In principle, a sovereign fund is a fantastic idea that we should have done long ago.
In the specifics, I'm a bit concerned about how it's being set up, because I don't trust that "major projects of national interest" won't be narrowly defined as "fossil fuel infrastructure".
These are the projects that have been officially acknowledged so far, per the CBC:
The Sisson Mine, for critical minerals, in New Brunswick.
The Crawford Nickel project in Ontario.
The Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia.
An Iqaluit hydro project.
The Nouveau Monde Graphite Phase 2 project in Quebec.
The Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor in northwest B.C. and Yukon., which could include critical minerals and clean power transmission developments in the area.
The North Coast Transmission Line in northwest B.C.
Certainly all industrial infrastructure, but not necessarily for fossil fuels.
The Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia.
That one is, but there are also issues of geopolitics and strategic economics involved. I think the key rebuttal is whether it is "narrowly defined as fossil fuel infrastructure" which we can clearly see it is not, nor should it be. I don't think it can realistically exclude fossil fuel infrastructure given how much of it underpins our economy and position in the world at this particular moment in history, but I will certainly be happy to see a lot these non-fossil-fuel infrastructure projects get built.
Yeah, and the LNG terminal expansion isn't really that bad for the environment either. Developing countries still have a few decades to switch to complete renewables.
Natural gas is the most environmentally friendly non renewable energy source out there. I mean it does emit CO2 (which is bad ofc, but it emits around 50%), but that's all it emits. The other ones are even worse. That's why Europe switched to natural gas as an intermediary source of energy (especially for backup power, when solar can't generate anything). It's highly likely that Asia would want to do the same.
Someone has to supply this. That "someone" is us. The LNG terminal expansion helps us do this.
The issue with LNG is that the environmental math doesn't account for all the natural gas that escapes into the air before it's burned.
I know a video of this length is a hard ask, but it's very well done and I think worth your time: https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw
Oooh thank you so much for linking it! Was quite an interesting watch.
Here's a resource from the Canadian government in regards to this. Basically, the government says it has improved regulations to reduce methane emissions and that it is taking actions to enforce these regulations better (through improved methane emissions detection) and is cooperating with international partners (which includes the EU) for the same.
Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on this and would love an opinion piece from a climate researcher who doesn't have a conflict of interest. However, to my untrained eye, it looks like the "good bridge fuel" isn't totally a con (at least for Canadian gas?).
There's a few other projects that are big ticket items that there would need to be federal money for. Thinking things like the Toronto - Quebec City high speed rail, the port expansion at Churchill, the space launch site in Nova Scotia. Pretty sure the major port in BC (the container port, not the LNG/oil one) is looking to expand too. Then there's the Ring of Fire mining projects in northern Ontario. That would for sure involve the federal government, since it touches the "critical minerals" issue and directly involved Native relations.
Canada announces the creation of a state-gauranteed investment vehicle that it is calling a sovereign wealth fund to ride off the good PR of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, which this resembles in (literally) name only.
If you're Canadian you should be angry you don't already have a trillion+ dollar fund.
Canadians literally should be the wealthiest people on the planet
They have more resources and in abundance than anywhere else
I am angry.
Pierre Trudeau was right.
The National Energy Program. The West lost their minds and privatized the profit. Alberta took a slice for the Heritage Fund which Lougheed looted and here we are.
nah...private industry makes all the tar sand money, fucks off, then the leftists pay for the cleanup.
Great deal for Alberta.
Us and Africa
While the idea of a sovereign wealth is great, I am rather skeptical of the actual proposed implementation. A typical SWF model is that you have a revenue source such as resource royalties or foreign exchange that's directed to a fund with political independence and a broad investment mandate as seen in Norway or Singapore.
But the proposed approach by the Federal Government does not follow these practices. It is using national debt to make initial investments. In theory, if your return is greater than interest it can work, but it’s not ideal. These investments are targeted at major projects in the national interest. But just like the Major Projects office, these are politically-prioritized. This makes me skeptical of the independence aspect of the fund. Finally, we should ask why our independent wealth funds (CPP/Pensions/Private) and global capital are not more interested in major project investments.
