William Watson: Foreign investment isn't key. Business investment is
While some economists and experts have described recent overseas investment by Canadian firms as a capital exodus, William Watson, a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute argues that ownership flows can be misleading because they often reflect currency changes, acquisitions, or retained earnings rather than productive new investment. The key issue for Canada’s future prosperity, he writes, is not who owns assets, but whether Canada remains an attractive place for businesses to invest in new machinery, buildings, and innovation that drive income growth. "What counts is not the national identity of an asset’s owner but what the owner does with the asset," he writes.
