Carney's Brookfield funds are in the spotlight. Here's what you need to know

Mark Carney faced tough questions over his position with Brookfield and the use of Bermuda as a tax haven. Judy Trinh explains the details.

OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s work for Brookfield Asset Management before embarking on a career in politics continues to draw heat from rival leaders in the federal election campaign.

The latest scrutiny comes after Radio-Canada reported this week that Carney co-headed a pair of green investment funds worth a combined $25 billion that were headquartered in Bermuda — a country widely viewed as a global tax haven.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Wednesday that the fund was located in Bermuda for “the sole reason of avoiding paying taxes.” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused Carney of shipping “his investments off to Bermuda to dodge his obligations to this country.”

The opposition parties did not provide evidence to support claims that Carney has used offshore tax havens to forgo paying tax on his own holdings.

Experts who spoke to The Canadian Press said that while the tax structures of global asset managers like Brookfield can be complicated, some of the proceeds from the funds in question could still flow through to Canadian pensioners and Ottawa’s coffers.

Carney himself pushed back on questions about his handling of the two funds on Wednesday, telling reporters he understands “how the world works and these structures work.”

“The structure of these funds is designed to benefit the Canadian pension funds that invest in them,” he said, naming the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan as examples.

Carney said the funds are structured to avoid paying tax multiple times before ending up in the hands of the beneficiaries, which include Canadian pensioners.

“It doesn’t avoid tax … The taxes are paid in Canada," Carney said.

The structure of global funds set up by gigantic asset managers like Brookfield is “complex,” said Daniel Tsai, business and law professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Whether the funds in question were set up in Bermuda specifically to avoid paying tax in other jurisdictions is a question for Brookfield itself, he said.

The Canadian Press reached out to Brookfield asking for clarity on the structure of the two funds but did not receive a response.

Tsai said that funds are often set up to take advantage of bilateral treaties and tax credits between nations to avoid “double taxation” — which happens when income moving among a global company’s subsidiaries is taxed at multiple points before reaching its final destination.

“You’re optimizing the income and reducing tax exposure,” he said. “You want to keep it as clean as possible.”

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Mahmood Nanji is a policy fellow at the Ivey Business School and a former associate deputy minister of finance in the Ontario government who helped to establish the province’s retirement pension plan.

He said that Canadian pension investments are largely tax-sheltered until they’re paid out to a beneficiary — at which point tax is remitted at the source as though it were income.

In this way, pensions act like registered savings accounts or other tax-deferred vehicles — investments can grow tax-free inside, but once they’re withdrawn, they count against an individual’s taxable income.

“These are average Canadians who are getting these benefits. And these are average Canadians who have to pay taxes on that,” Nanji said.

As for where those pension funds are invested, Nanji said the goal of fund managers is to ensure a certain level of returns so pensioners can get their payouts — which often means adding international investments to the mix.

But he adds that Canadian pension funds also have a global reputation for strong governance models. That, he said, would discourage fund managers from taking advantage of illicit schemes or working with asset managers that skirt tax rules in a local jurisdiction.

“The standard is pretty high in terms of how Canadian pension funds operate,” he said.

“Their job is to get the highest return possible on the investment while minimizing loss, and also at the same time complying with all of the regulations that exist around how these things are set up, including the tax obligations.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 28, 2025.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press