The Public Sector Pension Investment Board expects its Canadian investments to surpass $100 billion over the next few years, about 30 to 40 per cent above current levels, as one of the country’s largest pension managers sees a growing pipeline of opportunities at home.

“It’s not a top-down geographic allocation decision, but rather a reflection of the good investment opportunities that we think will serve our pension mandate well,” CEO Deborah Orida told The Logic in an interview.

The target comes as the federal government prepares to co-host the Canada Investment Summit with PSP and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in Toronto early next week, bringing together global investors as Ottawa tries to drum up $1 trillion in investment over the next five years.

Orida said PSP has no fixed timeline for reaching the $100-billion mark because the timing of large private transactions can be difficult to predict, but that infrastructure investment will likely account for a significant share of that growth. She also pointed to the potential opening of Canadian airports to pension investment as one area where PSP can draw on its experience abroad. 

PSP has a $32-billion global infrastructure equity portfolio and is expanding across the capital structure through infrastructure debt and investment-grade private credit, she added. Last year, it also increased its allocation to Canadian public equities by two per cent. 

It’s the latest major Canadian pension manager to signal plans to put more money to work at home, as Ottawa seeks to attract both domestic and foreign capital. The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System said in April it plans to invest at least an additional $10 billion in Canada over five years. CPP Investments committed another $750 million in January to its Canadian mid-market program with Northleaf Capital Partners, bringing its cumulative commitments to more than $3 billion.

PSP had more than $75 billion invested in Canada at the end of its 2026 fiscal year and deployed more than $10 billion in the country this year. Even so, Canada accounted for only about 20 per cent of its portfolio, compared with roughly 40 per cent in the U.S., which Orida described as the world’s “broadest and deepest market” for private investments. 

That’s in spite of a trade war between the two countries that has sharply escalated in recent weeks. “We’re not abandoning the U.S. but we certainly are always watching the geopolitical environment, the impact that that has on macroeconomics, exchange rates and bond prices, and we adjust our allocations accordingly,” she said.

Orida said PSP’s relatively modest Canadian footprint reflects a broader push by pension funds over the past two decades to deliberately expand overseas. That strategy let them diversify geographically and access large private market opportunities, particularly in infrastructure and other assets that can provide stable and often inflation-protected returns. It also helped  Canadian pensions build expertise in areas like infrastructure and private credit that can now be applied domestically, she added.

Still, Orida said Canada is beginning to make progress on “making projects investable,” including through structures that other countries already use. One is asset recycling, an Australian model in which governments offer mature infrastructure assets to investors and use the proceeds to fund new projects. Another is government support that absorbs risks private capital cannot readily take, such as first-of-a-kind technology risk or commodity-price uncertainty.

Some of these opportunities will be showcased at next week’s investment summit. Orida said the initial idea for the conference grew out of discussions she had with CPP Investments CEO John Graham at The Dock in June last year, when they first discussed using the pension funds’ international networks to bring global investors to Canada. 

PSP’s role in organizing the summit, however, does not mean the pension manager is committed to investing in the projects promoted there. Orida said PSP’s investment decisions will continue to be based on whether individual opportunities meet its mandate. 

A prospectus for summit attendees, a copy of which The Logic obtained, outlines 167 projects that will be pitched to foreign investors. Opportunities include hydroelectricity, oil and gas, critical minerals, ports and data centres. 

Orida cautioned against viewing that list as the full universe of investable opportunities in Canada. She described the deal book as “one leg of a five- or six-legged stool of information,” to give global investors several ways to understand and enter the Canadian market.

For investors that believe they are under-allocated to Canada, Orida said the easiest first move may be through public markets, including companies exposed to energy, critical minerals, aerospace and defence. Investors seeking private market exposure can instead look to Canadian private equity, infrastructure and clean-technology managers.

“In this new investing regime of increased complexity and increased uncertainty and volatility, there is value or attractiveness to Canada as a stable jurisdiction,” she said.

Orida said the summit is already showing signs of success, with investors from 25 countries, including Norway, Australia and Singapore, expected in Toronto and more than 50 related events taking place around the gathering.

“To me, it’s successful if the summit is the start, not the end. It’s the catalyst for future activity that we see through deeper relationships, follow-up meetings and ultimately investments that will come,” she said.