06:44 AM EDT, 05/30/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Bank of Montreal (BMO) said that this week it saw something in Q1 that hasn't been seen in Canada in more than a decade.

That is: over the past year, Canada had a net inflow

on the foreign direct investment (FDI) account. In Q1 alone, there was an inflow of $28 billion of FDI into Canada, while outflows fell hard to $7 billion.

That net inflow in Q1 was the second largest in the past 20 years, state the bank.

However, quarterly flows can be very "whippy," so BMO prefers to look at the four-quarter sums. On that basis, inflows jumped to $111 billion, the highest since the mining mega mergers in 2007/08.

Meanwhile, investment abroad slowed to a "pedestrian" $90 billion over the past year, pointed out the bank. The combined net inflow over the past four quarters of $21 billion is the first such FDI surplus since Q1 2014 -- 11 years ago.