Investment In Canada Research Articles

Canada and the United Nations at a Political Turning Point

In response to Kerry Buck and Michael W. Manulak's recommendations for the future of the UN, this essay highlights two problems that Canada faces in its current UN engagement. First, diplomacy and Global Affairs Canada are underfunded. Second, Canadian leadership has failed to adequately meet the political challenges of twenty-first century multilateralism. Focusing on the second, I argue that Canada must address key political difficulties to make a meaningful difference in the future of the UN. Without a politically sound vision and policy, increased Canadian investment in the UN is insufficient. I propose three areas where Canada can shift its engagement and recommend further actions. These include: (1) Canada-US relations; (2) the UN Charter and international law; and (3) Canada's relationship with the Global South.

THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC POLICY CHANGE ON OUTWARD FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA’S INVESTMENT IN CANADA

The resurgence of anti-globalization has made multinational companies concerned about the impact of host countries’ economic policy change on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). However, existing studies mainly focus on improving a host country’s institutional environment but ignore the impact of anti-globalization policies. This paper aims to complement this line of research by considering the effect of one-time economic policy shock on OFDI. In particular, using a unique dataset, this paper empirically investigates the effect of Canada’s review policy on investments by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The results suggest that an intensified review policy effectively discouraged Chinese SOEs from investing in Canada. However, as a coping strategy to the review policy, Chinese SOEs continued to invest in Canada by adding more funding to the existing projects, establishing new businesses or investing in small-scale deals.

The Investment Canada Act: Updates for the Knowledge-Based and Data-Driven Economy at the Dawn of the Age of Machine Knowledge Capital

The Investment Canada Act: Updates for the Knowledge-Based and Data-Driven Economy at the Dawn of the Age of Machine Knowledge Capital

From IDA to IIROC: Has self‐regulation in the Canadian investment industry evolved?

AbstractThis article analyzes the enforcement practices of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and compares them with its predecessor, the Investment Dealers Association of Canada (IDA). The study collected data from IIROC's tribunal cases decided between June 2008 and December 2019 and compared them with data on the IDA's enforcement of complaints from 1984 to 2008. The findings reveal no statistically significant difference in the fines imposed by the two regulatory bodies. Furthermore, IIROC has refrained from issuing lenient penalties such as retaking examinations/courses or mandating terms and conditions for offenders. The results also indicate no significant impact on the number or distribution of offense types committed in the industry over time. Most notably, the Ontario Securities Commission, the Canadian Securities Regulators, and the new Self‐Regulatory Organization of Canada should consider these findings when formulating policies concerning the role of self‐regulation in the financial markets.

Canadian investments in Russia in 2014–2023

The article examines investment flows between Russia and Canada in 2014–2023. The analysis of the activities of Canadian multinational companies in the Russian Federation under the conditions of the economic war declared by the United States and its allies to Russia is carried out. It is indicated that until 2022, Canadian capital in Russia was concentrated in such industries as mining, vehicle engineering, agriculture and food industry, retail trade and services. It is shown that to date, almost all Canadian TNCs that owned business in Russia have withdrawn from their Russian assets. The exception were two corporations operating in the service sector. It is concluded that the damage caused to the Russian economy by the departure of Canadian investors seems insignificant, since most of their enterprises have passed into new hands and continue to operate. It is estimated that the balance sheet loss on direct investments recognized by TNCs and institutional investors from Canada in connection with the withdrawal from the Russian Federation amounted to about USD 1,3 billion.

