All figures as of September 2026. I own Royal Bank, CPKC, Brookfield and Shopify. This is analysis, not personalized advice. The article below was created using my video transcript and the assistance of AI.
These are the titans of Canadian investing. One is your bank. One built the railway this country exists because of. One moves close to a third of North America’s crude oil. One runs the software behind millions of online stores. And one of them, most investors could not name, even though it has quietly become one of the biggest companies in Canada.
This week’s ranking is different from my sector videos. Instead of one industry, I took the biggest company from each of six industries: Royal Bank (RY), Enbridge (ENB), Agnico Eagle (AEM), Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CP), Brookfield (BN) and Shopify (SHOP). One slot per industry, biggest name takes it, no doubles. That rule is brutal: it eliminated TD Bank, Bank of Montreal, and Brookfield Asset Management before the list even started.
One caveat before the grades, because it matters. Every company on this board is an S-tier business in absolute terms. If I ranked any of them inside their own industry, they would sit at the top. Think of six students who all score in the nineties: somebody still finishes sixth. The grades below are relative, based on valuation and what I think the next five years look like. And note that I own four of the six, which did not save any of them.
Blue-chip 101: three rules before you grade a titan
Rule one: the P/E ratio lies for half this board. It works fine for the bank, the miner and the railway. It breaks for the rest: Enbridge’s earnings drown in depreciation, so you use distributable cash flow. Brookfield’s accounting earnings are noise, so you use distributable earnings. Shopify’s are polluted by investment gains, so you use free cash flow. Use the wrong yardstick and you rank the whole board wrong.
Rule two: compare each company to its own history. Cheap and expensive only mean something against your own past. That single idea decides more of this ranking than anything else.
Rule three: the market already knows about the moat. Every company here has a famous moat, and identifying it gives you no edge, because it is priced in. The edge is judging whether the company can leverage that moat to actually grow. Keep that in mind for two names in particular.
E tier: Enbridge (ENB), the tollbooth with the lowest ceiling
This one is going to ruffle feathers, so let me say it plainly: Enbridge is an A-grade business. It moves roughly 30% of North America’s crude oil and nearly a fifth of the natural gas Americans burn. The Mainline is still growing at 76 years old, and you could not permit these assets today at any price. After the US$14 billion Dominion deal, Enbridge also runs North America’s largest natural gas utility, with seven million customers and roughly half of EBITDA now coming from gas transmission and regulated utilities. The dividend has been raised 31 years in a row, and there is even a real AI angle: over 50 data centre opportunities that could need up to 10 Bcf/d of new gas demand.
So why E? Because of the number that rules everything else: C$112 billion of total debt against a market cap around C$150 billion. The biggest corporate debt load on this board.
That debt is not a solvency problem. It is a ceiling problem. The interest bill swings with rates, and there is little room to borrow for growth, which is why dividend growth has been walked down from 10% a year in the Spectra era to about 3% now, barely matching inflation. To me, slowing dividend growth from a company like this is a symptom of a strained balance sheet. Add the twenty-year question about the terminal value of crude pipelines, and I think Enbridge simply has the lowest upside of the six from today’s prices. A wonderful tollbooth. The weakest stock on this particular board.
D tier: Agnico Eagle (AEM), the best-run company nobody researched
Here’s the fact that surprises everyone: a gold miner is now one of the biggest companies in Canada. Bigger than Brookfield. Bigger than the railway. Agnico Eagle sits around C$143 billion after more than quadrupling since the Kirkland Lake merger in early 2022, and I say this with a personal scar, because I owned Kirkland Lake, was handed Agnico shares in that merger, and sold them in early 2022 around C$66. The stock is near C$274 today. One of the biggest regrets of my 16 years investing.
