TORONTO — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s assertion that “Canada has what the world wants” has become a refrain among investors, business leaders and government officials leading up to the inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto this week. Over the next two days, though, the country will have to prove it can turn those opportunities into investments big enough to hook the world’s largest pools of capital. 

That tension came up repeatedly on Monday at the Canadian Global Growth Forum (CGGF) hosted by the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association, one of several events happening on the sidelines of the main summit taking place Tuesday.

More than 300 attendees overseeing a combined $120 trillion have travelled to Toronto to see what Canada is selling. The gathering is central to Carney’s effort to attract $1 trillion in investment over five years to finance projects ranging from energy infrastructure to housing and transportation.

At the CGGF event, Stuart Waugh, managing partner of Toronto-based Northleaf Capital Partners, said turning that global intrigue into solid deals may not come easily. The world’s largest institutional investors, he said, are looking for bigger investments than what Canada typically has to offer. “If you’re sitting at a desk in London, New York or Singapore, a $7 million Canadian asset looks positively microscopic and seemingly not worth the effort,” Waugh told the room full of global and domestic investors and business leaders on Monday.

Judging by Ottawa’s deal book for the summit—a prospectus of 167 projects spanning pipelines, mining, digital technology and transportation—there is no shortage of Canadian companies seeking capital. The list of investment opportunities, leaked to the media last week, represents over US$425 billion in combined capital expenditures. The largest bid is for US$57 billion to expand the Port of Churchill. There are a handful of other projects that pass the billion-dollar mark. The project with the smallest capital expense in the book, meanwhile, is a US$25-million zinc and lead mine in Nova Scotia.

For the most part, though, Canada is a country of middle-market companies, said Waugh. In the past, he said, that’s been a barrier to attracting large investors, but it doesn’t have to be. “It is on us to try and move that conversation forward because there’s some really interesting mid-market value creation opportunities in this country that ought to be accessible,” he said. 

Waugh argued that Canadian fund managers can bridge the gap by pooling large allocations from institutional investors and spreading the money across smaller companies and projects through funds and co-investments, for instance. Northleaf, which has invested more than $6 billion in Canada over 20 years, said that’s been its approach to getting large investors into Canadian deals. 

Sarah Pisonero, director of government funds at Business Development Bank of Canada, said the size problem also shows up in venture capital. Many Canadian funds remain too small for large institutional investors, she said, who may be unwilling to make commitments below $50 million or so. That creates a circular problem: funds need to become larger to attract institutional investors, while larger funds are needed to provide Canadian companies with the capital to scale.

Pisonero said that’s a growing pain of Canada’s maturing venture capital ecosystem. “A few years ago, the conversation was about creating companies, but now it’s about scale,” she said. Ottawa’s planned $1-billion Growth Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative is intended to draw more private money into Canadian venture and growth funds, though Pisonero said she could not provide a timeline for its launch.

Camilla Languille, co-CEO of Mubadala Private Equity, a US$385-billion Abu Dhabi sovereign investment fund, said Canada remains a relatively small part of its US$170-billion North American portfolio. “But we see potential to do more,” she said at the CGGF event Monday. 

Languille said Canada has compelling opportunities in AI infrastructure, energy, critical minerals, financial services and deep tech. But she said it can be difficult to navigate different governments, regulators and agencies. She said Canada can support global investors by deepening relationships with them, including visiting their countries and spending real time with them. She also argued that there needs to be better co-ordination between federal departments, government agencies and regulators and that investors need “entry points” to “bring decision makers together, establish clear accountability and help investors move quickly from initial interest to capital deployed.” 

Languille also called out Canada’s interprovincial trade barriers as a deterrent for investors, making the country feel like several markets rather than one. “Removing barriers to labour mobility, unifying standards and approvals will help companies scale nationally from day one,” she said, “so that global investors like ourselves can help take them to the next level with the global markets.” 

Canadian founders on stage at the CGGF event said the country has no shortage of firms and projects seeking to get to that next level. “A lot of times, Canadian founders have to go elsewhere because there’s a lack of ambition and response from Canadian capital,” said Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez. “That’s something that needs to change.”

While Cohere’s more recent, larger funding rounds have been led by Canadian firms like Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, most of the money in those financings has come from the U.S., according to Gomez. “Increasingly, we’re looking to diversify it,” he said. “We want more Canadian [and] European ownership.” Gomez linked that push to the firm’s focus on selling sovereign AI.

Photonic chief engineering officer Paul Terry also cited sovereignty as a factor that Canadian investors and governments need to consider. On Monday, the Coquitlam, B.C.-based firm proposed a $500-million semiconductor manufacturing facility; Terry and other executives are seeking backers for the project, known as Vanguard, in Toronto this week. “We are seeing companies taking over various supply chain mechanisms,” he said, citing U.S. competitor IonQ’s recent acquisition of fabrication firm Skywater. Vanguard will provide an alternative that can make quantum chips, but also processors for AI, drones and other applications. “It’ll be a sovereign thing for Canada to make sure that supply chain is managed.”

Despite the challenges, many investors and CEOs at the event said they were confident that Canada can grab more global investments, even as it’s in the midst of a trade war with the U.S. Cyrus Madon, executive chairman of Brookfield’s private equity group, said geopolitical upheaval could ultimately strengthen Canada’s position by forcing the government to focus on attracting capital, creating jobs and making the country more competitive. “In the long term, this bump in the road is going to be fantastic for Canada because we’re going to focus on things that really matter,” he said.