Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
30-04-2026
OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government is developing a government-owned investment fund.
Carney said on Monday that the fund, a first for the country, will invest in major Canadian industrial projects in areas such as energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology. It will begin at 25 billion Canadian dollars (US$18bn).
The prime minister said the federal government will put up funds alongside private investors. The money will help finance major projects that Carney’s government is focused on building as Canada seeks to diversify away from the United States.
US President Donald Trump has threatened Canada’s economy and sovereignty with tariffs and claims that Canada could be “the 51st state” in the US.
Carney is a former central banker in England and Canada as well as chairman of the board of directors for Bloomberg.
“We take a lesson from other jurisdictions that had the foresight many decades ago to start sovereign wealth funds,” Carney said. “In some cases, they began with a domestic focus then outgrew the scale of the domestic focus.”
Sovereign wealth funds invest in assets, such as stocks, bonds and real estate. They are typically funded by a country’s budgetary surpluses, which Canada currently does not have. The announcement came a day before Carney’s government announces its spring economic update.
There are more than 90 sovereign wealth funds around the world. They 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 of these entities.
Trump ordered the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund last year. In the US, more than 20 sovereign wealth funds exist at the state level, according to an analysis from the Center for Global Development, a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan think tank.
Carney said the Canada Strong Fund will be managed by an arm’s-length independent Crown corporation that will report to Parliament and his government will spend the next few months consulting on “specific aspects of the fund.”
Describing the fund as “essentially a national savings and investment account,” Carney said the fund is being designed to “grow wealth for future generations.”
“This will be a Government of Canada fund but more importantly, this will be a people’s fund. It will be your fund,” Carney said.
Projects of national interest
Bill C-5, Carney’s legislation to speed up approvals for major infrastructure projects identified as being “nation-building,” passed through Parliament last June.
The second half of the bill, the Building Canada Act, enables the federal cabinet to pick projects, approve them upfront and override federal laws, environmental reviews and the permitting process.
The legislation speeds approval times from five years to two by introducing a “one project, one review” approach instead of having federal and provincial approval processes happen sequentially.
The Major Projects Office (MPO), which Carney created last August, is the central place to make pitches, deliver complaints or express concerns about major projects.
When he announced the MPO, Carney said it would “help structure and co-ordinate financing from the private sector, provincial and territorial partners” and the federal government to ensure taxpayers get value for money.
Carney said the projects being financed through the fund will not be limited to ones of national interest, which have to meet certain benchmarks to get that classification.
“It wouldn’t be restricted to that, in my judgement. We’ll consult on the specifics of that, so it’s a broader range than would be just specifically C-5,” he said on Monday. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