The business itself might be the best-managed in the country. Agnico realized about US$4,483 per ounce of gold last quarter against all-in sustaining costs of US$1,459. That is a margin of roughly $3,000 on every single ounce, or 67%. It produces 3.4 million ounces a year, generates more than US$5 billion in annualized free cash flow, and returned $625 million to shareholders in the last quarter alone. Production is 72% Canadian, with the rest in Australia, Finland and Mexico, the safest mining jurisdictions on earth. And the balance sheet did something remarkable:
As recently as 2023, Agnico carried US$1.5 billion of net debt. Today it holds US$3.46 billion in cash against just US$0.2 billion of debt, a $3.3 billion war chest in an industry where the cycle usually buries the balance sheet.
So why D? Because it is a gold price story, full stop. If gold falls 20%, the margin per ounce drops about 30%, and earnings fall harder after fixed costs. This is a leveraged play on one commodity, trading at 17.5 times earnings that only look cheap if gold holds. Miners always look cheapest at the top of the cycle, and 3.4 million ounces must be replaced every year, forever. Best-in-class operator, hostage to one price.
C tier: Royal Bank (RY), the best bank at the wrong price
Yes, I own it. Yes, it went in C. Royal Bank is Canada’s biggest company at C$403 billion, with a $2.4 trillion balance sheet, $5.8 trillion in client assets administered, and a record $6 billion profit last quarter. It has paid a dividend every year since 1870, which makes the dividend older than the telephone. The HSBC Canada acquisition added 780,000 clients to the deepest moat in Canadian banking, return on equity sits near 18%, the best of the big banks, and roughly half of the record quarter came from wealth management and capital markets rather than lending.
The problem is the price.
Royal trades at about 18.4 times trailing earnings against a historical range of 11 to 12, and around 2.8 times book value against a long-term median near 2. The yield, at 2.45%, is among the lowest a Canadian bank has offered in years, not because the dividend stopped growing but because the price ran that hard. Here is the simple math that decided this grade: if the multiple merely walks back to 15 times, that is roughly an 18% drop with zero change in the business. Meanwhile the segments driving the record results, wealth up 32% and capital markets up 16%, are the most market-sensitive lines in the bank, and this is the biggest single bet on the Canadian consumer that exists. Do I think Royal crashes? No. Could it take a year or two off? Definitely. That is a C.
B tier: Brookfield (BN), sixty cents on a dollar you cannot verify
Brookfield is a 127-year-old empire with over US$1 trillion of assets under management: ports, pipelines, power lines, renewables, data centres, real estate. To be clear on which Brookfield this is: BN is the owner. It holds about 74% of BAM, which collects the fees, plus the real assets and a fast-building insurance arm with roughly US$190 billion of assets built from a standing start in 2021, running the same float-compounding playbook as Berkshire and Fairfax.
The debate that defines the stock is simple.
Management’s own plan math values the company around US$68 a share. The stock trades near US$40. That is about 60 cents on management’s dollar. The bear case writes itself: that discount is management grading its own homework, the structure is genuinely convoluted, and distributable earnings depend on deals closing, so a frozen deal environment or a rate spike slows the whole machine. The stock has also been dragged down about 22% by the private credit fears that hit every alternative manager after the First Brands and Tricolor blowups.
Here is why it still lands in B: distributable earnings grow double digits, the model sailed through 2008 and 2020 thanks to non-recourse, asset-level debt, and management is buying back stock like they believe their own math. Real assets with inflation-linked cash flows are exactly what an AI buildout needs, and Brookfield has its hands in every one of those jars. If it were simpler to understand, it would be fighting for S. Complexity is the discount, and the discount is the opportunity.
A tier: CPKC (CP), the railway with a moat nobody can rebuild
The railway that built Canada is now bigger than CN for the first time in decades, and it is betting its future on Mexico. The Kansas City Southern merger created the only single-line railway connecting Canada, the United States and Mexico: freight loads in Canada and never leaves the train until it arrives in Mexico, while every competitor runs a relay race of interchanges and handoffs. I ran the rough math on replicating this network: about a million dollars per mile just for flat track, before bridges, tunnels and mountains. It is not happening.
Three years in, the thesis is working. Merger synergies are tracking US$300 to 350 million a year against a promised billion. Revenue grew 13% last quarter in the middle of an active tariff war aimed directly at its map. The operating ratio of 64.6% is elite next to any trucking company, though it worsened lately and is my watch item, because CP trades at roughly 30 times earnings against CN at 22.
