The LNG tanker GasLog Glasgow prepares to depart LNG Canada's shipping terminal in Kitimat, B.C. Photo by Handout/LNG Canada

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For years, investors have had it relatively easy. Globalization kept costs low, central banks suppressed interest rates and capital flowed freely across borders. The biggest winners were asset-light businesses capable of generating enormous growth without consuming significant amounts of labour, energy, commodities or infrastructure.

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Investors continue to view AI primarily as a software story, but it is rapidly becoming a resource story. Building the infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence demands staggering amounts of capital, electricity, copper, steel, cement, natural gas, and rare earths and other critical minerals. Data centres are becoming some of the largest consumers of power on the planet, forcing governments and utilities to rethink generation and transmission systems built for a very different world. At the same time, the vast sums needed to finance this buildout are competing directly with governments for capital, placing upward pressure on long-term bond yields.

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Then came Trump.

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Since returning to office, Trump has accelerated a trend already underway: a shift from globalization toward economic nationalism. Trade disputes have intensified, supply chains are being redrawn and governments are increasingly focused on domestic production, energy security, critical mineral access, manufacturing capacity and strategic industries.

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Layer on persistent deficits, aging demographics, labour shortages, rising defence spending and growing geopolitical tensions, and the result is a world facing structural inflationary pressures that monetary policy alone cannot solve.

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While investors continue debating whether inflation will settle at two per cent, or whether central banks will hike or cut rates by another 25 basis points, many are missing the bigger picture. What happens if we are entering a world defined by resource scarcity? What happens if the primary constraint on economic growth is no longer the cost of money but the availability of energy, electricity, commodities, skilled labour and infrastructure?

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Central banks can create liquidity. They cannot create copper mines, natural gas export terminals, power grids or pipelines, or even refill their strategic oil reserves. That is precisely why Canada may become one of the most attractive investment destinations of the coming decade.

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For years, Canada’s resource-heavy stock market was viewed as a weakness. Investors routinely criticized the S&P/TSX Composite for lacking the technology giants that propelled the S&P 500 higher. But what if the market got it backwards? What if Canada’s concentration in hard assets becomes one of its greatest advantages?

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Unlike the S&P 500, which has become increasingly concentrated in a handful of technology companies, the TSX remains heavily weighted toward financial institutions, energy producers, pipelines, utilities, railways, industrial companies and materials producers; in other words, businesses tied directly to the physical economy.