The Investment Canada Act Reforms and the Digital Transformation

The Investment Canada Act Reforms and the Digital Transformation

The everyday construction of value: A Canadian investment fund, Chilean water infrastructure, and financial subordination

AbstractInfrastructure in several economies in the Global South has rapidly undergone financialization, aided and abetted by governments opening-up their infrastructure assets to global institutional investors in search of stable, predictable revenue streams. This account of financialization could be the end of the story were it not for the fact that Christophers (2015) and others have shown that institutional investors are not simply in the game of ‘finding’ value or ‘harvesting it’ from obliging states, rather they actively construct it. What often catches the eye, however, are the more overt forms of financial engineering (Ashton et al., 2012), whereas what tends to go unnoticed are the ways in which infrastructure assets are routinely ‘worked’ to generate value over time. Here, we draw attention to a slower-paced financialization of infrastructure assets where, following Chiapello (2015, 2020), investors are engaged in a continual process of evaluation and revaluation of their assets to add value over and above prevailing benchmarks. Taking the example of Canada's Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) and its extensive investments in Chilean water infrastructure, this article considers how a global investment fund draws on financial practices developed in the advanced economies to add value to long term infrastructure assets in the Global South. Such practices, we argue, enact a routine form of financial subordination which does not match the familiar image of wholly subservient and dominated dependent economies. Rather, the power asymmetries involved equate less to a zero-sum game and more to a game where the benefits are unequally shared between asset managers in the Global North and states in the Global South, where effectively the latter cooperate in their own submission in ways that are not always acknowledged as such.

Dependence on Interprovincial Migrant Labour in Atlantic Canadian Communities: The Role of the Alberta Economy

(1) Background: In the face of persistent and chronically weak labour markets, Atlantic Canada has become increasingly dependent on mobile oil work in Northern Alberta for employment and income. In the regions, most intensely engaged in this form of employment, mobile oil work has largely replaced the dominant industries of the previous century. This geographic shift in Canadian investment and production has created uneven labour markets, with high demand for labour in the Northern Alberta and high unemployment in de-industrialized communities in Atlantic Canada. (2) Methods: There is little quantitative evidence on the flows of mobile workers from the East to the West and the impact of this movement on the Atlantic Canadian economy. Data for this paper were obtained through a special arrangement with Statistics Canada in the fall of 2015 and winter of 2016, from the Canadian Employer–Employee Dynamics Database (CEEDD). (3) Results: Analysis of CEEDD revealed that the oil and gas industry of Northern Alberta has a significant impact on the economies of Atlantic Canada with an increasing dependence for interprovincial workers. (4) Conclusions: To the extent that mobile work has served as a replacement for traditional industries, mobile work is re-structuring the social and economic makeup of Atlantic Canadian communities. The more reliant Atlantic Canadian communities become on oil-related mobile work, the more precarious their economies will become as global markets for oil and gas change and targeted actions on climate change increase.

KKR and XPV Water Partners form wastewater treatment platform

Investment firm KKR and Canada's XPV Water Partners have established a platform to provide end-to-end nutrient management solutions for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment facilities.

The Impact of Executive Board Gender Diversity on Risk-Taking in Canadian and US Banks

This paper examines the issue of board diversity and the role of women in the finance industry. Estimation of panel data regressions for a sample of all financial institutions in Canada and the US over the period 2008-2019 identified some qualitative and quantitative factors that allowed the Canadian banking system to withstand the 2008 financial crisis better than US financial institutions. We found that in Canadian banks risk-taking executive behaviour was moderated by gender diversity but no overall impact of gender diversity on financial risk-taking is evidenced in the US. Moreover, sub-sectoral analysis in the US shows that a higher relative number of women on executive boards actually increases risk-taking in investment banking, but not in commercial banking. Nonetheless, in investment management a higher female to male ratio on US executive boards tends to reduce leverage. There are no differences in the impact of number of female board members on Canadian investment banks relative to the overall financial services sector. Our analysis suggests that risk attitudes of female financial executives in the US financial industry is much more heterogeneous than in Canada, or in the general female population of both countries.

