Co-operation among large investors, industry leaders and governments is rapidly increasing as parties discuss how to get major projects off the ground to protect Canada against the threat from tariffs, the CEO of the OMERS pension fund says.
Demand for new infrastructure, energy and defence investment is surging, and so is investors’ willingness to explore big-ticket investments in projects of national importance, Blake Hutcheson, chief executive officer of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, said in an interview.
OMERS earned a 2.2-per-cent return in the first half of 2025, adding $3.1-billion to its assets in spite of a tough start to the year for markets, according to a mid-year update released Thursday. With high volatility in public markets and sluggish dealmaking for public assets, Canadian pension funds are eyeing a growing opportunity to make new investments at home.
“The conversations are at a level that I haven’t seen for at least a decade, where we are exploring some private and public opportunities in earnest,” Mr. Hutcheson said. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, in my view, where the governments, the financiers and the pension plans can and should do some meaningful things in Canada.”
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Mr. Hutcheson was careful to add a caveat that OMERS has a fiduciary duty to pursue the best returns with the least risk for members, and doesn’t intend to accept weaker investment results. But he said the “dialogue and a willingness to do things” are at a high mark.
“Is it crystal clear, are we ready to jump? The short answer is no,” he said. “Are we optimistic that we can do things in this space? The answer is yes. … And for the sake of the country, we’re hopeful.”
Through the first half of the year, infrastructure investments delivered the strongest gains for OMERS, increasing by 3.6 per cent, while private credit and publicly traded stocks produced solid returns.
The falling value of the U.S. dollar between January and June hampered OMERS’s investment performance, reducing total gains by 1.2 percentage points. But OMERS had hedging positions that it increased late last year, which helped offset some of those currency losses, reducing the potential drag on its overall results by one percentage point.
With widespread uncertainty over tariffs, wars, markets and currencies, “we think it’s a solid start to the year,” Mr. Hutcheson said. “As investors, you really just want to be certain that you know where the goalposts are, and they’ve been moving around a lot lately, so it hasn’t been an easy first half.”
Over 10 years, OMERS has earned an average annual return of 6.9 per cent, adding more than $70-billion to its portfolio. Over the past five years, the average gain has been 8.7 per cent.
OMERS invests on behalf of about 640,000 Ontario public-service workers, including nurses, firefighters and police officers.
Its assets increased to $140.7-billion as of June 30, up from $138.2-billion at the end of 2024.
The OMERS real estate portfolio bounced back with a 1.1-per-cent gain in the first half of 2025, after suffering a loss last year. The performance of office properties has started to rebound from pandemic lows as employers push staff to work from home less frequently.
“We never lost our commitment to high-quality office,” Mr. Hutcheson said. “Even in the worst days during COVID, my view was: Never count that asset class out.”
The lone asset class that produced a half-year loss for OMERS was private equity, down 1.3 per cent.