On January 16, 2026, the Governments of Canada and China announced a “Canada-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Roadmap.” In relation to the key question of Chinese investment into Canada, the Roadmap reads: “The Canadian side welcomes Chinese investments in Canada in areas such as energy, agriculture, consumer products, and other sectors.”
The above statement will be capable of empirical measurement. More particularly, Canada’s foreign investment law, the Investment Canada Act (ICA) provides for a mandatory notification any time a foreign investor, including a Chinese investor, acquires control of a Canadian business, regardless of its size or value, to allow for the Canadian government to carry out a national security screening process in relation to all such investments. In addition, an acquisition of control of any Canadian business having an asset value exceeding $578 million by a Chinese state-owned or state-affiliated enterprise is also subject to a “net benefit to Canada” review as is an acquisition of control of any Canadian business having an enterprise value exceeding $1.452 billion by a Chinese private-sector enterprise.
Put differently, the broad scope of the ICA is such that the invitation issued in January 2026 is likely to be tested, in the context of specific proposed investments, in the coming months and years. It is very likely that new investments and transactions will be proposed in these or adjacent sectors with the Government of Canada then having to decide, in a very concrete way, how to apply the Roadmap when faced with specific investors and target businesses. In assessing such investments, the government will have to integrate both technocratic national security feedback from its internal national security experts together with Ministerial judgment as to the political implications of such transactions. It is entirely foreseeable that the responsible Ministers will have to balance competing or indeed opposing perspectives on particular deals.
Before looking to the future though, it is instructive to look at the past.
In short, the modern history of Chinese investment in Canada reflects an ever-evolving Canadian perspective on such investment, characterized by periods of relative warming and relative cooling, tracking the dynamic geopolitical relationship between the two countries, perhaps as much or more so than any technical assessment of national security risk.
Key Chinese investments reviewed by the Government of Canada over the last 15 or so years include the below. We note that this is by no means whatsoever a comprehensive list but rather identifies transactions that attracted some measure of public profile. There have been many other, generally smaller, transactions (approved or blocked) not appearing in this table. All matters in the table are a matter of public record, i.e., either through Investment Canada registries or through the media (press releases, security filings, etc.).
NB: Transactions are “blocked” in multiple ways including pre-closing prohibitions, post-closing divestitures and also refusals to clear resulting in the parties terminating their deal or withdrawing their filing or investment proposal. The term “blocked” in the above table refers to all such scenarios. Transactions are cleared in multiple ways including unconditionally or conditionally, sometimes via affirmative approvals and sometimes via the taking of no governmental action. The term “cleared” in the above table refers to all such scenarios.
Stepping back
At first glance, the outcomes reached in the table above would appear to suggest no coherent Canadian approach to Chinese investments in Canadian companies. Examples of this apparent incoherence include the same mining company (Zijin) having been both approved and blocked under the ICA and transactions within the same sector (lithium) having been both blocked and approved. Telecom investments have been blocked where satellite investments have been approved.
It is possible though to discern certain patterns in what is otherwise a chaotic dataset. This is not accomplished so much with reference to the precise facts of particular transactions at hand but rather with reference to changes in the Canadian government perspectives on China and views on the relative sensitivity of certain sectors.
Key observations include the following:
Energy / Oil sands
- Canada was very receptive to major Chinese investments in the energy sector, particularly in the oil sands, with the oil sands being one of the most capital intensive sectors in the Canadian economy, requiring billions in spending.
- This culminated in the approval of CNOOC / Nexen mega-transaction.[1]
- Perhaps fearing the pendulum had swung too much in favour of such transactions, or that other major Canadian energy companies would be vulnerable to takeovers, on the same day that it approved CNOOC / Nexen, the Harper government issued a specific new policy in relation to state-owned investment in the oil sands, stating that going forward net benefit approvals in that area would be approved only on an “exceptional basis.”
- As it turns out, oil prices fell precipitously in 2013 with the result that it is very much unclear if this policy was ever particularly relevant – for many years there was simply no demand to invest foreign capital in the oil sands.
