Pensions are extremely difficult to pitch for any sort of deal, even when it’s safe and makes sense. There is definitely some sort of back-channel relationship that led to this deal. You need to figure out how this happened, because there’s likely to be more of this sort of corrupt junk in your pension’s portfolio.
You should also question how economically benefiting from proof of stake mining has any place in any fund that purports to care about ESG (that applies to everyone!).
But your money is definitely gone.
Now, on the other hand, forcing everyone to invest in that fund 10% of their earnings, considering the huge amount of risk they are taking and the very speculative nature of their investments... that sounds like something else that would be great to challenge in courts.
What's absolutely bunkers is that no major Quebec news sites are talking about this news this morning. La Presse, Journal de Montreal, TVA, nothing. (TVA is mentioning that the crypto market is down and casually mention la Caisse investment down in the article, but it's hardly an important news) Radio-Canada did make a major investigation into this investment few weeks ago (how timely!) but has yet to update it https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/4095/caisse-depo...
People that manage expensive assets are not punished if they make bad decisions
The whole idea of a "defined benefit" pension seems insane to me. It's essentially a promise that some entity will still exist and be solvent in 40+ years (start teaching around 22, retire around 65...)
Canadian pension funds are run more akin to a private equity firm. They invest directly in growth stage deals and therefore take commensurate risks like any other private equity firm.
That means that they make bets with more asymmetric risks and balance their entire portfolio rather than staying at a specific risk band with all of their investments. They pay for professional staff commensurate with that model. A canadian pension fund's employees earn salary and bonuses comparable to a investment bank or private equity firm.
You can't necessarily look at one off investments and have to look at return over time which is generally healthy and their funding ratio, which is generally much healthier than US pension counterparts.
There is a reason the "Canadian Model" is held up as one of the ideal pension management models.
Why would this model be held up as the ideal, and by whom? Why would pensioners be better served by expensive and underperforming active management rather than more cheaply balancing risk through a pension manager picking a balance of index funds and periodically rebalancing?
Perhaps I’m missing a crucial detail unique to pensions, but it just sounds like yet more expensive financial industry snake oil to me.
FTA:
"Canada is home to some of the world’s most admired and successful public pension organizations" and "The core characteristics of the Canadian pension model, articulated in more detail in the next section, have been demonstrated to improve performance. Strong, independent governance is often cited by experts as a driver of outperformance. Inhouse investment management tends to result in improved returns after taking costs into account."
The pension funds all take a much more broadly diversified AND deeper approach than actively managed mutual funds. They are more akin to a Blackstone or Apollo.
Almost all of the top Canadian pension funds have better performance to benchmark over a 3 decade horizon including during the financial crisis, so arguably the proof is in the pudding so to speak.