The 24 hours that could change Canada’s economic trajectory

Less than six weeks from now, Canada will have 24 hours to try to sway a captive audience of the world’s financial power brokers that the country is ripe for more investment.

The inaugural Canada Investment Summit, scheduled for Sept. 14 and 15 in Toronto, will be a rare moment for Canada. Led by Prime Minister Mark Carney and two of the country’s largest pension funds, it is expected to draw the kind of crowd that normally only gathers en masse in Davos, Switzerland or Los Angeles.

The guest list for the invitation-only event is not yet final, but the summit is on track to welcome executives from nearly 100 global investment organizations from 28 countries – including Canada – that collectively manage almost $120-trillion.

In the room at a luxury Toronto hotel will be Blackstone Inc. BX-N president Jonathan Gray, BlackRock Inc. BLK-N chairman and chief executive officer Larry Fink, and dozens of their peers.

There will be top executives from Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK-B-N and the world’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM-N, as well as from major funds in the Middle East and Asia. About 250 people are expected to be there, most of them CEOs and senior executives from abroad and from Canada.

The summit is the first of its kind in this country, pulled together in about six months, and will take place while the Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing and the city is buzzing with celebrities.

Done right, it could send a signal that Canada is on a more ambitious economic path and is serious about fixing barriers that have hamstrung investment – both foreign and domestic – in Canadian businesses and infrastructure.

The federal government has set out an ambitious agenda to attract $500-billion of new private-sector investment over five years, and to fast-track energy and infrastructure projects deemed critical to the country. But few of them are fully fleshed out or ready to put shovels in the ground.

Part of the summit’s draw is Mr. Carney, who built his reputation as a central banker and businessman, and personally sent invitation letters to many of the summit’s guests. And some of the heightened interest is a result of the continuing shakeup of global trade and security alliances set in motion by U.S. President Donald Trump.

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As Canada is locked in a trade war with the United States and engaged in intensifying talks about the future of North American free trade, Mr. Carney’s push to diversify Canada’s relationships is aligning with a period where investors are rethinking where to deploy their capital.

That has created a finite chance to turn heightened interest in Canada into durable relationships and get investment dollars flowing. While the world’s financial elite are listening, there is pressure to show that the country is serious and has shed a reputation for being too timid.

“In business, when the window opens that your customer is receptive, you’ve got to take that opportunity,” Canada Pension Plan Investment Board CEO John Graham said in an interview.

“Sometimes you’ve got to remind the world that Canadians have more wolf than Labrador in their DNA,” he added.

Even so, with such a large contingent of heavy hitters soon to land their private jets in Toronto, a quiet question has circulated around Ottawa and the Bay Street financial hub: Are we prepared for this moment?

“We’ve got to be ready,” Mr. Graham said. “The biggest investors in the world are . . . going to dedicate 24 hours to meet with Canadians. These are not people who fly in just on a whim. It’s a big deal.”

At CPPIB, Mr. Graham oversees $793-billion in retirement savings for more than 22 million Canadians. A co-host of the summit and an early proponent of the idea, he is part of the tight circle of federal officials and top business leaders shaping the summit.

Its steering committee is small, perhaps half a dozen people. Mr. Carney is not on it, but has been very involved, as has his chief of staff Marc-André Blanchard. Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. Mark Wiseman, a former top investment executive himself, has played a key role in the planning, sources said.

The Globe and Mail spoke to nearly a dozen sources with knowledge of the planning for the summit, as well as representatives of several global investment giants who confirmed their plans to take part. The Globe is not identifying the sources as they are not authorized to discuss the event’s confidential details.

The summit’s formal program will kick off with a gala dinner on Sept. 14. The main event is the next day, with a plenary session, panel discussions, small group meetings and a concierge service to match people up for sideline discussions, much of which will happen behind closed doors.

Canadian officials are working to compile a deal book to be circulated that can serve as a conversation starter and convey the breadth of opportunities that could soon need investment. But it will not be a comprehensive list.

There could be deals and investment commitments to Canada announced at the summit. But those would be a “nice to have” and are not the event’s main goal, Mr. Graham said.

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The measure of success will be whether global investors go home and start “dedicating real time and resources to looking at Canada,” he said, and to building deeper relationships with Canadian companies that could yield long-term flows of capital into the country.

“The summit is just the beginning. It’s the spark that leads to more activity,” Deborah Orida, CEO of the $321-billion Public Sector Pension Investment Board and a co-host with Mr. Graham and Mr. Carney, said in an interview.

For more than two years, CPPIB and Canada’s other major pension funds have been hearing much the same pitch. They are under pressure from government and business leaders to invest more in Canada from the $2.6-trillion they collectively manage. On average, those funds have about one quarter of their assets in Canada, and CPPIB has 12 per cent invested domestically.