Investment dealer collateral and leverage procyclicality

This paper introduces a novel data set to examine the relationship between leverage and asset growth in the Canadian investment broker-dealer sector over the period of 1992–2010. Investment dealers have highly procyclical leverage, in that leverage growth is highly correlated with asset growth. This is largely due to collateralized borrowing, whereby increases in asset values lead to increases in collateral (margin deposits), allowing investment dealers to borrow against these deposits and purchase more assets. Of course, decreases in collateral value have the opposite effect and margins can be destabilizing if investment broker-dealers are forced to de-leverage.

Canadian capital and secondary imperialism in Latin America

ABSTRACTThe last several years have witnessed a renewal of critical scholarship that understands Canada as a secondary imperialist power. While conceptualizations of Canada as a dependency of the United States have lost intellectual ground in the Canadian political economy literature, the rejection of the notion that Canada is imperialist has more recently drawn on the transnationalization thesis found in, inter alia, Robinson and Sklair. This article refutes these central premises. It argues, first, that Canadian capital can be measured as “Canadian.” In turn, because there is a Canadian capitalist class we need to theorize its relationship with the Canadian state. Second, this Canadian capitalist class pursues its interests abroad, with the support of the Canadian state, as a secondary imperialist power within the hierarchical world system. Third, expansion of identifiably Canadian capital abroad is exemplified in Canadian investment trends in mining and finance in Latin America in recent decades.

Correction: Setting an implementation research agenda for Canadian investments in global maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health: a research prioritization exercise.

Correction: Setting an implementation research agenda for Canadian investments in global maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health: a research prioritization exercise.

The predictive ability of investment property fair value adjustments under IFRS and the role of accounting conservatism

This paper examines the predictive ability (relevance) of fair value adjustments of Canadian investment property, for future cash flow outcomes. We hypothesize and find that the fair value adjustments of more conservative firms are more predictive of future cash flows. We also find that the market prices fair value adjustments of more conservative firms at a premium as compared to those of less conservative firms. Our empirical tests control for possible self-selection of sample firms into low and high accounting conservatism groups.

Reliance Communications Ltd.: A House of Cards?

Reliance Communications Ltd., a large, Indian telecom company has experienced severe financial difficulties brought on by poor management practices, an ill-conceived capital expenditure of more than $6 billion, a debt load of $5.8 billion, and changing industry dynamics. Interestingly, two analysts at a Canadian Investment Research firm gave a “sell” recommendation on the stock with a target price of INR 15 when the stock was trading at INR 93. The analysts also pointed out a possible rip-off of minority shareholders by the firm’s founders. The company’s stock price fell from a high of INR 844 in 2008 to INR 46 in 2012. The company is in the process of restructuring its assets and liabilities. The case considers the economics of the business from the perspective of shareholders. Students are required to assess the company’s performance and decide whether they would invest in the company’s shares. The first half of the case describes the company’s constituent businesses and the strategy followed by the wireless division. This gives students an opportunity to critique RCL’s marketing strategy and pricing of its services. The second half describes the company’s financial strategy, the instruments it issued and its restructuring initiatives. The case allows students to examine problems associated with high leverage and the challenges to restructuring in emerging markets.

Setting an implementation research agenda for Canadian investments in global maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health: a research prioritization exercise.

Improving global maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (MNCAH) is a top development priority in Canada, as shown by the $6.35 billion in pledges toward the Muskoka Initiative since 2010. To guide Canadian research investments, we aimed to systematically identify a set of implementation research priorities for MNCAH in low- and middle-income countries. We adapted the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative method. We scanned the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative literature and extracted research questions pertaining to delivery of interventions, inviting Canadian experts on MNCAH to generate additional questions. The experts scored a combined list of 97 questions against 5 criteria: answerability, feasibility, deliverability, impact and effect on equity. These questions were ranked using a research priority score, and the average expert agreement score was calculated for each question. The overall research priority score ranged from 40.14 to 89.25, with a median of 71.84. The average expert agreement scores ranged from 0.51 to 0.82, with a median of 0.64. Highly-ranked research questions varied across the life course and focused on improving detection and care-seeking for childhood illnesses, overcoming barriers to intervention uptake and delivery, effectively implementing human resources and mobile technology, and increasing coverage among at-risk populations. Children were the most represented target population and most questions pertained to interventions delivered at the household or community level. Investing in implementation research is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring health and well-being for all. The proposed research agenda is expected to drive action and Canadian research investments to improve MNCAH.

