Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: Carney opens Canada for business and courts a new European alliance

This is, uh, the, the best single thing they have done or any government's done in recent times-

Right

... to improve the likelihood of higher rates of investment, higher rates of productivity growth, higher rates of GDP growth. So if I was gonna borrow for anything-

Mm-hmm

... uh, it, it, it would be to, to pay the cost of something like this. [gentle music]

Roger Griffis here, chair of the Munk Debates with the latest installment in our Munk Dialogues with Globe and Mail journalist Andrew Coyne. Hey, Andrew.

Good to be with you.

So much to catch up with you on since our last chat. We've had, uh, more tumult out of the White House, a bond market in revolt, but I gotta start with the news the last 24 hours, the Big Investor Conference hosted by, uh, Prime Minister Carney. Um, what do you take away from this event? How should Canadians be thinking about this summit, what it says about his premiership, uh, as we barrel towards a consequential fall budget with the resumption of Parliament starting next week?

Yeah, I... You know, we should beware of, of falling too much for the hype of this thing. It's useful to get people together in a room, um, to some extent. I mean, there's no shortage of capital out there. There is perhaps a shortage of investable opportunities in Canada because we made it so difficult to invest here. Um, to the extent that the investors in that room can impress upon the authorities here, uh, the necessity to make things, uh, more attractive for investment, that's probably useful. But, you know, there's no shortage of people out there looking for investments. There's no reason to think that the people promoting investments in Canada are unable to find them themselves. Uh, um, so I, I, I do think there was a bit of a hype, uh, uh, around the summit itself. Now, coming out of the summit, um, there's been some very useful announcements, um, particularly, uh, the, the, uh, full deductibility in the first year of expenses for a much broader range of investments than had previously been allowed. That's major. That's a huge step. They've cut the, the marginal effective tax rate on new investment to something like 6.4%, which is the lowest in the G7. Uh, every economist who's looked at this says this is, this is a... This is the kind of thing we've really needed to see. Uh, and of course, the, the opening of, uh, of airports to investment. That's giving people assets they can invest in this country. Um, that's helpful as well. It's helpful 'cause I think we'll get better airline, a- airport service out of it as well. So it, it... The package of things all together has, I think, an important signaling device quite b- beyond the policies themselves, which is, uh, this government is very aggressively courting, uh, domestic and foreign investment. Um, I don't think it's fair to say it's all talk. We're seeing the, the policies now. Uh, I mean, it, that, that deductibility, for example, applies to pipelines. I don't think you would've seen the Trudeau government have, have done that. Uh, so th- th- th- I think it's, it's, th- there's more of a sense that the government's seizing the moment here. Add to that, of course, and I'm sure we're gon-