Learning that his plan to build a military explosives factory complex in central Alberta was in the Canada Investment Summit’s deal book left JR Cox elated. Then he had to figure out what to do about it. 

He’d submitted a dossier on his proposal months before, responding to a particular call for defence projects for global money managers to consider. The summit was days away when Cox learned that the 10-page file he’d submitted had made the cut.

But that was pretty much it. Managers of $120 trillion worth of investments would be gathered in Toronto, and it was up to Cox to find a way to talk to them.

“I just got an email saying, ‘You’re in the book,’” he told The Logic in an interview the day after the summit’s big day on Tuesday. “‘We’re not sending you a copy of it. There’s no track or program for those in the book. You know, hopefully these people get back to you after the summit. Have a nice day.’

“To be quite honest, I was like, ‘What the fuck?’”

Weeks before, knowing no more than that summit organizers had acknowledged his dossier, Cox had booked a ticket to Toronto on spec.

He knew big money would be at the investment summit and he wanted to shoot his shot for Sterling Energetics and its $1.3-billion plan to transform Wetaskiwin County, a largely agricultural area an hour south of Edmonton.

Cox talked to The Logic on Wednesday morning, the day after the formal summit concluded, looking out over Toronto’s city hall from the 43rd floor of Toronto’s downtown Sheraton hotel. He would have to decamp for another hotel later. With the summit, the Toronto International Film Festival and a Blue Jays home stand on the go, the Sheraton was crammed and couldn’t put him up any more nights.

Cox is a talker by nature, though, gregarious and enthusiastic, and tiredness did not slow him. The former infantryman has already built a firm making rifles and carbines, called Sterling Arms, with presences in Canada and the United Kingdom, and he’s emphatic that he can build another one.

Inclusion among the deal book’s 167 projects did not get Cox onto a panel in the summit dedicated to defence—that featured executives from corporate heavyweights CAE, Bombardier, Telesat and Linamar. It didn’t get him into the Yorkville hotel where Prime Minister Mark Carney and many others pitched Canada to the managers of $120 trillion of global capital, or even the guest list for the pre-summit reception Carney hosted for Canadian corporate swells.

“I had no illusions about getting into the main program,” Cox said. “But I knew there would be breakfasts. I knew there’d be roundtables. I knew there’d be panel discussions, and I’m gonna learn an amazing amount.”

Sterling Energetics’ deal book entry, a panel about the size of a baseball card on page 60 next to one for Telesat’s multibillion-dollar Lightspeed satellite constellation, was his entry pass when he set out to convince organizers of satellite events that he belonged on their guest lists.

“I’d write to say, ‘Listen, I’m not an investor, but I’m in the book,’ and they said, ‘Oh, OK, then you’re invited,’” he said.

Cox’s initial idea was to make nitrocellulose, which is key to making artillery shells blow up instead of being inert projectiles, out of waste wood from B.C. forestry. As the name suggests, cellulose, a chemical in plant matter, is the vital raw material.

Nitrocellulose is in short supply as shipments to Ukraine have ripped through western stockpiles. In March, the federal government pledged $355.7 million to a Canadian subsidiary of U.S.-based General Dynamics to build a nitrocellulose factory in Quebec, part of a $1.4-billion public investment in producing shells in Canada.

Hiring a U.S. prime contractor to make an essential military good in Canada is an incomplete solution, Cox said.

“We haven’t solved our sovereignty at all by championing projects by the primes,” he said. “Employment, yes. Investment, yes. Sovereignty of supply, no.”

A tentative deal to site a factory on land belonging to the Samson Cree First Nation, a little south of Wetaskiwin, fell apart after the chief Cox had been dealing with was defeated in a band election.

The current plan, which he’s working on with Wetaskiwin County, has grown. Beyond nitrocellulose, Cox wants to make a range of high explosives and equipment for other military uses, like kamikaze drones. Alberta regulators are used to dealing with permits for exotic and dangerous chemicals, and Cox believes it’s just about the only place in Canada he could get something like this going at the speed military buyers need.

His dream, to be blunt, is grand. The industrial infrastructure will have to be built practically from scratch. Sterling will need its own specialized emergency services. A workforce of 600 will need child-care services and recreation facilities.

“This is going to be one of those old-school company towns,” Cox said. “One in 10 families will be working at the plant in one way or the other.”

He wants to build with Canadian steel and cement and use Canadian-made electric trucks. “I’m going to hold my head high at the end of this, when it’s all built, and go, ‘Look at this. This is Canada.’”

None of the money managers has phoned yet, Cox said, but the face time in Toronto with people he might otherwise have struggled to exchange emails with has been valuable.

“I’ve climbed the ladder by being here, not just one rung, but two or three,” he said. “Nobody’s blowing me off here. I’m not getting canned responses when I’m having senior discussions with people.”

Some of the most valuable talk in Toronto has been with other Albertans, Cox said, gathering in a space Invest Alberta set up for summit attendees and hangers-on. The explosives business needs certain critical minerals, and Cox has talked to people who want to mine them, for instance. Anyone who was there was a serious person.

“Every day I’d call my wife with kind of a debrief, and I’m like, ‘What a great day. These are the kinds of meetings I had today. This is fabulous.’”