I am open to being convinced with more details provided because we do need a sovereign wealth going forward.
Venezuela will start to pump oil. The Middle-East war will end. Europe is going to structurally cut down how much oil it needs. The war in Ukraine will end. Oil from Africa will flow.
These capital investments aren't expensive. A $1billion investment into something is nothing nowadays, internationally, so we should be really suspicious as to why these are not getting invested into. I don't think they have a chance of turning a profit, just money pits.
I actually expect that demand for oil will be shrinking going forward. The renewables are already cheaper today, and the war on Iran is going to drive prices up for years to come. Even clearing the current backlog in Hormuz will take around a year. So, countries are now rushing to buy up solar panels and China's exports doubled in March. That's going to be the prevailing trend now because producing energy domestically is a matter of national security at this point. Nobody wants to be stuck with their pants down when the next conflict breaks out or some other shock hits the supply chains. Current wars will end, and supply will get restored, but we might be living in a very different world by that point.
I'd never thought I'd see electric cars replace gas cars, even up till last year. Now I'd think that most gas cars will be gone in 15 years. When tech revolutions happen, they happen fast. Europe, Asia will quickly go all electric, as well as India, Pakistan, Egypt, S. Africa. Followed by S. and then N. America.
Look at pictures from the 1980s and 90s, it was all medium sized sedans, and small hatchbacks; times change.
It's often like this with new tech, it kind of simmers under the radar for a while, and then explodes seemingly all at once.
CPP serves a different and super narrow purpose. The idea is to maintain a very safe, stable portfolio that can reliably pay out pensions. We CANNOT make politically/ethically charged decisions here AT ALL.
From what I'm guessing, the SWF that's being proposed here is something of a middle ground. Independent, but with a "let's invest in Canada" approach. The idea doesn't seem to be just to maximise roi, but to rather do that along with "investing in Canada". Basically the government wanting to create/fund profit making, Canadian businesses that require large capital to get started (so mostly infrastructure projects).
Keeping it independent from parliament kinda insulates it from political nonsense. At the same time, cheaper debt for the Canadian economy as a whole.
I like it. However, I would like if the operations were cooperativezed. I'm afraid that future governments would raid the fund to promise temporary tax breaks or whatever. They can't do that with the CPP, as this would cause massive political backlash. I hope the public is well educated enough regarding this fund, where its protection is of paramount importance to them.
What will probably happen is
The fund builds something like a new toll highway where tolls were supposed to pay back into the fund.
Conservatives take office, and sell the highway toll rights for pennies on the dollar.
Conservatives lose office, and then trash talk the liberals for the fund not working and what a waste the highway was.
A piece I think we're missing. They probably are opening the fund up to the public to invest in for exactly this reason.
If I'm putting in a thousand bucks in the fund through my TFSA, and if PP decides to sell off my highway for pennies on the dollar, my next thousand bucks would be invested in a sniper rifle.
If public involvement in the fund wasn't there, then what you said would be the likely outcome. I mean at least that's how I understand it (and if what I've understood is correct... Holy hell is the Carney admin smart lol)
The last bit is precisely the concern. There need to be guarantees that this fund can set long term goals without constant interference. Without that it risks simply becoming a slush fund that produces little tangible value.
I was thinking of this the entire evening. Maybe there's rebuttal to this point? So they're talking of opening the fund up to the public as a retail product. They've stated that the mandate would be to give market returns. This way, the average individual buys into the fund as well (I would for sure). THAT is how the public becomes interested in the fund's survival and growth as it is for the CPP.
Let's say the Tories get in next election. If the fund is giving good returns, then the toriest of Tory voter would get out on the streets if there is even a whiff of the government dissolving it. Now I am exaggerating here, but the point I'm trying to make is that opening it up to retail investors ensures public interest in the fund's continued existence and expansion.
I think the bigger question is what this fund ends up being used for, and how it will be decided which projects it invests in.
Here's my guess from my comprehension of the write-up:
So my guess is that the funds would most likely be used to fund highly capital intensive projects from the ground up (instead of just buying Shopify stocks for example). This would almost always be infra projects. Depends on how much risk the board would be willing to take for assessed potential reward.
