Canada Pension Plan Investment Board chief executive John Graham says Prime Minister Mark Carney’s push for large-scale, nation-building projects offers “pretty interesting domestic investment opportunities.”
Graham emphasized the fund’s appetite to grow its Canadian assets in line with Carney’s election platform targeting internal trade barriers and resilient infrastructure.
Carney, who won last month’s federal election on a platform of removing interprovincial trade hurdles and backing major projects, has also signaled openness to new pipelines—provided there is nationwide consensus.
The fund reported a 9.3% net return for the year ending March 31, with net assets climbing to $714.4 billion from $632.3 billion a year earlier—driven by $59.8 billion in net income and $22.3 billion in pension transfers. Despite this, returns lagged the 10.9% benchmark.
CPP Investments’ portfolio remains heavily global: 47% in the US, 19% in Europe, 17% in Asia Pacific, 5% in Latin America, and just 12% at home. US allocations rose as dollar strength and robust equity gains, particularly in the US and China, outpaced other regions—an imbalance Graham hopes Carney’s nation-building agenda will help correct.
On ESG, CPP Investments dropped its net-zero by 2050 commitment in the annual report, citing new legal requirements under Canada’s Competition Act to substantiate environmental claims.
“Recent legal developments in Canada have introduced, kind of, new considerations around how net-zero commitments are interpreted so that’s caused us to change a little bit how we talk about it, but nothing’s changed on what we’re actually doing,” Graham insisted.
The fund also noted that this move is avoiding the risk of “forcing alignment with rigid milestones [that] could lead to investment decisions that are misaligned with [the] investment strategy.”
In December 2024, the Competition Bureau issued clarifying guidelines of the Competition Act saying that any environmental claim—like net-zero targets—must be substantiated “in accordance with an internationally recognized methodology” and supported by clear, evidence-based roadmaps with interim milestones.
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