Canadian Pension Funds Pouring Billions Into ICE Contractors?
Major Canadian banks and pension funds provided tens of billions of dollars to American contractors for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, an investigation by the non-profit Stand.earth has found.
The group’s analysis of loan and share data found Canadian financial institutions backed multiple companies that have major contracts with ICE to provide equipment or services, through investments, loans and bonds totalling about US$35 billion.
The companies that benefited from those Canadian investments include: data analytics firm Palantir; major U.S. defence contractors General Dynamics and L3Harris; the IT firm CACI; and telecom giant AT&T. CoreCivic and Geo Group, which construct and manage detention centres, also benefited to a lesser extent.
Palantir, founded by major Republican donor Peter Thiel, supplies technology to ICE that helps it track individuals for detention and deportation.
Richard Brooks, finance director with Stand.earth, said Canadians should be alarmed to learn their savings and pensions are supporting U.S. President Donald Trump’s violent immigration crackdown and mass deportation campaign.
“We think it’s important for Canadians to know that their money -- their savings in the bank, their mortgage or their hard-earned pension -- is not agnostic money. It is actually being used to invest and attempt to profit from the violence that is happening in the United States right now,” Brooks told The Canadian Press, and called on Parliament to conduct hearings.
Left-wing politicians reacted sharply to news of the reported transactions. Newly elected NDP Leader Avi Lewis said Canadian businesses and public pensions should not provide support to “Trump`s personal military arm.”
“Canadians are scandalized by ICE, and we’ve been consistent as a party across this country that we don’t think that Canadian businesses should be doing business with ICE,” Lewis told a news conference Monday in Winnipeg. “We certainly don’t think Canadian pension funds should be investing in the infrastructure of repression in the United States.”
NDP MP Jenny Kwan said the Stand.earth report demonstrates the need for “greater transparency and accountability” and a “reassessment” of the ethical frameworks guiding public pensions and financial institutions.
Stand.earth has closely tracked the role played by Canadian banks in backing oil and gas operations.
By analyzing financial data from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the private financial data firm LSEG, it found the Canada Pension Plan, nine other public pensions and all of Canada’s major banks invested in companies that have multimillion-dollar contracts with ICE.
Brooks said Canadian banks TD, RBC, Scotiabank, CIBC and BMO have collectively provided these companies with financing through loans and bonds worth more than US$23 billion since 2020. The banks, along with financial services firm Desjardins, together invested at least US$9.8 billion in the ICE-connected firms, he said.
Public pensions have invested more than US$2.5 billion in these companies, Brooks said. The Canada Pension Plan is by far the biggest investor, followed by Caisse de Depot et de Placement du Quebec, British Columbia Investment Management and PSP investments, among others.
Brooks said he was most surprised to learn the CPP invested US$1.6 billion in the companies. The California Public Employees Retirement System invested roughly the same amount.
“For CPP to be investing to the same scale that the largest pension fund in the United States is investing in these companies, that really blew me away. It made me think they’re no better than U.S. pensions, and they should be better because we have different values in Canada,” Brooks said.
ICE has been mired in controversy and pursued by lawsuits over its agents’ aggressive tactics and alleged violations of civil rights while rounding up vast numbers of immigrants for deportation.
Federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota during the immigration enforcement operation in that state. Dozens of people, including a Canadian, have died in ICE custody after being detained since January 2025, when Trump was inaugurated.
Various Canadian pension funds and banks declined comment. The Canadian Bankers Association said it would not comment on individual decisions by members.
Banks and pension funds are federally regulated entities and the finance minister is directly responsible for the Canada Pension Plan.
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne’s office said it’s up to those institutions -- which operate at arm’s length from government -- to decide independently how they invest their funds.
“Canadian pension funds, much like banks and other financial institutions in Canada, are governed and managed independently -- and operate in a commercial manner at arm’s length from federal and provincial governments,” said spokesperson John Fragos.
“Their investment strategies are theirs to own, and guided by independent and professional boards of directors, who oversee, among other things, risk management and investment policies. Questions on individual investment transactions should be directed toward them.”