- Indeed, other foreign oil companies began exiting the oil sands, including Statoil (Norway), Total (France) and large American companies such as Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Devon, Marathon and Murphy.
- The key oil sands players (Suncor, Cenovus, CNRL) are now all Canadian. Notable exceptions to Canadian ownership are Imperial Oil (Canadian listed but majority owned by Exxon) and the Chinese state-owned enterprises.
- As of January 2026, the three Chinese state-owned oil companies have maintained their Canadian presence having quietly invested billions into Canada well into their second decade of operations.
Technology / Telecom / Data
- Around the same time as these major energy investments were being approved, a series of proposed transactions within the technology sector, broadly defined, resulted in very different outcomes, including the widely-rumoured Lenovo bid for Blackberry.
- While several of these involved China (Including those outlined in the table above) this approach extended to several other non-Chinese transactions, including Vimpelcom / Wind (telecom - blocked) and Accelero / Allstream (telecom - blocked).
- It was during this period possible to discern the contours of the Canadian government’s overall approach to foreign investment on a sectoral basis, with investments in the technology sector very clearly presenting the highest level of risk.
- This trend largely continued up until the infamous O-Net / ITF Technologies transaction, a landmark review that spanned across the Harper and Trudeau governments and can only be deciphered with reference to the change of government that occurred in 2015.
Sunny ways: A new approach
- Two of the most remarkable transactions during the early days of the Trudeau government were O-Net / ITF and Hytera / Norsat.
- In O-Net, the Trudeau government decided to reverse the final Cabinet order of the Harper government to block the transaction in question and instead set aside that order and permitted the investment subject to conditions. The government in substance overturned its own final conclusion.
- Around this same time, the government also cleared the Hytera / Norsat transaction, which was a satellite sector transaction, a sector generally perceived to be highly sensitive and was subjected to significant criticism for doing so. This episode was all the more noteworthy because, many years earlier, Canada had blocked a satellite-sector transaction where the buyer originated from the US (Alliant Techsystems / MDA) and now it was approving such a transaction from China, albeit vastly smaller in scale.
- There were also large, very public, approved Chinese acquisitions of Canadian businesses active in the hotel and retirement homes space. A Chinese buyer also acquired a significant Quebec lithium project.
Cloudy days: Retrenchment
- In October 2017, Aecon, a large, publicly-traded Canadian engineering and construction company announced a transaction to sell itself to a Chinese state-owned enterprise, CCCI.
- The Aecon share price immediately rose to the takeover price and stayed there for several months, a compelling indication that the market believed it would be approved, consistent with the Trudeau government’s approach to Chinese investment.
- Several commentators also declared that the transaction would be approved, perhaps with certain remedies or divestitures around Aecon’s sensitive nuclear construction contracts.
- To the surprise of many (at the time), including the companies themselves, the transaction was blocked outright in 2018. No remedies were acceptable.
- In the aftermath of CCCI / Aecon and in the several years that followed, predicting the outcome of national security reviews became challenging, with the disparate results on various deals seemingly not reflecting a unified policy. While Aecon was blocked, and China Mobile forced to exit Canada, and it was determined that a large Canadian mortgage insurer (Genworth, now Sagen) could not be Chinese-owned, other investments were cleared, including many in the interactive digital media (gaming) sector and also in the critical minerals space, such as Sinomine / Tantalum Mining (the owner of the unique Tanco lithium, cesium, tantalum mine in Manitoba) and the Zijin / Neo Lithium transaction discussed below.
Ice age: Focus on critical minerals
- In late 2021, the government cleared the Zijin / Neo Lithium transaction. Neo Lithium was the owner of a lithium project in Argentina. The opposition parties objected to this outcome and assembled parliamentary hearings in early 2022 to interrogate the matter. The Minister defended the decision, principally on the outwardly reasonable basis that the project was in Argentina and not Canada.
- In response to the outcome of the Neo Lithium matter, and also in the context of heightened global focus on critical minerals, with Canada itself adopting its first comprehensive Critical Minerals Strategy later in 2022, the Canadian approach to investments in this space took a decisive turn. Put differently, it became clear within a matter of months that the government viewed its own decision in Neo Lithium as a mistake as it was in taking decisions in direct contradiction to it.
