The Trans Mountain West Coast Oil Pipeline, the Ksi Lisims LNG project and the Wind West offshore transmission initiative in Nova Scotia are among the big-ticket items that will be pitched to global foreign investors at next week’s Canada Investment Summit.
The Logic obtained a copy of the prospectus for the summit. It includes 167 projects, with a section highlighting “conventional energy” projects like oil and gas at the front of the book, followed by sections focused on clean energy, marine and port infrastructure, power and utilities, digital technology, advanced manufacturing and transportation. Mining and mineral projects make up the largest group of investment opportunities.
Talking Points
Global investors attending the Canada Investment Summit will be pitched on 167 projects, ranging from multibillion-dollar energy deals to early-stage technologies
Oil and gas is front of book, and mining projects make up the largest section of deals in the prospectus, but there are also offerings like data centres, spaceports and quantum computing
The deal book is expected to be presented at the summit to attendees like global pension funds and asset managers from the U.S., Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has organized the gathering, in collaboration with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, as it tries to raise $1 trillion in investment over the next five years in a bid to diversify trade and bolster the infrastructure, energy, critical minerals and AI sectors. Some of the projects are seeking debt or equity investments, while others are looking for customers or joint venture partners.
“Canada has what the world wants, from energy to critical minerals, core capabilities in aerospace, cyber, AI and quantum,” states a message from Prime Minister Mark Carney that accompanies the deal book. As selling points, it touts the Liberal government tax cuts and promised regulatory reforms, as well as the country’s portfolio of free trade agreements. “I invite you to partner with us,” Carney wrote to summit attendees.
The deal book—and presumably the summit—give the chosen projects extraordinary exposure to some of the deepest pockets in the world, and the tacit backing of the Canadian government, although the document includes a disclaimer saying their inclusion “should not be construed as an endorsement of any project, company or investment opportunity.”
Related Articles
Audrey Champoux, a spokesperson for the PMO, declined to comment on the contents of the document and said it is not planning to make any details of its prospectus public ahead of the summit.
The projects in the deal book represent over US$425 billion in capital expenditures in total, according to The Logic’s analysis. They range from EDM Resources’ pitch for just US$25 million to build a zinc and lead mine in Nova Scotia, to the US$57-billion bid to turn the Port of Churchill into an all-season gateway for LNG and goods trade.
Other projects near the top of the list include Nova Scotia’s US$44-billion plan to generate and transmit five gigawatts of wind power from coastal turbines; the US $28.5-billion Ksi Lisims LNG terminal co-developed by Nisga’a Nation; and a joint venture by Abraxas Power and EDF Power Solutions to produce hydrogen and ammonia at a US$10.6-billion new facility in Botwood, N.L.
The deal book includes several large new AI data centres, which collectively could add up to 5.7 gigawatts of AI infrastructure, significantly expanding Canada’s compute capacity. Projects include a US$3.9-billion, 365-megawatt campus led by Beacon Data Centres in Spruce Lake, N.B., designed for use by large cloud providers. It’s seeking financing for utility upgrades and electricity infrastructure.
BW Velora’s Redcliff project, located near Medicine Hat, Alta., would supply its own energy from an 884-megawatt “behind-the-meter” power plant. The Norwegian firm plans to spend $14.5 billion in capital expenditures on the project, and is seeking equity and debt financing. The company is also touting a smaller, 150-megawatt project in Grande Prairie, at a cost of $2.4 billion. BW Velora is the new data centre offshoot of a conglomerate that also runs cargo ships, desalination plans, oil fields and wind turbines.
The deal book touts the country’s “abundant, reliable and competitively priced electricity,” and reduced cooling costs due to a chillier climate. It cites the federal government’s $2-billion program to boost so-called sovereign compute as an available incentive. Ottawa last week set out high-level guidelines for new AI data centre developments, including creating lasting local benefits and avoiding power price hikes for residents; the deal book does not set out similar requirements for included projects.
