Politics Insider: Carney hosts investment summit to show the world ‘what we can do, what we can build’

Politics Insider: Carney hosts investment summit to show the world ‘what we can do, what we can build’ IAN BAILEY OTTAWA PUBLISHED 14 MINUTES AGO COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Hello, welcome to Politics Insider. Let’s look at what happened today. Business leaders from around the world are in Toronto for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s long-awaited Canada Investment Summit, set to kick into high gear Tuesday with events that include an address by former prime minister Stephen Harper. Harper, a Conservative, is to deliver a speech titled Capturing Canada’s Moment, concluding an event central to the policies of his successor, a Liberal. (In 2007, Harper, then prime minister, appointed Carney governor of the Bank of Canada. He later said Carney had been a “valued partner” as his government worked to steer Canada away from the worst impacts of the 2008 financial crisis.) “The world’s come to Canada this week to see what we can do, what we can build and to partner with us,” Carney told an event today announcing that BCE Inc. will expand its artificial-intelligence data centre operations in Saskatchewan. The company plans to quadruple the capacity of those operations, with ambitions to provide as much as 1.2 gigawatts of compute power across three new facilities with a series of investments that could top $5-billion. Irene Galea reports that the company made the announcement at the Invest in Saskatchewan Forum in Toronto with chief executive officer Mirko Bibic, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Carney. There are live updates here on events ahead of the summit, which has an opening-night gala dinner today. Tuesday’s events include an opening keynote address by Carney, followed by a fireside chat. This afternoon, the Prime Minister’s Office released a list of six power brokers Carney met with today ahead of the conference. They included Larry Fink, the CEO of American multinational investment corporation BlackRock; Shemara Wikramanayake, the managing director and CEO of the Macquarie Group Ltd., an Australian investment banking and financial services group; Jonathan Gray, the president and chief operating officer of the New York-based alternative asset manager Blackstone Group; and Sheikh Saoud Salem Abdulaziz Al-Sabah, a board member and managing director of the Kuwait Investment Authority. Capital Power CEO Avik Dey cautioned that transforming the enthusiasm of business and political leaders into final investment decisions will be the real challenge…