As Prime Minister Carney remarked earlier this year at Davos, we are in the midst of a rupture in the old international rules-based order. The era of free trade with the United States is over. Canada needs to diversify its trade relationships, strengthen its domestic economy and invest in infrastructure. However, below the surface of those speeches, Carney has been pushing a modified version of early 2000s neoliberalism: more free trade deals, deregulation of the domestic market, low taxes and a smaller public sector (outside of defence).
On the international stage, the federal government seems content to promote big resource export projects, and is seeking global capital to take advantage of our resource riches. To this end, the PM has been pushing for new foreign investment, such as a $70 billion pledge from the United Arab Emirates. This seems like the inertia of Canada’s colonial history: we began as a British colony, replaced that with investment from the United States, and now we are catering to any and all footloose global capital.
Missing from the public conversation so far is the role of U.S. and other foreign ownership in Canada, particularly in the core resource sectors the federal government is promoting in its response to U.S. threats. While we often speak of “Canadian exports” in resource sectors, a large share of production is controlled by US or other foreign corporations through their direct investments. To get to “elbows up” it’s worth revisiting who is really on Team Canada.
Let’s review the data on foreign ownership in the Canadian economy, and the shifting patterns of foreign investment in recent decades—including Canadian investment in the U.S. and other countries. If we really want to be “maîtres chez nous” in the face of developments south of the border, we need to revisit the ownership structure of key sectors of the economy, and repatriate the trillions of dollars Canadian companies have invested outside of the country.
Foreign ownership by the numbers
At the broadest level, Canadian industry is largely controlled by Canadian corporations. Statistics Canada’s foreign ownership data focuses on country of control as the key determinant, meaning more than 50 per cent of ownership. A limitation is that smaller stakes (under 50 per cent) held by foreign companies or individual portfolio investors are overlooked. Below we focus on asset holdings, which include tangible assets like buildings and equipment, intangible assets like patents, and financial assets.
Table 1 shows the most recent data for 2023 on assets by industry and country of control. The U.S. constitutes just over half of foreign ownership, and for simplicity I’ve lumped together all other countries as the rest of the world (ROW). Some 86 per cent of assets in 2023 were Canadian controlled but this is distorted by finance and insurance, and if we just look at non-financial corporations, the total share of assets that are Canadian controlled falls to 77 per cent.
One caveat is that the reported total excludes “management of companies and enterprises,” a fairly opaque category that includes some key mechanisms of foreign control, including holding companies and corporate offices managing across regions or supply chains. This is to avoid double counting, but it likely means that foreign ownership is greater than indicated below. Federal and provincial government business enterprises are also excluded from the foreign ownership data.
Comparing these to historical estimates shows a long-term shift towards greater Canadian ownership. Kari Levitt’s 1970 landmark book, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, put foreign control at 34 per cent in 1963 (there may be some comparability issues from updates to industrial classifications and measurement). Levitt’s data for 1963 and the most recent 2023 data show a reduction in foreign control in manufacturing (from 60 to 44 per cent), oil and gas (from 74 to 37 per cent) and mining (from 59 to 30 per cent).
In the oil patch, foreign ownership may be much higher than reported by Statistics Canada. A BMO Capital Markets analyst estimated that U.S. funds now own about 59 per cent of Canadian oil and gas companies. A 2025 report by Silas Xeureb of Canadians for Tax Fairness estimates the big four oil sands companies (Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, and Suncor Energy), which account for over 80 per cent of total oil sands production, were on average 73 per cent foreign-owned, including 60 per cent American-owned. Xuereb comments, “this raises questions about whether the major corporations making decisions about production and employment in Canada’s oil sands are acting in the best interests of Canadians.”
A few other notable sectors in the 2023 Statscan data for their foreign-controlled share are wholesale trade (46 per cent of assets), retail trade (21 per cent) and professional, scientific and technical services (27 per cent). In finance and insurance, the numbers tilt more Canadian, with 91 per cent of assets held by and 87 per cent of profits going to Canadian corporations. Much of this is the chartered banks with the main foreign presence being in credit cards and investment banking.
These data point to sources of American economic power in Canada that could inform Canada’s response to the Trump tariff war. U.S.-controlled corporations held $1.4 trillion in assets in Canada and made almost $84 billion in profits in 2023 (again, excluding management of companies and enterprises). The sectors with the largest U.S. presence are finance and insurance, oil and gas, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, and professional, and scientific and technical services, which together comprise 85 per cent of U.S. assets and 90 per cent of U.S. profits.
Foreign direct investment patterns
Another way of looking at this issue is from the changing pattern of cross-border investment flows. This includes direct investment typically leading to active management and control of assets, as well as portfolio investment in more liquid stocks and bonds, which are more passive (although they could be quite active if the shareholdings become larger, like over five or 10 per cent of total shares).
