Est. MMXXVI · A sovereign wealth fund for Canada
Underneath the finance, a sovereign wealth fund is a claim on energy and property rights, held for a century rather than a quarter. Canada’s Wealth Sovereign Fund is an initiative to hold real estate property and digital assets on exactly that footing: protecting the digital and real estate assets modern Canada runs on, so that what the country already owns compounds instead of leaks.
Canada already owns the energy and the land. The fund’s job is to stop leasing them back.
An initiative of Semple Ventures. Not an offering of securities.
Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta
The opening ledger
Most national wealth conversations begin with what to buy. This one begins with what Canada already holds, and how little of it is held as an asset.
About nine in ten acres are Crown land.
Federal or provincial, the ground itself is already held by the public. What is missing is a vehicle that treats it as an asset with a return rather than a line in a budget.
Real estate propertyOil, gas, hydro, uranium, potash, critical minerals.
Much of it leaves raw and comes back as somebody else’s margin. A royalty collected and spent the same year is income. A royalty held is wealth.
Energy & property rightsCanada is among the largest hydro producers on earth.
Firm, clean, cold-climate power is exactly what the world’s compute wants and cannot find. Curtailed megawatts are a stranded asset until someone sites a load on them.
Digital assetsData, compute and bearer assets have no home yet.
The one asset class with no Crown precedent. Held on Canadian power, under Canadian custody and Canadian law, it is the piece that finances the other three.
Digital assetsThe mandate
Real estate, energy and digital assets fail as separate bets. Held together on property rights, each protects the others: the land hosts the power, the power runs the ledger, and the ledger finances the land.
Holding 01
Land titles · Torrens registry · Expropriation Acts · Ground leases
Income-producing property on titled land, held through cycles rather than flipped through them. The land hosts the power; the power runs the ledger.
Holding 02
Mineral tenure · Surface rights · Royalties · Power purchase agreements
Royalty streams, generation and the rights beneath the surface: the base every sovereign fund in history has been built on, from Alberta to Norway.
Holding 03
Qualified custody · Proof of reserves · Data residency · Key management
Compute, data centres and bearer digital assets, sited on Canadian power and held under Canadian custody. The newest asset class and the least-claimed.
A sovereign fund is not a budget. It is the part of the country that is not for sale this year.
The Charter · Article 01
Parliament Hill, Ottawa
Across Canada
West to east, the way it actually sits: power, minerals, ports and land in every province and territory. The fund’s map is the country’s map.
Hydro, LNG and the Pacific ports. Site C adds a generation’s worth of firm power.
Oil sands, gas, and the one Canadian precedent for a sovereign fund: the Heritage Fund, 1976.
Uranium, potash and hydro: the inputs every grid and every field on earth needs.
Nuclear baseload, critical minerals in the Ring of Fire, and the country’s deepest real estate market.
Hydro at scale, and the Caisse: a fund with a development mandate since 1965.
Offshore oil, Churchill Falls, and critical-minerals tenure the world is only beginning to price.
Precedents
Six funds, described from public record. Two of them started in the same year from the same kind of revenue; the difference today is a rule.
1990
Created in 1990 and first funded in 1996 from petroleum revenue, the Norwegian fund is now the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world and owns a share of most listed companies on earth. A fixed spending rule keeps the government to the expected real return, so the principal is never spent.
1976
Established in 1976 under Peter Lougheed to save a share of resource royalties. Regular deposits stopped in the late 1980s and the fund stayed small for decades, which is the cautionary half of the precedent. The province has since set out a plan to grow it substantially by 2050.
1965
Founded in 1965 with a double mandate: return on deposits and the economic development of Québec. It holds real estate, infrastructure and private companies alongside public markets, and has been doing so for sixty years.
1997
Not a sovereign wealth fund in the strict sense, since it manages pension contributions rather than resource revenue, but it is the closest federal precedent: arm’s length since 1997, global, and a large direct holder of real estate and infrastructure.
1974
Two funds, 1974 and 1981, from a country with no natural resources at all. Singapore built sovereign wealth from land, ports and a disciplined state balance sheet, which is the counter-example to the idea that only oil countries get to have one.
1976
Established in 1976, the same year as Alberta’s fund, from the same kind of revenue. The two started together; one kept depositing. The difference between them today is the clearest argument for a rule that cannot be suspended in a good year.
The charter
A sovereign wealth fund is, before anything else, a set of rules that outlive the people who wrote them. Norway’s works because the spending rule cannot be suspended in a good year. Alberta’s stalled because deposits could be. The charter is written so the second thing cannot happen to the first.
The mandate is narrow on purpose. Real estate property on titled land, energy and the property rights beneath it, and digital assets held on Canadian power under Canadian custody. Each holding is insured through licensed Canadian brokers before it is counted, because an asset that is not protected is a liability with a good story.
Nothing on this page is an offer. The fund is an initiative of Semple Ventures: the charter is published first, the governance second, and any instrument last, under the regulators who oversee it.
Assets are bought to be kept. A sale funds nothing but a better asset.
A fixed distribution rule, set before the first dollar, in the Norwegian manner.
Every digital holding sits on Canadian power and titled Canadian land.
Governance under the Santiago Principles. No minister, mayor or founder can direct a purchase.
Digital and real estate assets are insured through licensed Canadian brokers and held under qualified Canadian custody.
Aurora borealis, Yellowknife
Register
Property owners, energy and royalty holders, data-centre operators, institutions and public bodies. A short note on what you hold, or what you want to see held, is enough. You will hear back from a person.