Tbh I'm not really that worried about the competency of the board. The CPP and QPP have been incredibly successful till now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
yeah I think we'll have to wait and see how this develops
The CPP and QPP have been incredibly successful till now
Hey, CPP, want to grow and handle this other thing?
Yeah, I hope they create structures to reuse the CPP's analysis and even staff for that matter.
My guess though is that it would be slightly the other way round, where the Canada strong fund creates investment products that the CPP could purchase. But yeah, I hope CPP's talent is used here. It's clearly working, and quite competent!
It would be kind of funny if the sovereign fund does its thing and CPP is like, no thanks, its not suitable for our goals
Can you even do that? The next majority government could just change something via law and then use it as a slush fund?
Making it cooperatively owned as wraekscadu suggested could be one approach.
This is good news but I bet it has some neoliberal aspect that ultimately chips away at how good this could actually be.
What kind of finance pros are gonna run it? If Carney doesn't handpick Keynsian ideologues for the job, it's gonna be neolibs all the way down, cause that's the predominant culture today.
As long as none of the money, and none of the assets harvested with that money enters the US economy it's okay.
He still hasn't shown how he will ensure Canada won't benefit the US.
Wow, more public money going to private companies, awesome, and it is to destroy the land? Sick. So happy.
The best thing for capitalists in this country was Trump, you can say shit is "for Canadians" and libs will just fucking eat it up.
I hope it can escape looting by future governments and that oversight of the funded projects is rock solid to avoid funneling money to cronies.
The problem I see with that is that this fund won't last long enough to matter. I don't even give it a decade before a different administration quietly takes the money from that fund to spend it on whatever.
This is the problem: any surplus or balancing of the budget is weaponized.
The party being fiscally responsible is demonized: "why are you taxing us for benefits we don't see now?".
Cue to the opposition being elected and pilfering the coffers for easy political points from the electorate, then they will remember the opposition's term as the party of "good times".
I wish the electorate wasn't this dumb, but in Ontario atleast, we re-elected in Doug Ford so...
This needs to be managed by an independent government entity, like a central bank. They say that it is, so that's cool.
It depends how it's put together. The CDPQ for example is pretty independent.
The proof really is in the pudding for the Liberals here.
Do you prefer it being under less democratic control than more? Cause that's flip side of independent gov't institutions.
Personally I think isolating public infrastructure/institutions from the gov't has not worked incredibly well. I used to think the opposite. It "protects" them somewhat from bad actors but it also limits the ability of other gov'ts to leverage them to fulfill what Canadians voted for. Essentially limits the scope of electoral democracy to affect change further than it already is.
The DOGE example shows we do need a way to protect institutions from the "tear it down" far right. It's ridiculously easy to destroy but hard to build. So I would say give them a strong democratic mandate and charter and make it legally hard to tear down in one mandate.
Right, that's the worst case scenario result. But I think we (they) might have gotten to it by having decades of unrepresentative government where the gov't represented business at the expense of the majority. And if that's valid, then I think there's an argument to be made about getting the gov't to do what's elected to do by giving it more power to do stuff, as well as experience the consequences of bad gov't earlier, before we get to a DOGE moment. That doesn't really change how capital captures and drives gov't to make decisions in its interest instead of workers, but we'd still be able to course correct faster and more effectively I think. I don't have a settled opinion on this but I've been warming up to the idea that voters should in fact be able to change gov't institution directions via elections in major ways. Also I don't think isolating gov't institutions from elected governments does prevent capital from taking them over. And we might be curbing just our own ability to exercise control.
Oh I hear you. But I think we can create robust democratically accountable institutions that are also protected from destruction. Things like civilian oversight boards, ombuspeople, and unions having a stake. I'd even go wild and say use things like sortition to randomly select citizen "juries" with the power to veto defunding/destructive policies.
Edit: the Liberals aren't going to do any of that of course.
Oh I see what you mean. Not status quo situation but other possible schemes for perhaps more fine grained democratic control. Yeah I dig that.
I'll wait for the official announcement, but looks to me like this fund will financed with debt. So another $25B on top of the $75B already.
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