Carney unveils $18 billion Canadian government-owned investment fund

TORONTO (AP) — Canada is developing a government-owned investment fund, PM says Mark Carney He said Monday.

Carney said the fund will invest in Canada’s major industrial projects in areas such as energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology. It will start at 25 billion Canadian dollars ($18 billion).

The prime minister said the federal government would provide funding as well as private investors. The money will help finance projects that the Carney government is focusing on building at a time when Canada is trying to move away from the United States.

US President Donald Trump threatens Canada’s economy and sovereignty with tariffsclaiming that Canada might be the most aggressive 51st state of the USA.

“Many of our former strengths, built on our close ties with the United States, have become our weaknesses,” Carney said. “The United States has changed. This is their right, and we are responding. This is our obligation.”

Carney is a two-time central banker in the UK and Canada and is also a former chairman of Bloomberg’s board of directors.

“We’ve learned from other jurisdictions that had the foresight to establish sovereign wealth funds decades ago,” Carney said. “In some cases, they started with a local focus, then they scaled out the local focus.”

Sovereign wealth funds invest in assets such as stocks, bonds and real estate. These are often funded by a country’s budget surplus, which Canada does not currently have. The announcement comes a day before Carney’s government announces its spring economic update.

There are more than 90 sovereign wealth funds worldwide managing more than $8 trillion in assets, according to the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, a London-based organization comprised of about 50 of them.

Embers commanded creation US sovereign wealth fund last year. There are more than 20 state-level sovereign wealth funds in the United States, according to an analysis by the Center for Global Development, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.