The CEO of one of Canada’s largest pension plans says

new nation-building infrastructure projects

announced by the federal government last week represent a “first step” to creating the kind of investment opportunities long sought by the country’s globe-trotting institutional investors.

“Historically, we haven’t seen as much of those opportunities, particularly with the national level commitment, as we would have liked,” Annesley Wallace, chief executive of the

Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan

(HOOPP), said Wednesday following a speech in Toronto.

“And so the recent announcements around the major projects are very exciting.”

She said infrastructure is a natural draw for pensions, but Canada’s nation-building projects will need to be designed with “commercial models” and the right mix of government involvement to drum up significant interest.

“There is a long way to go in terms of being able to advance these projects. Hopefully the (new) major projects office will be able to help navigate through some of those next steps,”

 

she said.

 

“To the extent there are commercial models that are created around these projects, and with government support, there will be lots of capital that comes to the table for investing.”

On Aug. 29, Prime Minister

Mark Carney

launched the Major Projects Office to streamline regulatory approvals and help structure financing, in coordination with provinces, territories, Indigenous groups and private investors. The first series of projects including a

liquid natural gas project

in British Columbia and a

nuclear project

in Ontario, were unveiled Sept. 11.

Wallace said the

Canadian pension plans

could help create a competitive advantage for the country if domestic projects match their investment criteria, which includes ensuring they can meet their obligations to retirees over the long term.

“We have capital that we, at HOOPP anyways, would love to invest in Canada to help that economic engine and help improve productivity going forward,” she said.

 

“Canada needs to be competitive in order to attract not just Canadian pension plan capital, but global capital.”

Prior to joining HOOPP as CEO on April 1, Wallace was a senior executive at TC Energy Corp. Before that, she was executive vice-president and global head of infrastructure at the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), another of Canada’s large pensions, which are known informally as the Maple Eight.

Wallace said the

trade war

initiated by the administration of U.S. President

Donald Trump

earlier this year is making investing “more complicated” for pensions including HOOPP that invest there. As of Dec. 31, the healthcare pension fund had 27 per cent of its assets in the U.S.

 

“The same way we’ve seen market correlations break down, we’ve seen global alliances start to break down, and that has economic implications and lots of other implications,” she said.

 

HOOPP’s recent embrace of “a more defined total portfolio approach” should help the pension deal with the added complexity and pinpoint where dislocation presents new investment options, she said.

“Taking a whole-fund view is designed to set us up such that we can be successful irrespective of what ultimately evolves,” she said. “The more frequent economic cycles that we may go through … in the future, that can ultimately provide us more opportunity so long as we’re prepared to take advantage of it.”

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• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com