Rivers: A Wealth Fund or a Debt Fund?

By Ray Rivers

May 1st, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

Mr. Poilievre is having a field day mocking the Carney government for creating a wealth fund. There are something like thirty such funds around the world. Alberta’s former premier Lougheed created the provincial Heritage Saving Fund in 1976, built with the substantial petroleum royalties at the time and based on the fear, back then, that the province might eventually run out of the black gold.

Despite criticism that the Alberta fund over the years has been treated like an ATM, more like a chequing than a saving account, and accessed whenever the government felt it needed cash, it has grown to over $30 billion today and is targeted to hit $250 billion some day in the future. Unlike Alberta though, the federal government gets very little in the way of oil and gas royalties.

These war loans were heavily subscribed to – note the picture of the King and Queen at the time.

So the plan for Canada’s new national wealth fund will be based on a $25 billion endowment by the feds and open investment to private corporations and presumably individuals with a little extra cash in their pockets. That might end up as something akin to investing in a war bond to fund rebuilding the economy in this economic war with the USA.

The details are yet to come – most likely only after a board of directors is constituted. Canada already has a large pool of capital in the Canada Pension Plan, which currently is approaching $800 billion in value. However, being largely composed of obligatory contributions by future pensioners, the government is wise not to mess with one of the world’s most successful pension funds.

Poilievre’s claims that a wealth fund should be financed by federal budgetary surpluses is a laudatory but naive notion given that for almost twenty years, since the 2008 economic recession, neither the Liberal nor Conservative governments have ever generated a budgetary surplus. Fellow Tory Doug Ford was all about eliminating deficits as well, that is until he became premier and realized that the prospect of raising taxes or cutting essential programs has a political as well as a social and economic cost.

And Poilievre’s demand that the federal government remove all gas taxes would just add another eight billion dollars to the current deficit. That kind of math helps explains why he thinks he understands economics better than the sitting PM with his Harvard and Oxford degrees and his record as central banks governor. The complexity of higher finance clearly seems to evade the Tory leader’s comprehension – so he lashes out as best he can, accusing the PM of directing government policy to further enrich himself and his former business associates – essentially accusing him of corruption.

Poilievre has once again been transformed into attack dog mode.

But perhaps what is most concerning about Mr. Poilievre, who has once again been transformed into attack dog, is his lack of faith in Canadians and his inference that Canada doesn’t have enough wealth to start a fund – that Canada only has debt and that the new Sovereign wealth fund is just another debt fund. This is not the time to depreciate the country, especially if you are a political leader hoping one day to govern.

Canada is widely considered the 18th richest nation on earth with the 11th largest economy. Not bad for a nation of just over 40 million people, about half a percent of the planet’s population. According to the International Monetary Fund Canada has the strongest fiscal position in the G7, with the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio, at just under 12% and a triple A credit rating.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers