Institutional · EN · June 5, 2025

The Caisse de dépôt and the Architecture of Quebec's Economic Sovereignty

When the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec was established in 1965 under Finance Minister Eric Kierans and Premier Jean Lesage, its mandate was understood to be dual from the outset: generate competitive returns on the pension assets entrusted to its management, and do so in a manner that advanced Quebec's economic interests. The tension between these objectives has been present in every significant decision the institution has made in the sixty years since.

The financial scale the Caisse has accumulated — assets under management now exceed $450 billion — gives it an institutional weight in Quebec's economy that has no precise equivalent elsewhere in Canada. A pension fund of comparable size in Ontario, Alberta, or British Columbia operates primarily as a financial institution; its investment decisions are evaluated almost exclusively on the basis of risk-adjusted return. The Caisse operates in a different institutional context, one in which its decisions carry political as well as financial significance.