Canada’s Capital Flight 2025:

The Numbers Don’t Lie

The Exodus in One Table

Period	Net Capital Outflow (CAD billion)	Main Driver
February 2025	−33.6	Record one-month flight
Feb–May 2025 (cumulative)	−83.9	Canadians buying U.S. equities + foreign sell-off
May 2025	−16.2	$13.4B Canadian purchases abroad
Q2 2025	−43.7	Fastest quarterly outflow since 2008

2025 Capital Outflows – Interactive Chart

Canada’s Net Investment Position Abroad (2009 → 2025)

Key Takeaways  

• Canadians now own $811 billion more in foreign assets than foreigners own here.
• 2025 outflows already exceed post-2008 levels.
• Triggers: U.S. tariff threats, capital-gains tax hike, regulatory friction.
• Talent exodus running parallel — record skilled emigration.

Brookfield Asset Management’s 2025 New York HQ move is just one visible symptom of a much broader trend.

Article proposed by Mack McColl, Analysis by Grok (xAI) dated December 3, 2025, Edited slightly and produced for McColl Magazine

Vancouver Island's Vanishing Sawdust: One Mill's End and a Province's Reckoning

"This is the final straw": Scott Lunny on the death of Vancouver Island’s last big sawmill – and what Alberta should be terrified of next

350 families in Port McNeill just got the pink slip. The same forces are already circling Alberta’s forestry towns.

PORT McNEILL, BC – When United Steelworkers rep Scott Lunny walked into the Cedarvale Lumber mill last week to break the news, grown men cried. Teal-Jones is shutting the doors for good. 350 direct jobs gone before Christmas, another 400-500 ripple losses in trucking, equipment, and local shops. “This is the final straw,” Lunny told me. “We’ve been bleeding for eight years straight. Now the patient is flatlining.”

The official reasons read like a greatest-hits of pain: 45% U.S. tariffs, fibre that literally burned up in wildfires, and old-growth deferrals that locked away the last economic stands. Sound familiar, Alberta? Because the same triple punch is already landing east of the Rockies.

The Same Storm Heading East – Concise Comparison

Threat	BC Right Now	Alberta Next 2-5 Years
Fibre supply collapse	Harvests down 60% since 2007 – beetle kill + fires + deferrals	Pine beetle still active in northwest AB; 2023-24 fires torched 2M hectares of timber
U.S. tariffs	45% duties crushing margins	Alberta ships 70% of lumber south – same target on the darts
Policy chokeholds	Old-growth deferrals cut AAC 30-40%	Caribou recovery plans threaten 20-30% of northwest tenure
Mill closures 2024-25	8 permanent shutdowns (3,200 jobs)	West Fraser already idling High Prairie & Hinton lines in 2026

“People think Alberta’s safe because we still have trees,” Lunny warned. “But the economics don’t care about provincial borders. When the fibre math stops working and the Americans keep the tariffs, the lights go out – fast.”

​It Takes Two to Reconcile

 

Originally published Jul 18, 2009

An Indigenous nation in the Broughton known as the Namgis First Nation has invested an extraordinary amount of membership money in an aquaculture enterprise to grow fish. If this investment is  indication, apparently there is a strong interest in the Namgis territory to grow fish, in this case, at a fish farm called Kuterra.

How the eulachon came to Kingcome Inlet

Among the many stories of Beau Dick

PHOTO CREDIT Mack McColl

The Yukusem Heritage Society culture camp has been constructed 15 km south of Alert Bay, B.C. by sea. The people of the First Nations around the area at the north end of Vancouver Island have been reconnected to nationhood by their management of resources and jurisdiction over certain kinds of development, especially forest practices and fisheries, when it comes to jurisdiction.

Creating art and artists

Originally Published 2009

The first encounter with Jackson Robertson was completely by chance, a brief meeting outside an art store in the coastal city of Duncan, B.C., on Vancouver Island back in 1999. Duncan is known as the City of Totems and last year ('08) hosted the North American Indigenous Games.

Forestry is a career of monumental work

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CANADIAN BUSINESS

​Aboriginal Aquaculture Association Feedback on Decision-Making in Aquaculture

In the spirit of independent decision-making, salmon farming became a choice for economically sustainable investment by First Nations in their traditional territories. Many examples of economic success exist on the west coast in the First Nations.

The Aboriginal Aquaculture Association in Campbell River, B.C., believes it is important to understand the backdrop on which First Nation fish farmers provide present-day feedback. The Association exists to support First Nation communities and entrepreneurs actively involved in salmon aquaculture in British Columbia.

Sioux to Sault Proposal Has Been Made on Transload Facility

Sioux Lookout and Sault Ste. Marie are supporting initiatives to diversify the north western Ontario and Ring of Fire economy, making a proposal for a trans-load facility that will facilitate raw materials both trucked and transported via rail.

Sault Ste. Marie EDC CEO Tom Dodds says location, history and infrastructure led to his city's organization working with Sioux Lookout, "Our concept is the same and we see the synergies that could be created from an east west route," Dodds said.

Bruce Frank discusses protocol agreement at Aquaculture Conference

Bruce Frank representing the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation joined Creative Salmon's Tim Rundle, General Manager, in discussing the formalized protocol agreement that was two decades in the making, during a First Nation session organized by the Aboriginal Aquaculture Association at the 2015 Canadian Aquaculture conference in Nanaimo this June.

Creative Salmon is the largest producer of Chinook salmon in the world, owning their own hatchery and working with a parent company Lion's Gate Fishery that distributes the product world-wide.

Rundle explained to the aquaculture meeting in Nanaimo that Creative Salmon operates four sites to grow out thousands of fish each month. The company, says Frank, "is a major employer of First Nations from the Tla-o-qui-aht communities as well as folks from nearby Ahousaht." Frank says the First Nation has achieved a goal in signing a protocol agreement with the long-time salmon producer. Creative Salmon is celebrating their 25th year of growing salmon on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

"We applaud Creative Salmon. Now we are looking at economic development and business development opportunities that go way beyond politics. We started with a liaison officer in Creative Salmon," and Moses Martin was essential personnel in establishing better communication which led to the protection of clam beaches, trap-lines, and access to freshwater outlets.

Frank recounted a long-standing effort to work with the company that was beginning in earnest in 2000 and achieving milestone events in cooperation with the community in 2004, and especially during the years of 2008 to 2012. Now the company meets quarterly with Tla-o-qui-aht in a fish-farm committee currently chaired by Frank. "We have responsibility for wild salmon enhancement projects, and education of skilled employees.

Frank discussed the protocol agreement which include Chinook-only in the Creative Salmon net-pens, and no night-lights on sites, and no anti-foulant used on the nets, and a fish density not exceeding 10 kg per cubic metre.
Frank says, "We live here, and we might as well work together to bring prosperity to our families. The five Hawith (hereditary chiefs) had to be convinced of the benefits," before this agreement could be signed, sealed and delivered to the Nuu Chah Nulth people on the west side of Vancouver Island.

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— Resurrected from newsprint. Truth that never died. —

GIS Becoming an Essential Service in Land and Asset Management

"There is a higher demand in the spring time for the Geographic information system (GIS) training in north west Ontario," says Jordan Shana, owner, Northern GIS, in Thunder Bay, Ontario. "We are busy delivering courses two per month from January to April each year." Training continues throughout the year, and Northern GIS works extensively in other GIS projects throughout the year as well. "We get calls to do specific GIS training in communities at any time during the year. We run 15 to 20 courses per year and these run with a maximum 10 people per course, or a minimum three or four students," in Northern Ontario, often using the lab facilities of the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre in Thunder Bay.