Evidence of meeting #20 for Canada-China Relations in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was investment.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
But you're not prepared to divest from the index. Are you prepared to divest from the index on that basis?
Executive Vice-President and Global Head, Public Markets, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation
Actually, we're engaging with index providers to improve what they put in the index.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
With all due respect, sir, that seems to me like getting on the wrong train and running down the corridor in the opposite direction.
Do you think your members would find it acceptable that you are, to the tune of $35 million, investing in a company that is complicit in the Uyghur genocide? You're saying, “Well, we asked the index providers to reconsider what they're doing.” You're still putting the money into it, sir. Do you think the people you're investing on behalf of would find that acceptable?
Executive Vice-President and Global Head, Public Markets, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation
I would say that there are issues linked with indexing, and we're active in tackling those issues. There are different ways of doing it. We've usually done engagement. If engagement doesn't work, there are other ways to deal with it—
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes, I think one obvious way would be to not invest in companies that are complicit in genocide, sir. Frankly, I don't know how you sleep at night with your complete inability to answer these basic questions.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes, go ahead and defend him if you want, Mr. Oliphant.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Mr. Chair, that is badgering the witness. It is not parliamentary. It is outside the rules of the standing orders of this committee—any standing committee—to badger witnesses with inappropriate comments.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Just on that point of order, I control the time and—
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Mr. Chair, on that point of order, I don't think you had given anybody else the floor.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Mr. Chair, I'd welcome the opportunity to respond to that point of order.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Your time is up.
We'll continue on. Ms. Yip, you have six minutes or less.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you to all the witnesses for coming. I know the hour is late. We're very appreciative of you coming and answering our questions.
My first question is for Mr. McLennan.
Is cryptocurrency considered to be a safe investment for Canadians?
Executive Managing Director, Total Fund Management, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
I'm not going to comment necessarily on crypto as a broad asset class. I can only speak to how Teachers' has been thinking about it in terms of our own portfolio.
We've spent a lot of time analyzing it, and for a variety of reasons, at least from an asset allocation perspective, we determined it wasn't going to be an appropriate part of the overall asset mix. We would look at it from that perspective.
Liberal
Executive Managing Director, Total Fund Management, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
That is an emerging part of the capital market space. Certainly it has some characteristics that one might think have a place in a portfolio. However, when we did the analysis and looked it from the context of what the return drivers and the risk drivers are, again from an aggregate top-down perspective, we came to the conclusion it wouldn't be suitable from an asset mix perspective.
That's not to say there couldn't be some interesting activities from more of a business perspective or from a more direct investing perspective.
Liberal
Executive Managing Director, Total Fund Management, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
The only investment we would have in the crypto space would have been our FTX investment, which would have been well publicized late last year.
Liberal
Executive Managing Director, Total Fund Management, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
Yes, there was a financial loss. I believe we've disclosed publicly that we wrote that investment down to zero.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Do you think there was enough due diligence to go into this emerging market with your investment?
Executive Managing Director, Total Fund Management, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
Look, we always strive to have the best due diligence in place. We're really disappointed when things don't turn out and when we lose money in any investment. I think we also recognize that due diligence need not be 100% fail-safe. When these issues do occur, we, as a learning organization, take it as an opportunity to improve the process and make it better for future situations.