While shifting away from its closest business partner will prove a test for Carney, the former central banker has an address book full of the world’s biggest business bosses and is on first-name terms with many of them.
“These were personal invites in many cases, literally,” said Goldy Hyder, president and chief executive of the Business Council of Canada.
“It’s not a group of politicians inviting financiers, it’s a group of former financiers and investment people inviting their former buddies,” added Miville Tremblay, who worked with Carney for several years at the Bank of Canada, and saw his skills on show during the 2008 global financial crisis.
“He was way above everyone,” he said. “He understands finance very deeply. [He] would know when they are bluffing and when the understatement meant that something really bad was happening.”
Knowing the minds of investors gives the prime minister, who began his career at investment bank Goldman Sachs, an advantage this week.
Carney is betting his background will boost his country’s economic future, though there’s little doubt that Canada stands to lose the most from any permanent divorce with the US, the world’s largest economy.
Tremblay said Canada seeking investment from overseas was not new, but that the selling pitch to large corporations had now changed.
For the past 25 years, Canada’s trade ministers used its proximity to the US as a selling point, pitching to foreign investors that they should “invest in Canada because you’ve got an easy access to the US market”, Tremblay said.
“This line doesn’t work anymore.”
While the US-Canada trade war rumbles on, many believe there will come a moment when both sides return to the negotiating table.
Bradley Saunders, North America economist for Capital Economics, said securing the future of the trade deal was the “really important thing” for Carney to achieve in the longer term.
“Trade exports to the US are worth 20% of Canada’s GDP – that’s one of the highest rates in terms of bilateral trade between any two countries in the world.
“If Carney wants to attract long-term investment… he wants this to go well, he has to try and provide a stable environment – and that won’t come until Canada has a certain trading relationship with the US.”
Tremblay added even if Canada cut its trade with the US over the longer term, it was clear “they’ll have to sit down and make a compromise”.
Hyder cautioned that investors will want Carney to prove he can fix other barriers to investment, including ensuring indigenous communities and provinces – who have the power to slow or kill major resource projects – are on board with proposals.