Though the prospectus is weighted toward heavy construction efforts, it also includes some opportunities for venture capital-style investments in Canadian companies.
Medtech company Kardium, for instance, is looking for $250 million in financing to commercialize a device to treat atrial fibrillation. The Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation (CSMC) seeks “strategic capital, project development partners, deployment partners and potential manufacturing partners” for its plan to build micro-scale nuclear reactors, which it acknowledges are not yet ready to be demonstrated.
“There is no secret sauce here. We just submitted it to Invest in Canada as a brief for consideration. I feel lucky that we got included, if that’s the case,” CSMC’s CEO Daniel Sax told The Logic in an email when asked how he went about getting on the list.
Two of Canada’s leading contenders in the race to develop useful quantum computers are also pitching major projects. Canada is trying to hold on to its champions in the sector, as the U.S. federal and state governments seek to capture the industry with the promise of significant funding and contracts.
Toronto-headquartered Xanadu, which went public in March, is seeking equity investments to help fund its $1.3-billion bid to build a large-scale commercial machine by 2031. Last month, the firm announced the site of a new production facility designed to make the quantum computers for a US$1-billion data centre it plans to set up by 2029. The federal government has already committed $195 million to the $893 million manufacturing project, and Xanadu is in discussions with Ontario for matching funding. Xanadu CEO Christian Weedbrook is scheduled to speak at the summit, according to a draft schedule obtained by The Logic.
Meanwhile, Photonic, which is based in Coquitlam, B.C., is looking for financing for a $500-million quantum chip-making plant. The factory could produce hardware for both the firm’s own quantum computers as well as customer applications that use light-based processors. Photonic closed a $275-million funding round in May, from investors including British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and Canadian telecoms Bell, RBC and Telus.
“There are no foundry facilities in Canada for us to make these chips,” Kirsten Sutton, Photonic’s chief business operations officer, said in an interview last week, before the deal book was distributed. “We do have to go internationally to do that.” The proposed project, dubbed “Vanguard,” could help onshore production to British Columbia.
The federal government is also pitching a project of its own—the spinout of the Canadian Photonic Fabrication Centre. Currently run by the National Research Council of Canada, it is one of only three independent facilities in the world that manufactures compound semiconductors, light-based components that help move information around data centres.
In May, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly announced plans to convert the Ottawa-based centre into a commercial entity that could take on private capital. European and Asian firms have signalled their interest in investing, she has said. The deal book does not put a price tag on the facility, but cites “expansion opportunities.”
Several projects in the prospectus explicitly seek institutional capital, but none name a specific financial institution or pension fund. The Prairie Silica Project, for instance, is seeking institutional investors, private equity and debt financing. Meanwhile, the Canada Sovereign Systems Centre lists Canadian pension funds and sovereign wealth funds among its targets.
Novaporte—a port project in Nova Scotia—is the only project that explicitly lists private credit among its financing objectives. But debt financing appears much more broadly across the deal book, with 53 projects referring to debt in some capacity.
The prospectus points to the Canada Infrastructure Bank as a tool for bringing more private capital into Canadian projects, saying it provides flexible financing and project-structuring expertise, while not tying it to a specific project. It also touts how Invest in Canada, the federal investment agency at which the government recently installed new leadership, including Dominic Barton as chair, will help investors and the government “to identify opportunities, navigate the Canadian market and facilitate connections” that can turn into investments.
Many, but not all, of the projects are being built by Canadian companies. Norway-based Vianode’s synthetic graphite plant and the nearby PowerCo Volkswagen gigafactory are on the list.
The Leif Erikson Trans-Atlantic Fiber System, a proposal to lay a fibre-optic link between Canada and Norway championed by Norway’s Bulk Infrastructure, is in the deal book for the foreign investment summit even though Bulk, a foreign company, is the one looking for a Canadian investor to take majority ownership.
With files from Kevin Carmichael