Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard is carrying the message, by participating in the summit aimed at stimulating private investment taking place in Toronto, that “Quebec is at the centre of the transformation of the Canadian economy”.
“We have a major manufacturing sector. We have clean energy, we have defence expertise. We have critical and strategic minerals,” he listed in a telephone interview from Toronto.
The minister will listen attentively throughout Tuesday to the various panel discussions planned, but will also participate in hallway conversations and other informal events.
Arriving in Toronto on Monday, he told The Canadian Press that he was excited about the lineup of foreign investors present, who are widely considered to be the cream of the crop in the business world.
“Here are gathered representatives of private companies, financial intermediaries, major financial institutions, governments, project promoters, but the key element is the foreign investors who come here to study these projects,” he said.
Like the federal prime minister, Mark Carney, Girard deplores a deficit in private investment in Canada and Quebec.
He notes that this issue predates the current trade war that is shaking many companies, as well as the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
Investors who accepted the invitation to the federal government summit, such as BlackRock, will have the opportunity to be presented with a host of Canadian and Quebec projects.
BlackRock is considered the world’s largest asset manager.
“What these projects all have in common is that they are capital intensive – they take a lot of capital – and there is also a lot of uncertainty about the prices at the time these projects will be carried out,” said the Quebec minister.
He mentioned projects that would be deployed “at a cost of billions”.
“The Quebec government is a catalyst, meaning it is ready to put in the money to get these projects started, but our level of intervention must be limited and diversified, hence the need for more private and foreign capital so that private capital takes the majority of the risks of these projects, which are, at their core, risky projects, but important projects for the Quebec economy.”
Minister Girard represents the Quebec government at the Canadian Investment Summit, which has brought together hundreds of business leaders.
According to the list of participants provided by Premier Carney’s office, major players in the Quebec business world will be represented, such as Bombardier, the Desjardins group and Rio Tinto, a company that is notably a leader in the aluminium sector in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.
Rio Tinto is sending its chairman of the board, Dominic Barton, to the event. Barton previously headed the McKinsey consulting group, working with numerous governments, and also served as Canada’s ambassador to China.
Barton also serves as chairman of the board of an organization created by the Carney government called Invest in Canada, an initiative that aims to mobilize private sector investment.
The head of the state-owned company Hydro-Québec, Claudine Bouchard, will also be present on Tuesday, according to the list, as will the president and CEO of La Caisse, Charles Emond.
The event is reminiscent of a “summit” initiated by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February 2025, called the Canada-United States Summit, which also took place in Toronto.
But according to Minister Girard, this is a first in terms of successfully bringing together so many major, globally recognized investors.
However, he believes it will take two years to truly know if this event has been a success.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
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