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The Carney government wants to double Canada’s exports to countries other than the United States by 2035 to help reduce dependence on the U.S. market and deepen Canadian trade and commercial ties with other economies. The idea commands significant public support. Canada faces a volatile mercantilist president determined to dismantle much of the architecture governing the global economy and upend America’s longstanding trade relationships.
Apart from the challenges posed by protectionist U.S. trade policies, Canada’s economy is also being hobbled by an unprecedented domestic investment gap, which reflects the cumulative impact of years of growth-inhibiting taxes, cumbersome government regulations and persistent infrastructure bottlenecks.
Fortunately, at least some policymakers in Ottawa recognize the need to bolster business investment. Next week, Prime Minister Carney will preside over a high-profile “investment summit” in Toronto—an event intended to galvanize domestic and international interest in Canada as an investment destination. In 2025, Canada recorded (for the first time in a decade) a positive net inflow of “foreign direct investment” (FDI), meaning foreign investors allocated more capital to Canada than Canadian firms invested abroad. However, most of this inbound FDI was deployed to buy existing businesses and assets, not to increase Canadian-based production or to improve productivity, which are essential to income growth for workers.
Natural resource industries are at the heart of both diversifying Canada’s exports and boosting investment. The natural resources sector—composed of energy (e.g. oil and gas), mining, forestry and agri-food—plays an outsized role in our economy, generating 16 per cent of the country’s economic output and supporting 1.8 million jobs.
Some of our resource industries look well-positioned for significant growth.
According to the federal government, as of early 2025 there were 504 major resource projects under construction or planned across the country, representing a potential $630 billion in capital spending—that is, money used to expand production and make businesses more productive. Energy—including oil and gas, electricity and other energy sources (including uranium)—comprised more than four-fifths of the national resource project inventory, followed by minerals and metals.
Additional natural resource projects announced or proposed over the last 20 months (that is, since the above data were published) amount to another $100 billion or so of capital spending, should they all proceed. All told, the current inventory of natural resource projects (under construction or proposed) totals almost $750 billion of potential investment.
Resource industries also loom large when thinking about how to increase Canada’s exports and diversify our export markets. Today, more than half of the country’s exports originate in the natural resource sector. The long list of resource-related projects under development or being considered suggests energy and other resource industries will account for an even bigger share of Canada’s international exports in five or 10 years.
It’s important to note that Canada reliably generates hefty trade surpluses—when the value of goods and services we sell is greater than the value of what we buy from other countries —in resource-based industries. These trade surpluses help raise Canadian incomes and help offset the sizable trade deficits Canada runs in most non-resource sectors including consumer products, electronic and electrical equipment, and motor vehicles and parts.
Simply put, Canada’s natural resource industries remain central to our ability to “pay the bills” in an increasingly unforgiving world. For the Carney government to deliver on its pledge to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports, the country will need a thriving and growing resource sector.
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COMMENTARY: Carney Government’s ‘Export’ Plan Relies on Canada’s Natural Resource Sector – Fraser Institute