Terence Corcoran: Industrial strategy — a global push to crush capitalism

The corporate excitement level is rising to fever pitch in Toronto as the media braces for next month’s Canada Investment Summit, where an all-star cast of global corporate and financial elites will gather around Prime Minister Mark Carney to learn how Canada is ditching free market principles and embracing state-run industrial strategies.

Organized by Carney and his team — including two of Ottawa’s government pension operations — the objective of the summit is to establish Canada as a new economic force under new management that aims to unlock up to $1-trillion in national and foreign investment. Over the last year, Carney’s Liberal government has outlined multiple government-led strategies to transform the Canadian economy — defence, housing, infrastructure, telecommunications, trade, AI technology, major projects, automotive, climate industries, critical minerals.

Scheduled for Sept. 14 and 15 in Toronto, summit attendees — leaked to the media — include names such as Larry Fink of BlackRock Inc. , “top” executives from Blackstone Inc. , Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. , along with representatives of Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund and other global investment officials, Canadian bankers and investment executives.

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A naive observer might expect at least one or two of the attendees to quietly lift a finger and attempt to ask an obvious question: “Ah, Mr. Prime Minister, er, are you not concerned that engaging in this process represents abandonment of the free market and replaces it with too much government intervention? Why should we invest in projects and ideas that are dependent on erratic and unpredictable government officials?”

Investment executives who have made their billions cashing in on free market economies over the last several decades will not ask such a question of someone like Mark Carney. Summit attendees — including Fink, one of Carney’s climate policy buddies — will have read the prime minister’s Canadian best-selling book — Value(s): Building a Better World for All — and will be familiar with Carney’s long-time mission to replace free markets with state markets.