While Canada has historically been a net recipient of investment from the U.S. and other countries, this has shifted significantly in recent years. Figure 1 shows Canada’s net international investment position—the value of assets held by Canadians abroad minus foreign holdings of assets in Canada. Again, we break out the U.S. and the rest of the world, and data are adjusted as a share of Canadian GDP to be comparable over time.
Over the past decade, investment flows have surged from Canada to other countries relative to investment into Canada. In 1990, non-residents held net assets in Canada, with two-fifths of this amount from the United States. Canada shifted to being a net asset holder in 2000 for the rest of the world outside the U.S., and in 2015 for the U.S. itself. As of Q3 2025 Canada had a net international investment position of $1.9 trillion, equivalent to about two-thirds of GDP.
If we just look at direct investment, as of Q3 2025, the total stock of Canadian direct investment abroad (CDIA) was $4.7 trillion, whereas foreign direct investment in Canada (FDIC) was $3.4 trillion, for net assets of $1.3 trillion. For just the U.S., CDIA was $2.2 trillion and FDIC $1.5 trillion, for net assets of $700 billion. Note that this is the total accumulated stock of investment and not the annual flows of investment.
Canada’s ownership position vis-a-vis the rest of the world has grown. Going back to 1990, the stock of FDIC increased from 25 per cent of GDP in 1999 to 48 per cent in 2024 but CDIA increased faster from 29 per cent to 80 per cent of GDP over the same time frame. Key industry sectors for both CDIA and FDIC are similar, and include finance/insurance (33 per cent of CDIA in 2024 and 13 per cent of FDIC), mining and oil and gas extraction (10 per cent and 11 per cent respectively) and manufacturing (six per cent and 17 per cent respectively). The industry-level statistics have comparability issues compared to other stats cited above, as they are reported based on book value not market value, and many long-lived assets in the resource sector would have been depreciated substantially on the books but may retain much higher value for the purposes of production.
Perhaps the most significant industry category is that opaque one mentioned earlier—management of companies and enterprises—which is responsible for 22 per cent of the stock of CDIA and 32 per cent of FDIC. Statscan comments that these are “often large corporate groups that receive foreign direct investment and are involved in a variety of activities in the country.” More research is required to better understand what this category means in terms of ownership and control in Canada.
Nonetheless, considering both direct and portfolio investment, it is clear that Canada is no longer reliant on foreign capital to grow its economy as it was in earlier decades. While the Canadian government continues to see foreign capital as critical to a pivot away from the United States, the country should instead look at policies to repatriate Canadian capital currently being invested overseas.
Revisiting the foreign ownership debate
In the 1960s and 70s, Canada had a robust debate about the role of foreign ownership in the economy. Led by the 1968 report of the Task Force on the Structure of Canadian Industry (aka the Watkins report, named after the esteemed economist Mel Watkins, the task force’s chair), and economist Kari Levitt’s more popular 1970 book, Silent Surrender, many economists at the time challenged American ownership, especially in Canada’s resource sectors and manufacturing industries. Levitt famously commented that Canada is “the most neocolonial country in the world, the richest dependent developed industrialized country.”
That era spawned efforts through the 1970s to boost Canadian entrepreneurship and ownership, with the federal government creating the Canada Development Corporation, the Foreign Investment Review Agency and Crown corporations like Air Canada to Petro Canada. Provincial governments piled on in their own ways, including the development of Crown corporations in electricity and other areas, although these have also been used to facilitate the flow of resources south.
Much of this washed away in the 1980s with the Mulroney government’s hard neoliberal shift, including the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. By the mid-1990s, Canada was a booster of 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1995 World Trade Organization, the (failed 1998) Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and other bilateral or regional trade and investment agreements. The Mulroney government also privatized other Crown assets like the Canada Development Corporation, Air Canada and Petro Canada. By and large, Canadian governments since then have welcomed and actively encouraged foreign investment through various neoliberal reforms, such as lower taxes on capital and reductions in regulation.
The federal policy apparatus remains shaped by the 1985 Investment Canada Act, which sets thresholds for official review of significant foreign investments. In 2026, this threshold is just over $2 billion and the review includes a “net benefit” test, including job creation, technology transfer, and other economic impacts such as competition. Investments in the cultural sector (e.g., publishing, film, music) are subject to additional scrutiny to preserve Canadian cultural identity.
In addition, the federal government can review any investment that could impact national security—including critical infrastructure, technology, and defense. The Act was used to block the Chinese takeover of a Canadian construction company in 2018, and an Arctic gold mine in 2020. In March 2025, the federal government updated the guidelines under the Investment Canada Act to increase its capacity to screen and block potentially predatory foreign acquisitions that “undermine Canada’s economic security.”
