CPP Investments and the Maple Eight: Why Canada’s Pension Funds Became Global Investors

Canada’s pension funds became global investors because they were designed to be independent, large and professional at a time when most public pensions were none of those things. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, created in 1997 to invest the surplus of the national pension plan, had C$793.3 billion of net assets at 31 March 2026 and has earned C$549 billion of cumulative net income since it began investing. Alongside it, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, OMERS, PSP Investments, BCI, AIMCo and HOOPP form the group known as the Maple Eight, which collectively owns airports in Britain, toll roads in Australia, Chilean water utilities, Indian renewable developers and large slices of the world’s private-equity industry. This article explains the governance model that made this possible, the 2025 and fiscal 2026 results, and the growing political pressure to bring the money home. It is part of the Canada Company Stories hub.

Who are the Maple Eight and how much do they manage?

The Maple Eight are the eight largest Canadian public-sector pension investment managers: CPP Investments (federal, C$793.3 billion at March 2026), the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec or La Caisse (C$517 billion at December 2025), Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (C$303.2 billion at June 2026), PSP Investments (federal public service, military and RCMP), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), OMERS (Ontario municipal employees, C$151.6 billion at June 2026), Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) and the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP). Together they manage more than C$2.5 trillion, which is roughly equal to Canada’s annual GDP.

Their size relative to the country is what makes them unusual. The United States has larger funds in absolute terms, such as CalPERS, but no US public pension approaches the scale of CPP Investments relative to its home economy, and none has the same freedom to invest globally in private assets. Among the world’s largest asset owners, only Norway’s sovereign fund, Japan’s GPIF and a handful of Gulf and Asian sovereign funds are bigger than CPP Investments.

What they own is also distinctive. Where most pension funds hold mainly listed equities and bonds, the Maple Eight were early and heavy investors in infrastructure, real estate, private equity and private credit. Ontario Teachers’ owns stakes in Cadillac Fairview, GFL Environmental, Global Container Terminals and HomeEquity Bank in Canada and in airports and utilities abroad. La Caisse took renewable developer Innergex private for about C$10 billion in 2025 and partnered with Brookfield on the C$3.8 billion Boralex deal in 2026. CPP Investments is one of the largest limited partners of every major private-equity firm and a direct owner of toll roads, pipelines and data centres.

How did the Canada model come about and why does it work?

The Canada model dates from the 1997 reform of the Canada Pension Plan, when the plan faced insolvency within a generation and the federal and provincial finance ministers agreed to raise contribution rates and, crucially, to invest the surplus in markets rather than lending it to provinces at below-market rates. The CPP Investment Board was created as a Crown corporation with a board appointed on professional criteria, a legislated mandate to maximise returns without undue risk of loss, and explicit independence from government over investment decisions.

Ontario Teachers’ had pioneered the approach a few years earlier, in 1990, when it was converted from a holder of non-marketable Ontario government debentures into an independent investor with its own professional staff and board, jointly sponsored by the Ontario government and the teachers’ federation. Its early success, including the purchase of stakes in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment and the Cadillac Fairview property company, provided the template. La Caisse, founded in 1965 with a dual mandate of returns and Quebec economic development, is the oldest of the group and the one with the most explicit domestic role.

Three design features explain the performance. First, independence: boards are nominated through professional processes, and governments cannot direct individual investments, which has protected the funds from the political allocation that hollowed out public pensions in many other countries. Second, scale and internal management: by building large in-house teams rather than outsourcing to external managers, the funds cut costs and could invest directly in private assets. CPP Investments’ operating expenses were C$1.76 billion in fiscal 2026, a ratio of 23.1 basis points of assets, down from 26.1 the year before, although it also paid C$1.98 billion of external management fees and C$2.76 billion of performance fees. Third, market-rate pay: the funds pay their investment professionals comparably to private-sector peers, which is politically contentious but has retained talent that would otherwise have gone to Bay Street or Wall Street. La Caisse’s record 2025 executive pay bill drew criticism in Quebec for exactly this reason.

What did CPP Investments earn in fiscal 2026?

CPP Investments reported a net return of 7.8 per cent for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, net income of C$56.9 billion and net assets of C$793.3 billion, up from C$714.4 billion a year earlier. Net transfers from the Canada Pension Plan added C$22.0 billion. The ten-year annualised net return was 8.8 per cent and the five-year return 6.6 per cent, and cumulative net income since inception reached C$549 billion.