He said the federal government is currently “seized with creating an attractive domestic investment profile” and drawing in more private investment.
Brooks said that response tells him the government wants to pass the buck.
The federal government itself has also awarded contracts and subsidies to some ICE contractors.
The tech publication The Logic has reported that Ottawa-based tech company JSI, which provides wiretapping tools to ICE, is getting $1 million in federal funds to commercialize AI products for law enforcement and security agencies.
National Defence awarded Palantir’s Canadian subsidiary with a $14.4 million software contract in 2020, according to documents tabled in Parliament last year.
Many Canadians were also scandalized to learn last year that Brampton-based vehicle manufacturer Roshel was selling armoured vehicles to ICE.
This article is making a big splash today. I read it and wasn't particularly impressed.
I'd love to have an open debate with Richard Brooks, finance director with Stand.earth, because he obviously has no clue of what he's talking about.
Don't get me wrong, I loathe ICE, think Peter Thiel is the Antichrist and his views are extreme right-wing nonsense, but I can't stand left-wing drivel and that's exactly what this is.
I mean, just think carefully about this statement:
The companies that benefited from those Canadian investments include: data analytics firm Palantir; major U.S. defence contractors General Dynamics and L3Harris; the IT firm CACI; and telecom giant AT&T. CoreCivic and Geo Group, which construct and manage detention centres, also benefited to a lesser extent.
All these companies figure prominently in large, mid and small-cap indexes and yet no mention of how much of this exposure is "passive".
Moreover, Palantir does a lot of business with the federal government as do other defense companies but we are going to single them out for their dealings with ICE?
Completely ridiculous.
I understand why politicians love to harp on these stories to score cheap political points but we need to take a step back here and analyze things correctly and dispassionately.
Canadians are entitled to have moral views on publicly listed companies.
They might hate Palantir, General Dynamics, L3Harris for their role supporting ICE but it's a legal agency no matter how repugnant some think it is.
Hell, Canadians might hate Meta and Google for their role in polluting young people's minds with garbage on social media platforms but I don't see calls to divest from these two tech juggernauts.
Divestment is really, really stupid, a perfect example is oil & gas where many pension funds bowed to pressure and got out. They are now losing serious returns by not investing in fossil fuel stocks.
My message is simple: you don't have to like Peter Thiel/ Palantir, Elon Musk/ Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg/ Meta, or whatever company for whatever reason but you need to trust your pension fund managers when it comes to investing on behalf of their members' best interests.
That's what it all comes down to, is your pension fund making the right decisions, taking the right risks at the right time to make sure it's solvent for decades to come?
Everything else quite frankly is irrelevant.
In Canada, large pension funds like CPP Investments (which is now larger than CalPERS) operate at arm's length from the government.
It would take at least 2/3 of all provincial finance ministers and the federal finance minister to change that mode of operating but they won't because they want to ensure the funds are managed in the best interests of all stakeholders.
Why didn't Canada's large pension funds respond to a request to discuss this matter?
That's their call, quite frankly, they can't respond to every criticism laid on them and they're busy with more important things right now.
Again, these articles will arouse many Canadians and irritate them but they're not well informed as to how our pension funds (or big banks) are exposed to these investments and why this is all meaningless left-wing drivel.
Again, I'm not trying to be insensitive to the plight of ICE victims and think Trump's domestic policy on this front is going as well as his foreign policy in Iran, but let's not accuse our pension funds of investing in immoral companies or doing shady things.
That's just not the case here.
Below, Global's Anne Gaviola discusses how major Canadian banks and pension funds have provided tens of billions of dollars to the US Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agency according to the non-profit Stand.earth.
Also, NDP's new leader Avi Lewis said on Monday that Canadians don't want public funds going into what is essentially "Donald Trump's personal military arm, a masked paramilitary, murdering American citizens."
I'll leave it up to Americans to vote on whether they approve Donald Trump's domestic and foreign policies. Our pension funds aren't the villains here, nor should they be treated as such for doing their job.
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