Trudeau Prepares to Sell Canada

[Oscar]

Trudeau Prepares to Sell Canada

[ http://www.hilltimes.com/2016/11/14/tru ... L_CAMPAIGN)&goal=0_207adb2c89-9436a3d7c3-90669285&mc_cid=9436a3d7c3&mc_eid=37c29b0f13 ]

By PAUL WELLS PUBLISHED : Monday, Nov. 14, 2016 3:03 PM

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will kick one of his most ambitious and uncertain projects into high gear in Toronto today: a plan to attract tens of billions of dollars from outside investors to pay for an unprecedented burst of public infrastructure investment.

It’s a big day for Trudeau. He will lead two sessions with large institutional investors. The first is for large Canadian investors including the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Quebec’s Caisse de dépot et placement.

Federal officials have been planning for today’s second meeting, organized with the New York-based asset manager BlackRock, since at least midsummer.

Trudeau will be joined by nine senior cabinet ministers to pitch Canada as an investment destination. Their audience will be two dozen representatives from pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, and other international organizations that control a combined $21-trillion in assets.

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The hitches are … well, they’re multiple.

There is no real international model for the infrastructure bank Morneau and his colleagues are trying to build. There are reasons to believe the demand for decent rates of return is very large, but connecting demand to a reliable supply of projects is tricky.

Long-term institutional investors are supremely unsentimental in their portfolio decisions, so a Trudeau charm offensive is unlikely to sway them if they are unpersuaded by the numbers.

And the very notion of seeking private investment for public building has aroused suspicion on the Liberals’ left flank, just as more traditional public-private partnerships do.

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“Trump’s election came as a surprise to a lot of these investors,” a senior Liberal said late last week. “It certainly enhances how we look as a destination for global investment, that’s for sure.”

Joining Trudeau at the summit will be Morneau, Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, Health Minister Jane Philpott, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi ,and Transport Minister Marc Garneau.

Nobody will be asked to sign contracts or write cheques at this meeting. The process that might lead to those decisions will last months, at least. Morneau will continue the pitch by flying immediately after Monday’s sessions to London, where on Wednesday he will address a conference organized by the Swiss financial services company UBS.

The goal is to state emphatically, as one of Trudeau’s predecessors once proclaimed, that Canada is open for business.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column usually appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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Goodbye globalization

[ https://news.vice.com/story/heres-what- ... looks-like ]

Here’s what the end of globalization looks like By Matt Phillips on Nov 14, 2016

Since the end of World War II, a commitment to open trade — paired with ironclad security agreements with Japan and NATO — had been the cornerstone of American foreign policy. Last Thursday, those decades of political investments in increasing global integration halted with a simple word: “no.”

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[ https://news.vice.com/story/heres-what- ... looks-like ]