Canada’s inaugural Investment Summit brought global capital to Toronto, with the federal government seeking to attract as much as $1 trillion for major Canadian projects. The opportunity is particularly significant for established domestic leaders in energy, infrastructure, critical minerals, defence, advanced technology, and finance.
In our latest Globe and Mail column, TSI senior analyst Scott Clayton identifies five Canadian dividend payers that attended the summit and already have the scale, financial strength, and industry positions to benefit from a stronger flow of domestic and foreign capital. These businesses don’t need the summit to succeed, but an investment acceleration could provide an additional tailwind for earnings, cash flow, and future dividend growth.
Of course, announcements alone do not build projects. The summit’s ultimate impact will depend on whether the federal government can give investors greater confidence around permitting, environmental reviews, regulation, carbon policy, emissions caps, and the risk that policies could change before projects are completed. Capital-intensive investments often take years to develop, making predictable rules and shorter approval timelines essential.
That’s why we began with companies that have already demonstrated the qualities dividend investors should demand. Using our disciplined 12-point TSI Dividend Sustainability Rating System, we screened for businesses with dependable dividend histories, recent payout increases, management commitment to shareholders, manageable debt, adequate cash, and a long record of earnings and cash flow sufficient to support their dividends.
The five companies that emerged operate in areas central to Canada’s investment agenda. They include an integrated oil sands producer, a major natural-gas pipeline operator, an automotive-parts and industrial-equipment manufacturer, a leading life insurer planning billions in Canadian infrastructure investments, and one of the country’s largest banks, with substantial financing commitments across energy, critical minerals, defence, AI, and infrastructure.
These aren’t speculative bets on a summit headline. They’re established industry leaders with sustainable shareholder payouts. Their businesses could become even stronger if Canada succeeds in converting investor interest into major long-term projects.
Excerpt from theglobeandmail.com, September 17, 2026
Domestic players looking to the Canada Investment Summit for new projects to bolster their earnings and shareholder dividends.
The inaugural event in Toronto was aimed at attracting $1 trillion in private and institutional capital to a slew of Canadian projects – potentially backed by $280 billion in federal government capital investments and incentives.
Attendees included senior executives from a number of Canadian companies as well as the leaders of major global investment houses including BlackRock Inc., Blackstone, JPMorgan Chase, KKR, and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek. Sovereign wealth funds, including Norway’s government pension fund, and state-owned firms, like the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., were among those alongside Canadian institutional investors CPP Investments and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo).
Key to the success of the summit will be the ability of the Carney government to ease investor concerns about policy-reversal risk, red tape, emissions caps and carbon taxes, plusenvironmental reviews and regulatory requirements that stretch project timelines.
The summit’s focus in large part was on capital-intensive sectors, such as energy, critical minerals, defence and advanced technology – where Canada already has impressive representation and financial backers. The best among those offer highly sustainable dividends and will prosper regardless of the summit’s outcome. At the same time, they stand to gain even more from the acceleration of U.S. and foreign investment.
Our analysts at The Successful Investor started this search by looking at Canadian firms attending the summit. We then applied our TSI Dividend Sustainability Rating System to dividend payers. Our system awards points to a stock based on key factors:
- One point for five years of continuous dividend payments
- Two points for more than five
- Two points if it has raised the payment in the past five years
- One point for management’s commitment to dividends
- One point for operating in non-cyclical industries
- One point for limited exposure to foreign currency rates and freedom from political interference
- Two points for a strong balance sheet, including manageable debt and adequate cash
- Two points for a long-term record of positive earnings and cash flow sufficient to cover dividend payments
- One point for an industry leader
Companies with 10 to 12 points have the most secure dividends, or the highest sustainability. Those with seven to nine points have above average sustainability; average sustainability, four to six points; and below average sustainability, one to three points.
5 dividend payers ready for Canada’s investment push
Canadian oil and gas major Suncor Energy Inc. (with a 2.4% yield), headquartered in Calgary, generates production from oil sands, as well as conventional wells, for sale and to feed its refining operations.
Pipeline operator TC Energy Corp. (4.1%), based in Calgary, operates a 93,700-kilometer pipeline network that pumps natural gas from Alberta to eastern Canada and the U.S. It also owns gas pipelines in Mexico, and owns or invests in seven power plants in Canada and the U.S.
Auto-parts leader Linamar Corp. (1.3%), headquartered in Guelph, Ontario, makes a variety of automotive parts, including cylinder heads and cylinder blocks. Its self-propelled, scissor-type work platforms trade under the Skyjack brand.
Sun Life Financial Inc. (3.4%) headquartered in Toronto, is a leading Canadian life insurer, with expanding interests in Asia. The company will invest $5 billion over the next five years in critical Canadian infrastructure, including digital technology, energy, and transportation.
Toronto-Dominion Bank (2.7%), based in Toronto, is a Big Five stalwart. The bank will provide $150 billion in financing over five years across five key sectors, including energy, critical minerals and resources, defence and aerospace, digital and AI, and infrastructure.
Note, we like Summit attendees Cameco Corp. and Teck Resources Ltd. but have excluded them from this list given their low dividend yields (currently below 1.0 percent).
Scott Clayton, MBA, is senior analyst for TSI Network and associate editor of TSI Dividend Advisor.
