As Main Street investors, Silicon Valley executives and other capital-allocation enthusiasts streamed out of Omaha following Berkshire Hathaway’s yearly festival of finance, one group of visitors left with an endorsement of sorts from the Oracle himself. 

At Berkshire’s annual meeting Saturday, a Canadian shareholder asked CEO Warren Buffett about the prospect of the US$860-billion holding company investing more north of the border. For large-enough opportunities that meet the firm’s requirements, “we don’t have any hesitancy about putting big money in Canada,” Buffett said, disclosing that the company was currently considering a new investment here.

Buffett’s comments were “another vote of confidence” in Canada’s business environment, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in an interview Sunday, while en route home from Nebraska. 

Champagne arrived in Nebraska Thursday night. During his two days on the ground, Ottawa’s industrial policy salesman met with state business leaders and elected officials, and toured the local plant of Nutrien, the Saskatoon-headquartered agricultural giant. (Fertilizer and cattle go south, feed and meat north). The trip is the latest of the Liberal government’s Team Canada missions, designed to win friends in the United States ahead of a possible second Trump administration that threatens to disrupt trade.

Champagne met Friday with Berkshire vice-chair Greg Abel; he spent Saturday elsewhere in Omaha. 

Berkshire, Nebraska’s most notable name, already has a Canadian presence. For example, its energy subsidiary owns wind and gas power-generation facilities in Alberta and a transmission line across to Montana. “But from a macro perspective, I wanted to feel the temperature,” said Champagne. 

Though he offered a warm response to the Canada question, Buffett didn’t provide any deal details. Champagne wouldn’t either, but said that in his meetings with Berkshire executives he’d highlighted Ottawa’s proposed green investment tax credits, and its promise to cut approval times for major projects to five years. He also touted the potential for the firm’s exporting businesses to take advantage of Canada’s portfolio of trade deals. “I am pretty confident that this is going to lead to more investments,” Champagne said, adding that his government and Berkshire had agreed to more regular meetings.

Buffett has anointed Edmonton-born Abel to take over as Berkshire CEO, and over the weekend made clear that his successor would control capital allocation decisions. The transition will put a Canadian in one of the most powerful jobs in American business. “Those are the kinds of key influencers you want to have” in the bilateral relationship, said Champagne, who is on texting terms with Abel. The minister cited Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen and Congressman Doug Bacon as other examples.

Republicans Pillen and Bacon have opposed the Biden administration’s electric-vehicle mandates, arguing they are currently unaffordable or impractical. Champagne has led Canada’s push for plants to make such cars and the batteries in them, landing a string of major facilities that will receive tens of billions in federal and provincial funding. 

Whatever the trade and industrial policy disagreements across the border, issues of energy, employment and economic security are non-partisan, Champagne insisted. On Saturday, he visited Offutt Air Force Base with Bacon, who was once its wing commander. The pair found common cause on critical minerals, research security, and the two countries’ approaches to engaging with China, according to Champagne. 

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has threatened to impose a flat tariff on all imports if re-elected in November, and has promised to break with the Biden administration’s policies on EVs, Beijing and other key bilateral files. Canadian policymakers and business leaders mobilized during Trump’s first term to save NAFTA (now USMCA). Under Biden, Ottawa launched a smaller but also successful lobbying effort to ensure U.S. EV tax credits applied to cars made in Canada.

Unlike the effort on NAFTA renegotiations, the new batch of Team Canada missions has not included any federal Conservatives; Champagne said he’d welcome Tory MPs on his trips, but that they haven’t been willing to come along. The Conservative caucus did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Champagne’s Team Canada tours this year have taken him to Georgia, Ohio, Michigan and Washington, D.C. He claimed both Democrats and Republicans have been receptive. It helps to have secret Canadians like Abel—Champagne prefers to call them “exceptional”—but the minister will accept assistance from anyone who can boost the bilateral relationship. 

“Our message resonates,” Champagne said. “We just need to tell it again, again and again.”