The supply and demand sides of corruption: Canadian extractive companies in Africa

ABSTRACTWith the rapid expansion of Canadian investment in extractives around the world, it is perhaps not surprising that Canada’s reputation as a low-corruption country has faltered: Canada currently ranks ninth internationally in Transparency International (TI)’s corruption perception index, down from sixth in 2010, and sixth, down from first (i.e. best), in 2009 in TI’s Bribe Payers index. This article presents the preliminary findings of our ongoing research regarding both the demand side (that is, the request for bribes, principally by foreign officials) and the supply side (that is, the giving of bribes, principally by corporations) of corruption. We have examined Canadian mining companies operating in Ghana and Burkina Faso and have identified 10 “tensions” which need to be acknowledged in public policy formulation. We note that Canada is implementing policies to reduce supply-side corruption (e.g. by adopting anti-bribery legislation and guidelines for corporate social responsibility) but recommend that more be done, especially oversight of anti-corruption laws by Parliament. We also recommend that mining companies undertake ex-ante corruption risk assessment and develop proactive corporate anti-corruption policies. And, finally, while host countries have anti-corruption laws, implementation is weak. Global affairs could usefully support stronger parliamentary oversight in these countries.

Determinants, Boundaries, and Patterns of Canadian Mining Investments in Latin America (1995–2015)

As part of the commodities boom that Latin America enjoyed in the first decade of the twenty‐first century, Canadian investments in metal mining expanded there at an extraordinary pace, determined by a larger process of industrial consolidation and long‐term Canadian government policies to support the internationalization of its industry. Their success in Latin America has now induced some observers to believe that Canada is a dominant actor in that region's mining sector, but the specialization of Canadian firms in precious metals, gold and silver, has set up clear boundaries to their regional relevance, rendering Canadian capital necessary but not an essential actor in the Latin American mining boom. In fact, such pattern of specialization has turned the expansion of Canadian mining capital into a significant exposure to Latin American politics that Ottawa's government and diplomacy can affect only marginally.

Resource Extractivism in Latin America: Canadian Investments in Mining

Latin American Policy invited Laura MacDonald and Pablo Heidrich as guest editors to prepare the core articles for this issue. Both scholars in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, they prepared an excellent collection of eight articles dealing with Canadian mining investments in key countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. We are very grateful to our guest editors and to all of the contributors for their interest in publishing in our journal. We hope our readers find these contributions interesting and attractive for their respective policy making or research. In our Policy Articles section, we also include three contributions from other authors, dealing with microfinance and trade-policy issues in Brazil and with renewable-energy policies in Central America. Finally, readers will find two interesting book reviews in the respective section. Isidro Morales is Editor-in-Chief of Latin American Policy and is a professor at the School of Government, Tecnológico de Monterrey.

Canadian Investment Treaties with African Countries: What Do They Tell Us About Investment Treaty Making in Africa?

Between 2013 and 2015, Canada signed nine bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with countries in Africa. Canada was remarkably successful in imposing its model investment treaty on its African partners. Canada’s success might be considered surprising. Investor-state arbitration cases have shown the strong binding character of BITs and the corresponding need for host states to ensure that treaties reflect their distinctive priorities. In seeking to do so, African countries could have looked to African regional initiatives for expressions of made in African investment policies. African negotiators could have benefited from the substantial work done by UNCTAD and others to provide new forms of international investment rules that make BITS more supportive of sustainable development. Despite stronger incentives for African countries to assert themselves in BIT negotiations and resources for them to draw on, however, Canada’s recent BITs suggest that political and economic power continue to define the outcome of negotiations.