And then there is the reason I personally sold CN and bought CP: capital allocation.
CN spent nearly C$9.5 billion on buybacks in 2022 and 2023, at record freight profits and record share prices, more than its free cash flow in both years. CP paused buybacks entirely for four straight years while it digested Kansas City Southern, then restarted at 2025 prices. Same industry, opposite discipline. With the freight cycle showing early signs of turning, I think the premium is earned. A tier.
S tier: Shopify (SHOP), the only titan that can triple
The youngest company on this board by decades, and the only one that has ever taken the number one spot in Canada away from Royal Bank. It did it twice, and I believe it is a matter of when, not if, it takes it permanently. One more thing that separates it from the rest of this list: the banks grew up inside a protected oligopoly. Shopify built this in the most cutthroat industry on the planet, with zero regulatory protection.
The machine: roughly half a trillion dollars a year of merchandise now flows through Shopify’s stores, and Shopify takes a growing cut. Shopify Payments processes 68% of that volume, up from far less five years ago, and revenue grew 34% last quarter, accelerating at a $13 billion scale, which almost never happens. Operating leverage is the real story: revenue up 34% on flat headcount, operating income up 68%. With leverage like that, an expensive P/E gets cheap in a hurry, which is why the 68 times forward number does not scare me.
Then the AI bet. Shopify co-wrote the Universal Commerce Protocol with Google, its merchants’ products flow into AI assistants automatically, and AI-driven orders are tripling year over year. Those long, specific requests people type into chatbots surface products that would be buried pages deep on a marketplace. Sales that simply never happened before.
The honest bear case: about 98 times trailing earnings, 14 times sales, and a stock that halves regularly, down more than 80% in 2022 and about 45% into this spring, which is when I bought more. The AI checkout war is not won, and Stripe and OpenAI are fighting for the same rails. But no other company on this board has a realistic path to tripling. The risk is worth the squeeze. S tier.
The final board
| Tier | Company | Ticker | The one liner |
|---|---|---|---|
| S | Shopify | SHOP | The only titan that can triple. Priced like it, earning it |
| A | CPKC | CP | The irreplaceable three-nation railway, with the freight cycle turning |
| B | Brookfield | BN | A compounding machine at 60 cents on the dollar, if you trust the math |
| C | Royal Bank | RY | The best bank in the country, at the richest price it has ever asked |
| D | Agnico Eagle | AEM | Maybe the best-run company in Canada, hostage to one commodity price |
| E | Enbridge | ENB | An 80-year tollbooth with the biggest debt load and the lowest ceiling |
FAQ
What is the best Canadian blue-chip stock to buy right now?
For growth, my answer is the S tier: Shopify, which I own, sized for its volatility. For a steadier profile at a discount, Brookfield at roughly 60 cents on management’s stated value is the most interesting risk-reward on the board, and CPKC is the quality compounder if the freight cycle cooperates.
Is Enbridge a bad stock?
No, and that is the point of a relative ranking. It is an A-grade business with 31 straight years of dividend increases. I put it last because the C$112 billion debt load caps growth, dividend raises barely match inflation now, and I think it has the lowest five-year upside of these six. Income investors can reasonably disagree.
Why did Royal Bank rank so low if it’s Canada’s best bank?
Purely valuation. At 18.4 times earnings versus a historical 11 to 12, the multiple is doing something it has never done. If it normalizes even to 15, that is an 18% drawdown with no change in the business. I own it and I am holding, but I would not call today’s price a gift.
Is Agnico Eagle safe if gold falls?
The company survives almost any gold price: US$3.3 billion of net cash and the lowest costs in safe jurisdictions. The stock is another matter. A 20% drop in gold could cut the share price 30 to 40%, because miners are leveraged plays on the commodity.
Do I already own these companies?
If you hold a Canadian index fund or have a pension, yes, all six. That is exactly why it is worth knowing which ones are priced for the next five years and which ones are priced for the last five.
