Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said Monday that his country would establish a pool of money similar to those used by major oil exporters like Norway to make investments as he seeks to make the Canadian economy less dependent on the United States.
Known as a sovereign wealth fund, it will focus on investments in Canadian infrastructure and will be operated like a private company. Canadians will also be able to invest in the fund.
Sovereign wealth funds are large pots of investment money that are generally managed independently, though they sometimes receive broad direction from governments about where they can put their funds.
In creating one of it own, Canada is following the lead of other countries, among them oil-rich nations in the Middle Eastern.
“This will be a Government of Canada fund, but more importantly, it will be a people’s fund, it will be your fund,” Mr. Carney told reporters in Ottawa. “Many countries that are blessed with natural resources, like Norway, have them. Canada has not until now.”
Mr. Carney linked its creation to his plans for major infrastructure projects like pipelines, ports, new nuclear generation and a high-speed passenger rail line. They are intended to bolster the economy in the face of President Trump’s trade war with Canada.
“For the first time in the history of Canada,” Mr. Carney said, “Canadians will not just contribute to the realization of these projects, they will benefit directly from their return.”
He said that its investments would be made in conjunction with private sector investors and other funds.
With an initial infusion of 25 billion Canadian dollars — about $18 billion — Canada’s new fund will be a fraction the size of Norway’s, which at $2 trillion is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.
It will also differ in its source of cash. Norway puts all government oil revenues into its account. But in Canada, underground natural resources belong to the provinces, and they collect and keep royalties paid by oil companies.
Alberta, the center of Canada’s oil and gas industry, set up a sovereign wealth fund in 1976. But in the following decade, the province stopped transferring any oil royalties to the fund and governments began withdrawing money from it. The Alberta fund held about $32 billion at the end of last year.
While Mr. Carney said that the fund would focus on investing in Canada, he offered no specifics. He also did not provide details about the source of the fund’s initial 25 billion Canadian dollars. The fund is expected to grow by keeping much of the profit generated by its investments, officials said.
Mr. Carney, a former central banker and investment executive, has been traveling the world aiming to attract 1 trillion Canadian dollars, about $730 billion, in investment to Canada within a decade. As part of that effort, he will host a meeting of investors and executives in September.
To date, Qatar, India and the United Arab Emirates have made broad pledges to invest in Canada.
A recent report by the Royal Bank of Canada found that foreign investment in Canada reached 100 billion Canadian dollars, about $73 billion, last year. It was, the bank said, a sharp reversal from the previous decade, when more than $1 trillion in investment money left the country.
“Canada is increasingly catching the attention of global investors and companies looking to rebalance their portfolios amid global uncertainty,” the report said.
Mr. Carney made his announcement standing between two steam locomotives on display at a science and technology museum in Ottawa. He used them to evoke the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the first transportation link to unite Canada, which involved both private and public finance. In the 1870s, the governmentprovided the railway’s promoters with over 25 million Canadian dollars, 25 million acres of land and generous tax exemptions.
“Facing at that time an economic depression and threats to our sovereignty from our southern neighbor, Canadians chose to build,” Mr. Carney said. “And the Canadian Pacific Railway became the connective tissue of a new country.”
After a reporter reminded the prime minister that the awarding of the railway contract also led to a political scandal, Mr. Carney said that the government would do things differently today.
“We have this same reliance on private enterprise to build and run these businesses,” he said. “But at the same time, we’ve also learned from our past.”