Canadian pension CEOs have protected their independence by stressing that they are mandated to invest in the best interests of pensioners. Yet at the same time, Mr. Graham and Ms. Orida are using their influence to galvanize the country’s business community to expand the pool of suitable investments.

When Mr. Graham meets with fellow CEOs abroad, “there’s genuine curiosity” about Canada, but most global investors’ portfolios are “underweight” with 1 per cent or less in the country, he said.

To match Canada’s share of global market capitalization, they should have two to three times that.

Mr. Graham and Ms. Orida are spearheading a small group of Canadian CEOs who are working on an open letter to domestic business leaders that urges them to act quickly to develop more projects that are attractive to long-term capital, according to an early draft reviewed by The Globe.

“Attention alone . . . is not enough. We must convert global interest into investment and partnerships,” the draft says.

As much as possible, summit organizers have insisted that company leaders attend themselves, and not send deputies, with a few exceptions. Likely guests include KKR & Co. Inc. KKR-N CEO Joseph Bae, PIMCO CEO Emmanuel Roman, TPG Inc. TPG-Q CEO Jon Winkelried and the co-CEO of French asset manager Ardian, Mark Benedetti.

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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who visited Toronto in June, can’t be there but the bank’s head of asset and wealth management Mary Erdoes will likely come in his place. Berkshire CEO Greg Abel, the Canadian successor to legendary investor Warren Buffett, also won’t make it but is sending a senior colleague, Ted Weschler.

There will be senior officials from a majority of the major sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the Qatar Investment Authority. Also making the trip are CEOs and chairmen from Singaporean funds such as Temasek Holdings Ltd. and Japanese financial conglomerates.

The chief executives of Canada’s “Maple 8″ pension funds, Big Six banks and a number of major insurers and companies in key industries such as energy, technology and mining are also expected to be in the room. So are provincial premiers.

There will be panel discussions on key themes such as energy, frontier technology and critical minerals, as well as aerospace and defence. The CEOs speaking on the panels could be drawn from oil and gas leaders such as Suncor Energy Inc. SU-T, as well as newer startups such as AI company Cohere Inc. and quantum computing pioneer Xanadu Quantum Technologies Ltd. XNDU-T.

A small group of global investors will also likely lead a panel outlining what they look for when making deals.

Those investors expect government to “set the table” for investment and make sure “things happen on time,” Mr. Graham said. In turn, Canadian companies and investors need to be “very specific” about the opportunities that will be available and what stands in their way.

PSP’s Ms. Orida has spoken to some CEOs attending the summit who are keen to know more about what government is doing to strengthen Canada’s investing environment, and the tools available to help get projects off the ground.

“I think there’s an opportunity to showcase some of the work that has been done,” she said.

The desire to drill down into details and talk confidentially about plans is one reason organizers have tried to keep the event relatively small and private.

Initial invitations on the Prime Minister’s letterhead went out to about 100 of the top CEOs in global finance. After the summit was announced, requests to be included flooded in. Inevitably, the guest list has expanded, but many prominent business leaders still aren’t invited.

“It’s not a trade fair,” Mr. Graham said.

Executives from Canada’s venture-capital and private-equity communities who were left out made a flurry of calls and knocked on doors in Ottawa, making the case that the middle-market investment community should have seats at the table, two of the sources said.

A coalition of private-equity executives made their pitch in a document sent to Laurel Broten, CEO of Invest in Canada, an agency that promotes investment in this country by acting as a liaison to global businesses.

“A healthy domestic midmarket is the supply chain for the mega-funds,” the document said, according to a copy The Globe reviewed. “It is where assets are originated, professionalized, and scaled before they reach the size at which the largest global sponsors take notice.”

Most middle-market CEOs still have not secured invitations to the summit, but the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association is instead teaming up with those private-equity leaders to hold a parallel event in Toronto on Sept. 14, before the main summit starts.

The two gatherings are not officially linked, and Ottawa was initially hesitant about distracting from the summit. But organizers have become more receptive to the importance of the middle market in Canada’s pitch and have shared information such as the summit’s tentative list of attendees, the two sources said.

“We have to make sure that we’re owning the future, and that requires us to think obviously about major projects, but what is actually going to enable those major projects?” CVCA CEO Benjamin Bergen said in an interview. “It’s going to be AI, it’s going to be new forms of technology that empower how we either extract resources, ship oil, or cut lumber.”

The Milken Institute, which holds one of the premier gatherings of business and political leaders at its annual conference in Los Angeles, is also expected to announce an adjacent event in Toronto to coincide with the summit.

From time to time, Mr. Graham still hears doubts about whether Canada is prepared to show tangible proof that it can absorb an influx of new investment. But the summit is “not just about a pipeline or an airport,” he said. It’s intended to be “the starting line to create momentum to get things done.”

“Maybe it is being a little bit less Canadian. We have to seize the moment,” he said. “If you want to send the signal that you have ambition, you can’t be afraid to do ambitious things.”