Canada Strong Fund or Sovereign Wealth Fund, Spring Economic Update, & Asset Recycling
The new “sovereign wealth fund” is really the OPPOSITE of Norway’s: the Norwegian fund takes from oil and gas revenues and invests broadly – in part to serve as a backup given the volatility of oil and gas prices. The “Sovereign Wealth Fund” announced by Canada takes from public money – likely through the sale of public assets and public service cuts – and then invests it in projects that would likely include high risk oil, gas and LNG projects (especially since transferring risk off of corporations and onto the public is a key goal of Canada’s new fund). Norway’s fund lowers risks to the public, but Canada’s fund increases public risk to the benefit of already wealthy oil and gas corporations.
Again new oil, gas and LNG projects will not have a market by the time they are built and are therefore economic dead-ends (and terrible public investments). The Iran war has accelerated the global transition to renewables by pushing countries to get off oil and gas – further hurting the economic viability of oil and gas expansion.
Climate action is the canary in the coal mine – not a secondary issue: if governments can’t commit to climate action and take affordability measures that confront oil and gas corporate profits, we can’t rely on them to do a lot of other things either.
Sierra Club Canada’s concerns were quoted alongside others in The Energy Mix, Global News, and the National Observer.
- Find out more and find all the sources for today’s EPISODE BELOW in the most recent edition of our newsletter here: https://secure.sierraclub.ca/civicrm/mailing/view?id=3929&reset=1
- Read our related fact sheet on why wind and solar with batteries make much more expensive gas plants and nuclear (including SMRs) obsolete: https://www.sierraclub.ca/renewable-energy-does-not-need-baseload-power-more-facts-on-wind-solar-batteries-grids/ &
- More on why nuclear is NOT a viable clean energy source and only delays a transition off of oil and gas to cheaper wind and solar in Canada: https://www.sierraclub.ca/nuclear-energy-strategy-for-canada/
- And our previous newsletter on gas price caps, corporate profiteering, and how gas tax pauses are pointless and often just benefit corporations who vacuum up the difference: https://secure.sierraclub.ca/civicrm/mailing/view?id=3916&reset=1
As Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood put it recently to the National Observer: “what’s interesting is that we don’t have a solar and wind to battery strategy when every other part of the world has decided that it is so much cheaper and so much more efficient and so much quicker to mobilize solar and wind than any other kind of power.” Indeed, “Canada, the Global Electricity Review found, is an outlier to the market trend. Renewable energy plant construction has dropped over the past two years, leaving wind and solar power accounting for just nine per cent of the country’s electricity mix, less than half the average among the G7.”
Listen to The Environment in Canada Podcast video episode below 108 on how the sovereign wealth fund, or Canada Strong Fund, could just be a public money funnel to oil and gas corporations and also the Spring Economic Update 2026 from the Federal Government. You can watch / listen to the episode on The Harbinger Media Network, IHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify (video), YouTube (video), or watch it on our website below:
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Photo of demonstration against federal government cuts on April 18, 2026 that drew hundreds of people into the streets.