If 2026 were to have one theme, it would be this: uncertainty.

In moments like this, the world needs people who are bold and can seize the opportunities that lie in this shift. It needs safe harbour and certainty in an uncertain world. Prime Minister Carney is bringing global investors to Toronto this week on the bet that this is how they see Canada. Carney and his senior officials will try to play matchmaker between over 160 domestic industrial projects and trillions of dollars of global capital represented in the room.

But the unsaid thing many visitors to Canada in that room will be asking: how certain can we be that these projects go from deal book to delivery?

They’ll ask this because despite Bill C-5 and other announcements, a real hesitancy exists about doing business in Canada, and nothing provokes this more than outdate misunderstanding about Indigenous participation. For too long, Indigenous participation has been perceived as hurdles of Section 35 requirements and the risks of convoluted consultations and an unpredictable legal environment. But its time to flip the script from consultation to ownership where Indigenous groups and their economic development entities will be your most valuable partner. Where they bring major projects and capital to the table and authority over lands where you can build at speed and scale.

DesNedhe Group is founded on these principles. In 1991, the company was founded to drive sustainable growth for English River First Nation located on Treaty 10, in Northern Saskatchewan. Des Nedhe has been a progressive leader in uranium development, construction, real estate, utility, and retail management with its 21 diverse national investments. Starlight Infrastructure Solutions has partnered with DesNedhe to bring forward major projects that can build a strong and sovereign Canada. Today, the focus of the partnership ranges from housing to defense, to energy, and to digital infrastructure. And this partnership is baked in right at the very foundation of the deals.

Partnerships like this, with motivated and entrepreneurial First Nations businesses, are how we build the future of Canada. And it’s how we give global investors far more certainty. Solving the Indigenous part of any deal equation is not about consultation being bypassed with legislation or litigated in the courts. An institutional investor, based a thousand miles away, should find certainty in knowing a project carries genuine Indigenous ownership. Distant capital cannot build that kind of consensus that you find when all partners walk into the deal aligned on the investment thesis. A truly viable deal needs boots on the ground, domestic operators who have done the work of partnering with Indigenous nations and earned trust no term sheet can manufacture. It is also how Canada’s two sovereignty conversations become one: economic sovereignty for First Nations is not a parallel project to the country’s—it is the foundation of it.

International capital looking to North America has long been blinded by the economy on our southern border, confounded by our jurisdictional overlap, and deterred by our regulatory grind. Diverse capital is key to our growth and the answer to help it overcome past hesitancy is already at the table. Our failures with Indigenous partners, many in recent memory, are why we need a new model with Indigenous partners as structural partners. Where Indigenous engagement isn’t regulatory hurdle but instead as a regulator accelerator.

It’s time for us all to modernize and that includes investors coming into Canada for this summit. It’s about partnering with players who have their own sovereignty. Groups with broad political consensus on lands where things can get things done expeditiously, where they want to build projects that will last for generations, with expertise and commercial offtake relationships that capitalize on Canada’s free trade opportunities and its sovereign stability. Indigenous economic sovereignty is not a departure from free-market principles, it’s an overdue arrival—one that will unlock the full force of what Canada has to offer and deliver the risk-adjusted returns global investors are searching for.

Abroad, we used to call ourselves business tourists, but even the best visits end. What Canada offers right now is the rarer thing: a reason to unpack. A G7 country with emerging-market upside, generational projects waiting to be built, nations and capital aligning for the first time. This is not a market you pass through; it is one you grow with. The moment belongs to those who see it, stay for it, and build through it.

Sean Willy is the president and CEO of Des Nedhe Group and Kristopher Wojtecki is the president of Starlight Infrastructure Solutions.

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