Canadian investors have put a record amount of money into foreign securities this year, new figures show.

Canadians invested in $6.8 billion worth of foreign securities in October, Statistics Canada said today. The bulk of that money — $5.7 billion — went to buy foreign bonds.

Almost half of that went to buy Maple Bonds –Canadian-dollar bonds that are issued by non-Canadian companies.

That boosted the total purchase by Canadians of foreign stocks and bonds so far this year to $68.5 billion, surpassing the record annual purchase of $63.9 billion in 2000. That year, Canadians’ purchase of foreign securities was heavily skewed toward stocks, as the dot-com boom was in full swing.

This year, however, more than half of the outflow into foreign investments has been into bonds.

Following a $2.9 billion sell-off in September, foreign investors reduced their holdings of Canadian securities by $5 billion in October.

However, transactions this month were dominated by a large foreign takeover of a Canadian company whose foreign portfolio shareholders relinquished $8.7 billion worth of portfolio shares.