Pension Pulse

Bill Curry and James Bradsaw of the Globe and Mail report pension funds should invest more in Canada, Senate finance committee chair says: The federal government should force the investment arms of the Canada Pension Plan and public-sector pensions to invest additional funds in this country rather than launching a sovereign wealth fund, says the Conservative chair of the Senate finance committee. In an interview with The Globe and Mail Wednesday, Senator Claude Carignan said the model – known as a dual mandate – has worked well in Quebec with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. “My position is that I think that the pension funds need to invest more in Canada,” the Quebec-based senator said. While the federal government has frequently said it wants to help create conditions that encourage such funds to invest more domestically, Mr. Carignan said urging voluntary action hasn’t worked and legislative changes should be considered.  “We could change their mandate an...

The Canadian Press reports senior Quebec pension plan executives paid over $17M in remuneration and compensation: The six most senior executives at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec received a total of $17.15 million in total remuneration and other compensation payments in 2025. This information is contained in the annual report of the “Quebecers’ nest egg,” published on Wednesday. Chairman and CEO Charles Emond was awarded total remuneration of $5.1 million, compared with $4.9 million in 2024, representing an increase of approximately one per cent. The remuneration and other terms of employment of the president and CEO are determined in accordance with parameters set by the government, following consultation with the board of directors. The annual base salary of Michael Sabia’s successor was maintained at $550,000 in 2025. Emond also received annual variable remuneration of $4.5 million, as well as $23,799 in pension plan contributions paid by La Caisse and other ...

Darcy Song of Top1000Funds takes a peek inside CPP Investments’ TPA engine: It has been two decades since CPP Investments, Canada’s largest pension fund, first adopted the total portfolio approach, swapping out asset class labels for underlying drivers of performance as guidelines to portfolio construction. Looking back on the revolution, the C$780 billion pension giant outlined in a recent paper the five pillars of TPA through which it achieves “disciplined flexibility”, allowing the fund to preserve “the ability to deliver exposures efficiently and adjust by choice rather than necessity”. While CPP Investments made the first foray into TPA in 2006, it wasn’t until 2016 that the fund “institutionalised” the framework and set targeted market risk and desired exposures to economic drivers at a total fund level. It then separated the investments into an active portfolio and a highly liquid, passive “balancing portfolio”. Central to CPP Investments’ TPA framewo...

John Rapley wrote a comment for the Globe and Mail stating that our pension funds must be sovereign wealth funds, too – even if pensioners take a hit: This essay is part of the Prosperity’s Path series. In a time of geopolitical instability and a shifting world order, the challenges facing Canada's economy have only gotten more visible, numerous and intense. This series brings solutions. When the 2008 financial crisis struck, the Bank of Canada followed other central banks in flooding the economy with money, by slashing interest rates and buying government debt. This juiced the economy with borrowed money. But it did nothing to boost its long-term productivity. This effectively took future income and redistributed it to the present. When wealth races ahead in this manner, something I call the Icarus effect sets in. Initially, rising wealth raises a country’s growth rate by, among other things, creating a larger pool of capital to support investment. But past a certa...

Jared Blikre of Yahoo Finance reports the stock market just had its best month since the pandemic rebound: Stocks knocked it out of the park in April. Wall Street’s April rebound ended the month with a scoreboard that looks more like 2020 than 2026 — and some of the details look even more like the dot-com era. The S&P 500 ( ^GSPC ) surged over 10% during the month, its best showing since November 2020, while the Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ) jumped more than 15% for its best month since April 2020. The Nasdaq 100 ( ^NDX ) gained nearly 16%, its best month since October 2002. That was not the setup investors had in mind a month ago, with stocks still shaking off the shock of a major war and the bull market suddenly on defense. The rally was broad enough to pull smaller stocks along too. The Russell 2000 ( ^RUT ) climbed more than 12%, also its best month since November 2020. But the S&P 500 equal-weight index rose less than 6%, barely more than half the gain in the...