This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Jack Mintz, April 28, 2026
Rather than pay down the federal government’s debt, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a $25-billion sovereign wealth fund (SWF), the Canada Strong Fund, which will join with private interests to invest in nation-building projects. It could grow even larger by selling a “retail investment product” to any Canadians who for some reason want to hold shares in politically-directed projects like high-speed rail, mining critical minerals and expanding the Port of Churchill.
Governments and private investors usually make strange bedfellows. Governments pursue political objectives that compromise the profitability investors want. To assuage investor concerns, subsidies boost the return to nation-building of the sort promised in the past fall’s budget. The big losers are taxpayers.
This is not the first Liberal government to create a fund to invest in private-sector business as a “partner.” Back in 1971, Pierre Trudeau created the Canada Development Corporation (58 per cent government-owned with 31,000 private investors) to widen investment opportunities for Canadians and maintain Canadian control of corporations. (Anti-Americanism was popular then, too.) Promising to operate profitably, the CDC and other mixed public-private enterprises became heavily leveraged, earning sub-par returns. By 1986, the Mulroney government did the smart thing and privatized CDC and its investments.
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Jack Mintz is the President’s Fellow at the University of Calgary’s school of public policy and a distinguished fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
