Sebastien Betermier from McGill University presented the findings of a report entitled Should Canada Require its Pension Funds to Invest More Domestically? The report was co-authored with Keith Ambachtsheer from University of Toronto and Chris Flynn from CEM Benchmarking. The presentation compared domestic vs. international investment by pension funds in Canada, the U.S. and the UK over the last ten years, and looked at barriers to domestic investment by Canadian funds.

Key findings:

• Canadian pension funds have a relatively high proportion of Canadian listed equity and fixed income holdings, but that share has decreased over the last ten years.
• All asset owners in Canada and elsewhere have become more global investors, decreasing their share of domestic investments.
• Challenges to domestic investment by Canadian pension funds include the risk of portfolio concentration and increasing global competition for capital investment.
• Canada could attract more capital, both from Canadian funds and others, by monetizing strategic assets and scaling up public-private projects.

During the Q&A, Sebastien and moderator Gerard McDonald from GRI dove further into the potential for public-private partnerships to drive domestic investment, and discussed success stories from Australia and India that could serve as a template.