The fund trailed its reference portfolio, which returned 13.2 per cent, because the benchmark is dominated by large US technology stocks that outperformed everything else during the year, while CPP Investments holds a much more diversified mix with heavy private-asset weightings. Chief executive John Graham described the result as a strong year given geopolitical uncertainty, market volatility and currency movements, and pointed to the fund’s diversified portfolio and global platform. Over five years, public equities returned 8.9 per cent a year, private equities 9.1 per cent, credit 7.0 per cent, real assets 7.9 per cent and government bonds just 0.5 per cent.

The base CPP, which covers contributions up to the original earnings ceiling, held C$712.9 billion and returned 8.0 per cent, while the additional CPP, launched in 2019 to raise replacement rates, held C$80.4 billion and returned 5.4 per cent, reflecting its more conservative risk profile. The Chief Actuary of Canada continues to project that the base CPP is sustainable for at least 75 years at current contribution rates, which is the ultimate test of the model.

How did La Caisse, Ontario Teachers’ and OMERS perform in 2025 and 2026?

Returns across the group were positive but mostly below public-market benchmarks, because 2025 was a year in which listed equities surged while private-asset valuations were marked down. La Caisse returned 9.3 per cent in 2025 against a 10.9 per cent benchmark, generating C$43 billion of investment income and taking net assets to C$517 billion. Equity markets returned 17.7 per cent, credit 9.6 per cent in what chief executive Charles Emond called its best-ever performance against index, and fixed income 6.6 per cent, but private equity returned just 2.3 per cent against a 12.6 per cent benchmark. Ten-year returns of 7.2 per cent a year still beat the 6.9 per cent benchmark.

Ontario Teachers’ returned 6.7 per cent in 2025 on net assets of C$279.4 billion, against an 11.7 per cent benchmark, a gap of C$12.0 billion that chief executive Jo Taylor attributed to disciplined year-end valuation adjustments on private holdings. The plan remains fully funded for a thirteenth consecutive year, with a preliminary surplus of C$31.2 billion and a funding ratio of 111 per cent. By 30 June 2026 net assets had grown to C$303.2 billion.

OMERS earned a 4.8 per cent net return, or C$6.9 billion, in the first half of 2026, taking net assets to C$151.6 billion. Chief executive Blake Hutcheson called it a positive start despite global challenges. The fund’s geographic mix, 25 per cent Canada and 52 per cent United States, is among the most US-heavy in the group, and that is where the political argument begins.

Sources: fund releases and reporting by Benefits and Pensions Monitor, Advisor.ca and Corporate Knights, 2026. Canada shares are approximate and defined differently by each fund.

Why has the pressure to invest at home become so intense?

The pressure stems from a simple observation: Canadian pension funds, built with Canadian contributions and tax advantages, hold a small and shrinking share of their assets in Canada, at a moment when the country needs capital for housing, energy, critical minerals and defence. CPP Investments had C$98 billion, about 13 per cent, in Canada at the end of 2025 and C$366 billion, about 47 per cent, in the United States. OMERS is 55 per cent American and PSP 41 per cent. Only HOOPP, Ontario Teachers’ and AIMCo hold more in Canada than in the United States.

The debate became public in 2024 when about 90 business leaders signed an open letter organised by Montreal money manager Letko Brosseau calling for rules to push the funds toward domestic assets. The funds pushed back hard, arguing that Canada is 3.6 per cent of world markets while the US is about 70 per cent, that a domestic-investment mandate would breach their fiduciary duty, and that their Canadian weighting is already several times the country’s share of global indices. The Trudeau government appointed former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz to explore incentives rather than mandates, and the November 2025 federal budget set a target of enabling C$1 trillion of new investment over five years, alongside measures to let insurers invest more in infrastructure and to open federal infrastructure such as airports to pension capital.

The 2025 trade war with the United States changed the tone. With the tariff conflict exposing how dependent Canada had become on US demand, and Prime Minister Mark Carney using his January 2026 Davos speech to call for a national investment drive, the funds found it harder to argue that the US was simply a better market. Finance minister François-Philippe Champagne said in February 2026 that Ottawa and the funds could do more together while respecting their independence, and chief executives began adjusting their language: PSP’s Deborah Orida asked whether the fund had been underleveraging its home-ice advantage, HOOPP’s Michael Wissell said the capital was available now, and CPP Investments’ John Graham said unity and coordination would unlock the nation-building projects Canada required.

What was agreed at the 2026 Canada Investment Summit?

