People Mentioned
Special Advisor, Ottawa
Stephen Poloz, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and a special advisor at Osler, is taking a soft approach to his latest assignment: chairing a working group created by the federal government to encourage more pension fund investment in Canadian businesses. As he told Catherine McIntyre of The Logic, “It’s about carrots, not sticks.”
He continued, explaining that he is asking pension funds what can be done to help them increase their domestic investments. “Can we remove obstacles? Can we create new vehicles of some kind to make it easier?”
While Poloz was originally supposed to be the head of a working group of seven or eight members, he has been doing the job on his own, and has already obtained formal submissions from 15 pension funds on his request. He says that so far, there is a common attitude expressed by the pension fund representatives: “‘We would love to invest more in Canada — but.’ It’s the ‘but’ that we’re preoccupied with … What’s holding you back?”
Poloz says that he plans to submit his recommendations to the federal government this summer and that tight timeframe, as well as the government’s own desire to jumpstart Canadian-based investments means there are restrictions on the type of actions he can recommend. “We can’t boil the ocean … This government doesn’t have time for that. If they’re going to make changes, they’re going to make changes pretty soon.”
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People Mentioned
Special Advisor, Ottawa
