Buy Canadian, and create value for a day—invest Canadian, and your value compounds

Sonia Vinogradova 🍁

American businesses haven’t gotten this much of a cold shoulder from Canadians since the retail chain Target absolutely missed the mark. But today, the chill runs deeper: it’s not just about shopping habits, it’s about capital. Investors are looking to Europe and China as more stable alternatives to the “erratic protectionism” of the US stock market. A recent warning sign is the sell-off of long-term US debt—that means investors aren’t just moving to safer US investment options, they’re leaving the US market entirely.

Consumer patriotism is growing. Flight bookings between the US and Canada have dropped 70% and grocery stores are slapping ‘Made in Canada’ labels on everything they can. The next frontier? Extending that same patriotism to our portfolios.

Canadians are cashing out of Canada. 

The vast majority of Canadians’ financial assets are either in houses or retirement funds. But investing in housing comes at the expense of affordability to the younger generation. We feel that burn today, living in a housing shortage. Meanwhile, investing in retirement funds means putting a lot of your money overseas—Canada’s pension plans have reportedly cut holdings of publicly-traded Canadian companies to less than 4% of total assets, in pursuit of higher returns elsewhere.

Canadians are rallying around the homefront more with their remaining personal savings, but they still remain heavily invested in the United States. In February 2025, half of the ten most popular stocks bought on CIBC’s Investor’s Edge were American. The top ETFs? One was built around Tesla; another tracked New York’s NASDAQ. Canadian investors are still betting big on the US.

Shaky ground in Canada

This comes at a time when the Canadian icon, Hudson’s Bay, is in the process of liquidating all but six of its stores. While some frame the story of its fall as a cash grab, brick and mortar stores have been on a long decline, accelerated by the pandemic. Still, one might think things could’ve turned out differently if the company had been guided by a committed, long-term strategy. Instead, the Canadian icon became just a ledger entry to its American owner, to be discarded when no longer useful. 

This notion that Canadians are more emotionally invested in the long-term success of Canadian companies is somewhat reflected in the federal government’s efforts to protect Canada’s mining sector from foreign ownership. Recent regulations set an exceptionally high bar for foreign companies looking to merge or acquire Canadian producers of critical minerals. The mining industry, though, longs for the long-term and strategic investment preferences of Chinese firms—to replace that, Canadian investors will have to step up.

Canadian investment choices are starting to penetrate the electoral campaign. Pierre Poilievre has suggested incentivizing capital to stay Canadian, by granting domestic investments a capital gains tax break and bonus TFSA room. Similarly, Jagmeet Singh has called for the issuance of First World War style victory bonds to enable Canadians to invest in Canadian debt. This will require taking everyday Canadian investors more seriously, and giving them the information and frameworks they need to succeed. 

Laying a strong Canadian foundation

A surge in domestic investments should not be dominated by unproductive investments into real estate, unsafe investments into fossil fuels, and unserious investments into cryptocurrencies and “meme” stocks. If we want to chart a future rooted in national prosperity, we need to rethink not just where our money goes, but what kind of country it’s building.

Right now, there’s great interest in defining what it means to be Canadian. There should be equally great interest in figuring out what it means to be a Canadian investor. By investing wisely, Canadians can ensure that their capital builds something meaningful—at home, and for each other.