At the inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on 14 and 15 September 2026, co-hosted by CPP Investments and PSP Investments, Canada’s pension funds, insurers and institutional investors committed nearly C$100 billion of new capital to Canadian assets, according to the Prime Minister’s remarks, alongside nearly C$325 billion of new financing from the banks. The summit drew investors from about 30 countries managing more than US$100 trillion and was pitched as the centrepiece of the C$1 trillion investment drive.

The pension pledges were specific. Ontario Teachers’ committed to invest an additional C$10 billion in Canadian public and private assets by the end of 2027, on top of the roughly C$100 billion, about 30 per cent of its portfolio, it already holds at home. OMERS committed to at least C$10 billion of new Canadian investments over five years. Sun Life pledged C$5 billion for Canadian infrastructure over five years and asked Ottawa to amend the Insurance Companies Act to allow equity investments in infrastructure, a request the insurers’ story explores. CPP Investments, as co-host, emphasised its existing Canadian pipeline, including a C$225 million data-centre investment in Cambridge, Ontario, and its role in the Major Projects Office process rather than announcing a single headline number.

The government’s side of the bargain was regulatory. Carney announced a Productivity Mega Deduction that makes immediate expensing permanent for roughly two-thirds of qualifying assets, a C$1 billion Business Development Bank allocation for defence and critical-minerals companies, and a proposed Build Canada Strong Act to extend the one-project, one-review, one-year approval standard beyond the Major Projects Office. For the funds, the attraction is a pipeline of large, long-dated infrastructure assets of the kind they already own abroad, from LNG terminals to transmission lines to the 1.2-gigawatt AI hub Bell and Saskatchewan announced at the summit.

Does investing abroad actually produce better returns?

Over the long run, the evidence supports the funds. CPP Investments’ five-year annualised returns by region to March 2026 were 8.7 per cent in the United States, 4.9 per cent in Europe, 10.2 per cent in Latin America and 2.6 per cent in Asia Pacific, against 4.5 per cent in Canada. The US has been the best-performing large market for most of the past fifteen years, and the funds’ heavy US weightings are the main reason their ten-year returns are above 7 per cent.

The counter-argument is about risk rather than return. Concentration in US assets exposes the funds to currency, political and valuation risk at a time when the US market trades at historically high multiples and the bilateral relationship is strained. The funds also hold their US exposure in asset classes, such as private equity and commercial real estate, where 2025 marks were weakest; La Caisse’s private equity returned 2.3 per cent and Ontario Teachers’ took C$12 billion of negative value-add largely from private write-downs. Diversifying back toward Canadian infrastructure, which produced strong returns for La Caisse in 2025, is not obviously a sacrifice of return.

What the funds will resist is any formal mandate. The 2024 letter campaign failed precisely because the Canada model’s credibility rests on fiduciary independence, and a rule requiring X per cent in Canada would invite the next government to require Y per cent in a favoured sector. The 2026 summit’s pledge-based approach, voluntary commitments against a supportive regulatory backdrop, is the compromise both sides can live with.

What are the main risks facing the Maple Eight?

Demographics add a slower-burning risk. Ontario Teachers’ and HOOPP are mature plans with more retirees than contributors, which limits their risk budgets and makes them more sensitive to liquidity. CPP Investments, by contrast, has decades of net inflows ahead and can afford illiquidity, which is why it carries the heaviest private-asset weighting. As the plans age, the group’s ability to be the patient capital Canada now wants will diminish.

What can founders and investors learn from CPP Investments and the Maple Eight?

The first lesson is that governance is a competitive advantage. The Canada model’s independence, professional boards and market-rate pay produced results that political allocation never could, and the structure was deliberately designed in 1997 rather than evolving by accident. Founders building institutions, from family offices to sovereign funds, should study how the CPP Investment Board Act insulated investment decisions from the people who had the power to raid the fund.

The second lesson is about scale and direct investing. By internalising investment management, the funds cut fees, learned to own assets directly and built relationships that give them first look at infrastructure and private-equity deals worldwide. The lesson for smaller investors is that control of the investment process, not just asset allocation, drives long-run outcomes.

The third lesson is that independence must be renewed politically. The 2024-26 domestic-investment debate shows that even a model as successful as Canada’s needs to demonstrate its value to the society that created it, and the funds’ pivot from resisting Ottawa to pledging C$10 billion each is a recognition that fiduciary duty and public licence are not separable. Investors tracking the Brookfield and Big Six bank stories will see the same bargain being struck across Canadian finance in 2026. Readers comparing national models may also find the Australian superannuation story instructive, since Australia’s funds face the same pressure to invest at home.

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