WHILE CANADIANS WORRY about climate risk and the political direction of the United States, their retirement savings are quietly riding a very different bet. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is financing—and profiting from—Donald Trump’s renewed push to expand fossil fuels and accelerate artificial intelligence development in the US. It has partnered with private equity firms to acquire American oil and gas producers and financed AI companies like Elon Musk’s xAI.
The CPPIB is an independent investment-management organization responsible for managing the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Canada’s largest public pension. It was created by an act of Parliament, in 1997, and is accountable to Canada’s Parliament. The CPPIB’s primary responsibility is to ensure the CPP maximizes its long-term revenues with minimal risk.
The CPPIB has a policy on sustainable investing, updated in May 2025, that recognizes climate change as a serious risk and encourages adapting its investment strategy to evolving decarbonization pathways and investing “for a whole economy transition required by climate change.” However, the same policy indicates the CPPIB’s belief “that accelerating the global energy transition requires a sophisticated, long-term approach rather than blanket divestment.”
In response to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledges to fast-track major infrastructure projects, CPPIB chief executive officer John Graham stated, in September 2025, that the CPPIB was keen to invest in major projects, particularly in the energy sector. As reported by the Financial Post, Graham singled out fossil fuel pipelines, saying, “Here in Canada, we like pipelines. We like oil and gas pipelines.”
Its recent investments in the US fossil fuel and AI sectors are a growing concern to pension fund watchdogs, which argue that, at a time when the US is actively waging a trade war against Canada and destabilizing the climate, the CPPIB is providing capital to allow it to happen.