- Canada began vigorously reviewing and blocking Chinese investments in the critical minerals area even where the target business had virtually nothing to do with Canada. A Canadian bank account, a Canadian employee, or a small leased Canadian office space would be sufficient to ground ICA jurisdiction with implications for Canadian mining companies owning interests in overseas mining projects. A series of companies with projects outside of Canada were impacted by this approach (see public examples including Pan American Silver, Solaris and SRG). Chinese investors were also ordered to divest from minority stakes held in three microcap Canadian issuers.
- Numerous experts in the mining sector noted that this expansive approach could have the unintended consequence of causing international companies not to locate in Canada in the first place, thereby weakening the role of Canadian capital markets in an area of core strength. Such concerns regarding over-reach - the Canadian government deciding who develops a mine in South America or Africa - became apparent.
- Canada issued various policy statements directed at the critical minerals sector, including that net benefit approvals would be issued to state-owned acquirers in the critical mineral space only on an “exceptional basis,” mirroring the language used exactly ten years earlier in relation to the oil sands, and emphasizing that state-owned acquirers would also be subject to a very high degree of national security scrutiny, potentially including blocks, “regardless of value, whether direct or indirect, whether controlling or non-controlling, and across all stages of the value chain.” In 2024, a further statement was issued setting forth that acquisitions of “important Canadian mining companies engaged in significant critical minerals operations” will only be found of net benefit in the “most exceptional of circumstances.”
- Outside of the critical minerals space, the government updated its national security guidelines and in doing so clarified that national security includes economic security. The government also has adopted a tougher position on net benefit reviews in the interactive digital media sector (gaming), stating that such investments would be subject to “stringent undertakings” and calling out as a factor in its reviews “the extent to which a foreign state is likely to exercise direct or indirect operational and strategic control over the Canadian business as a result of the transaction.”
- It is also known that the government continues to adopt a very high level of scrutiny on Chinese investment in the financial services sector, with the Wealth One Bank divestiture being perhaps the most high-profile recent example (following Genworth many years earlier).
What’s Next?
The Roadmap comes at a time when the foreign investment pendulum appeared to have swung almost entirely in the opposite direction. The new government, with its stated ambitions to make Canada an energy superpower, is clearly prepared to make assessments of new investments emanating from China on a highly pragmatic, case-specific basis. As the Prime Minister has said in response to questions regarding Canada’s trade and investment strategies: “we take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
The Roadmap is explicit in welcoming investment in certain areas but many questions will arise and it is likely that they will only be tested via specific investment proposals. These questions will include: will controlling investments be as welcome as minority investments; how broadly is energy defined; what about energy infrastructure as many energy companies own such infrastructure; what about agriculture infrastructure as many agriculture companies own such infrastructure; is it implied that investment is not welcome in areas not identified in the Roadmap; does the use of the open-ended phrase “other sectors” reflect strategic ambiguity on the part of the Canadian government; and what about areas adjacent to energy, agriculture and consumer products.
Perhaps most relevant of all, we expect that the government will have to contend with and reconcile competing views from within itself as to how to respond to specific investment proposals. It may be that “compromise” solutions, manifested in the form of undertakings, take on additional prominence in settings where the government is otherwise keen to welcome the investment. Fortunately, the experience with undertakings under the ICA is extensive; we would expect their use only to grow in the future in light of the investment opportunities seemingly newly opened by the Roadmap.
This article first appeared on Stikeman Elliott’s Knowledge Hub: Chinese Investment Under the Investment Canada Act – A New Era?.
[1] The author was counsel to CNOOC in respect of this transaction.
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Michael Kilby is a partner and Head of the Competition & Foreign Investment Group. He is a leading advisor on matters relating to Canadian competition and foreign investment laws, and has wide-ranging experience in complex merger reviews, foreign investment approvals, national security reviews, pricing and distribution practices, misleading advertising, anti-corruption and related counselling matters across a broad spectrum of industries.