OTTAWA — Before Prime Minister Mark Carney headed into his first meeting with the new chief executive of CIBC last year, a senior official briefed him on how major lenders can help spur economic growth and reduce Canada’s reliance on the United States.

A key point in the backgrounder: Supporting Canada’s push to diversify trade will require higher risk tolerance from those who bankroll the businesses making the leap into new markets.

“Business lending and credit availability is essential for economic growth, investment, innovation and business scaling,” said the memo prepared for Carney’s Dec. 12 meeting with CEO Harry Culham, who had recently taken over as head of Canada’s fifth-largest bank.

“In addition,” the memo from the Privy Council Office said, “as Canada looks to diversify its trading relationships, Canadian businesses will need to expand and penetrate other foreign markets—an inherently riskier and often more capital-intensive endeavour.”

The Logic obtained the document through the Access to Information Act.

The memo signed by Tushara Williams, deputy secretary to the cabinet, is heavily redacted. Not a single word in a section titled “Questions to Raise” was released, as government censors determined it contained advice to cabinet. That makes it hard to know whether Carney went into the meeting with a specific ask for Culham. Yet the suggestion that more capital and a higher tolerance for risk would support trade diversification is in line with Carney’s efforts to persuade financial executives to get on board with his vision.

“Fortune favours the bold in a crisis,” Carney said May 20 in a fireside chat with the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. “You really have to look for positive things. If you’re pulling back and trying to minimize risk all the time, it will overwhelm you.” 

The Liberal government is striving to double Canada’s exports outside the U.S. by 2035, and to unleash $1 trillion of total investment—including by attracting $500 billion from the private sector at home and abroad over the next five years—to fund major infrastructure projects.

To support those goals, Carney is inviting top CEOs, investors and other global business leaders to Toronto in September for a Canada Investment Summit co-hosted by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

Last month in Toronto, Carney reportedly gathered Bay Street executives, including Culham, for an hour-long private meeting. The discussion focused on how the private sector can work with the government to “mobilize capital and create the right conditions to catalyze more investment in Canada,” according to a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office reported by The Globe and Mail.

Renée LeBlanc Proctor, a spokesperson for Carney, said the federal government has been signing deals around the world as part of its efforts to diversify trade beyond the U.S. “This work is only getting started,” she wrote in a statement to The Logic. “Prime Minister Carney has spoken to a wide range of businesses and investors about opportunities to contribute, ultimately building a stronger, more independent, more competitive Canadian economy for all.”

CIBC spokesperson Tom Wallis said that the bank had no comment for this story.

Carney has encouraged Canadian corporate leaders to take greater risks before—with a less gentle tone. In 2012, when he was governor of the Bank of Canada, he accused companies of “excessive” caution coming out of the global financial crisis, which left them sitting on “dead money” better off in the hands of their shareholders.

Weak business investment has long been a factor in Canada’s sluggish productivity. This was the case before U.S. President Donald Trump launched his trade war, but the tariffs fuelled uncertainty that caused many businesses to pause their investment plans. 

The most recent quarterly business outlook survey from the Bank of Canada suggests many companies intend to get the ball rolling again within the next year. Yet Statistics Canada reported business capital investment fell 0.7 per cent in the first quarter of this year. It was the fifth quarterly decline in a row.