Summary
Canada is developing a government-owned investment fund that Prime Minister Mark Carney said will start at 25 billion Canadian dollars ($18 billion), with investments aimed at major industrial projects in Canada. Carney said Monday that the fund would put money into sectors including energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology, and that it would operate with federal support alongside private investors.
Carney said the government-owned structure is intended to help finance projects that his administration is focused on building, as Canada seeks to diversify its economy away from the United States. He also pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs directed at Canada, including a claim that Canada could become the 51st U.S. state.
In remarks about the shift in U.S.-Canada relations, Carney said: “Many of our former strengths built on our close ties to the United States have become our weaknesses,” and added, “The U.S. has changed. That’s their right and we are responding. That is our imperative.”
Carney, a former two-time central banker in England and Canada, also said Canada would take lessons from other jurisdictions that created sovereign wealth funds. He said those funds sometimes began with a domestic focus before expanding beyond that initial scope.
Sovereign wealth funds are typically invested across assets such as stocks, bonds and real estate and are often funded by a country’s budgetary surplus, which Canada currently does not have, according to the account of the announcement. The plan was unveiled a day before Carney’s government was set to release its spring economic update.
Globally, more than 90 sovereign wealth funds manage more than $8 trillion in assets, according to The International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, a London-based organization made up of roughly 50 such entities. The report of Carney’s comments also noted that Trump ordered the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund last year, and that more than 20 sovereign wealth funds exist at the state level in the United States, based on an analysis by the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank.