“’Buy Canada’ pressure builds on US$1.6 trillion in pension pot,” was the chilling headline to a Bloomberg News article this week, detailing the push to demand our public pension plans invest more in Canadian projects simply because they’re Canadian. That’s not a new argument by any means, and it doesn’t spell certain doom. Quebec’s Caisse de Dépôt has a mandate to invest in Quebec, and in the long term its returns reliably beat the “benchmark portfolio” — i.e., an index fund. (That said, in 2024 the Caisse lost more than $10 billion relative to that benchmark portfolio.)