People Mentioned
Special Advisor, Ottawa
In March 2024, an open letter signed by 92 Canadian business leaders appealed to federal and provincial governments to mandate that pension funds increase their investment in domestic assets. In her article in fDi Intelligence, a specialist publication at the Financial Times, journalist Danielle Myles explores growing tensions between the public and private sectors in countries around the world about where retirement savings should be invested. In response to the open letter, the Canadian federal government launched a working group to investigate how to spur domestic investment. Osler Special Advisor Stephen Poloz is leading this review, and told Myles that he doesn’t expect a “major change” in the country’s pension funds’ international investment focus.
“The main question here [is], should there be rules that keep investment domestic? We’re trying to avoid that whole discussion by instead working out what are the barriers [to investing domestically], and if we can remove them as opposed to coercing investment,” Stephen explains. He goes on to say that he is focused on “concrete and actionable ideas … that the government can do in a fairly short time-frame.”
In addition to examining the issue in Canada, Myles looks at similar domestic vs. international investment “tussles” taking place in other countries, including the United Kingdom and Germany.
To learn more, read Danielle Myles’s full article, “Canada’s pension spat exposes global institutional capital fight,” in fDi Intelligence from July 11, 2024.
People Mentioned
Special Advisor, Ottawa
