One hundred of the world’s most powerful investment funds, controlling about $120 trillion between them, will be sending top executives to Toronto this September. There, they will attend a summit where Mark Carney will pitch “Canada, Inc.” to them in a bid to rustle up $500 billion in investment for major projects and reverse the catastrophic outflow of capital that Canada has experienced in the recent period.
Discussing the summit when it was announced back in April, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne explained, “There’s a lot of interest around Canada. So, now this summit is really about: How do you transform interest into projects and catalyze the momentum that we see?”
The “interest” and “momentum” that Champagne is referring to is the result of Carney’s ongoing attempts to make Canada more attractive to investment by tearing down regulations, attacking workers, and promising corporate handouts. Of course, all those efforts mean nothing if corporations don’t take the bait.
As Business Council of Canada CEO Goldy Hyder said of the summit, “If we don’t get our resources out of the ground expeditiously in an investment-friendly regulatory climate, we are going to miss this window one more time, and I don’t know how lucky of a country we think we are, but we don’t have the nine lives of a cat.”
Hence the summit. It is so important that Carney has reportedly been personally involved in planning the meeting, relying on his own reputation and connections to attract the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and top executives from Blackstone, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway. After wooing invitees at a “gala dinner” at a luxury hotel, Carney will try to sell them on Canadian ports, mining, energy, and AI.
As summit co-host and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board director Michael Leduc described it, “It’s a little bit like a large public company holding their investor day.”
Or it’s like a party that Carney is throwing for his real constituents. Carney, the Liberals, and bourgeois democracy in general don’t serve the people, they serve a class.
If investment follows—which is still a big if—it won’t be Canadian workers who experience the benefits. The entire point of Carney’s reforms, from the Canada Strong Fund to changes to the labour code, is to attract business by letting them stuff their pockets at the expense of the working class.
Moreover, the question of where investment is directed is decided entirely over the heads of working people. There are plenty of things that desperately need injections of cash: crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded hospitals, a national wildfire agency—things that would make people’s lives better. But none of these things are currently viable sources of private profit. Instead, AI data centres are figuring heavily in the pitch for “Canada Inc.,” just as communities are questioning and pushing back against data centre plans. As suggested by Carney’s latest budget, the privatization of airports is on the table, which will undoubtedly mean higher prices and worse service.
We are told that we live in a democracy. But the decisions that matter aren’t made at the ballot box, or even in Parliament, they’re made in luxury hotel conference rooms by a few dozen people.
These asset managers have colossal resources at their disposal, more than the GDP of the entire world in 2025. That wealth could be mobilized to improve the lives of millions. But that will only happen when decisions are no longer made based on profit, but by workers who have taken democratic control over the economy.