Canada limits foreign ownership in certain areas to protect national interests, particularly in culture, telecommunications, and transportation. Foreign ownership in Canadian airlines is capped at 25 per cent of voting shares under the Canada Transportation Act. Foreign ownership of Canadian telecommunications carriers is limited to 20 per cent of voting shares and 33.3 per cent of total equity, and for broadcasting companies to 20 per cent of voting shares to ensure Canadian content and cultural sovereignty.
It’s worth noting that Canadian ownership does not guarantee economic health. Indeed, Canadians are regularly gouged by Canadian telecom oligopolies. The federal government has long preached more competition as the antidote to this behaviour, as opposed to price regulation or greater public ownership. Conservative commentators argue that foreign ownership restrictions should be eased or eliminated in order to provide that competition. However, it’s not obvious that the economics of telecom services over the vast landmass of Canada would generate beneficial competition outside the major cities.
Time for a new National Policy
The prospect of renegotiation of Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), or any bilateral successor agreement, raises a number of questions about what Canada might be asked to give up. And the value of any agreement could only be temporary at best, given the whims of the U.S. president in response to any perceived slight. Having normalized this behaviour, even a post-Trump U.S. will not be a reliable trading partner.
The creation of Canada as a country was, in significant part, a response to American expansionism. The original 1879 National Policy aimed to boost East-West linkages in place of North-South linkages with the growing and expanding United States. The tariff wall created incentives for U.S. companies to build branch plants in Canada to service the Canadian market. These eventually became rationalized as part of North American production.
Canada has at various times aimed to use industrial policies to shape foreign investment towards economic development. The Auto Pact in 1965 was based on the principle that a company must essentially build a car in Canada in order to sell one here, but allowed producers to get the economies of scale of servicing Canada and the United States. Although the Auto Pact was ruled in violation of World Trade Organization rules in 2001, its legacy is still visible across central Canada.
With the WTO essentially sidelined, Canada has the latitude to ensure that market access to our 40 million person market be accompanied by commitments to build here, in automotive and other sectors. If anything, Canada should expand its ability to set conditions on foreign investment to benefit Canadian workers, communities, and the environment, as opposed to replicating and multiplying the problematic language of free trade deals that restrict such capacity.
Canada can go beyond this if we think outside the limits of the mainstream and revisit our own historical experiences. First of all, let’s launch a new generation of Crown corporations and other public enterprises. Think of where Canada might be had PM Mulroney not killed the Canada Development Corporation in 1986. Other countries have successfully deployed public enterprises to take a more direct role in controlling economic activity.
State enterprises are already players in Canada’s oil sands—they’re just not Canadian state enterprises. Or look at Norway for a model of state-led resource development with a wealth fund now worth $2.2 trillion. In contrast, the majority of oil and gas profits in Alberta have gone to U.S.-controlled companies, Alberta’s fiscal situation is far weaker, and the future holds massive unfunded liabilities for clean up.
Public enterprise may have broader benefits beyond the capture of economic rents and boosting domestic value added from the exploitation of resources. Crown corporations offer a better pathway to ensure resource development is consistent with treaties with First Nations and broader efforts at reconciliation and revenue-sharing in the resource sector. And when it comes to challenges like climate change, and the need to wind down the problematic oil and gas sector over the coming decades, public enterprise may be essential to the energy transition.
The 2025 federal budget makes a modest contribution in this regard, with the promise of a $2 billion Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund. While this is not a huge commitment in the grand scheme of things, the fund would consider equity investments to advance critical minerals projects, as well as more conventional loan guarantees and offtake agreements. More of this is needed and in other key sectors to break free of the colonial mindset that Canada is just a vast quarry for anyone who wants to come along and harvest resources.
In addition, domestic pools of capital invested overseas need a pathway for repatriation. This includes the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and a wide number of public sector pension plans. This is challenging in the short term, but it seems absurd that the CPP has half of its holdings in a country that is threatening our sovereignty. Channeling these savings into the development of infrastructure and industry that builds Canada’s resilience should be a key test of the federal government’s nation-building orientation.
Finally, it is worth reconsidering additional foreign ownership limits in key resource sectors, critical minerals in particular, as Canada already does in telecommunications. Joint ventures would still be welcome but the key is Canadian control over Canadian resources driving much stronger economic benefits for the country.
This need not be just about resource sectors, either. In the broader care economy, much is protected from the full force of free trade agreements, as legitimate public services. However, there is always a margin where the for-profit private sector is playing (e.g. private surgical clinics in health care, for-profit child care facilities). Trade deals can serve to lock in privatization, and an added vector of foreign investment could worsen this situation if the company has access to investor-to-state dispute settlement mechanisms.
As we look to define what we mean by “elbows up” and “maitres chez nous” there is a robust policy agenda awaiting to build Canada and turn its vast physical and human resources into collective well being. Being Canadian alone is not the only issue but it’s an important one that used to be part of the national conversation—and should be again.
