The Canadian institutional buy-side, in primary numbers.

The follow-up promised in the family-office research roundup landed faster than expected because the Canadian Top-Three pension publications had already shipped: CPP Investments closed fiscal 2026 on March 31, 2026 (press release May 21, 2026), Ontario Teachers’ closed calendar 2025 (press release March 10, 2026), and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec reported its 2025 calendar performance (page dated May 6, 2026). The Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security 2023 cycle is the canonical household-wealth backdrop for a Canadian buy-side reader; it released October 29, 2024.

This piece reads all four together. The intent is a clean picture of where the Canadian institutional posture sits and the wealth substrate underneath it, sourced from publications a reader can verify.

The Canadian Top-Three, in headline numbers.

Three observations on the table.

Benchmark-relative underperformance is common across the cohort. All three underperformed their published benchmarks in their most recent reporting period. CPP Investments and OTPP point to the same cause in their press releases: heavy concentration in large-cap technology and communication services in the public benchmarks, particularly the AI-tied names, that diversified institutional portfolios are intentionally less exposed to. CPP Investments writes the framing plainly: “Significant concentration in public equities, with relatively heavier exposure to large-cap technology and communication services companies largely tied to artificial intelligence, were the principal drivers of benchmark portfolio performance in fiscal 2026.”^[1]

Long-horizon value-add is harder to read than a single year’s gap. CPP Investments published its 10-year value-add as +0.7% per annum net of costs.^[1] OTPP frames its 2025 negative value-add as $12.0 billion in dollar terms; its 10-year annualized return of 6.8% on a 9.2% since-inception number is the longer-horizon read.^[2] CDPQ’s 10-year fund return of 7.2% versus a 10-year benchmark of 6.9% works out to +0.3% per annum, lower-magnitude than CPP Investments’ but in the same direction.^[3]

Asset-mix differences matter. OTPP’s 2025 asset mix shows public equity at 18%, private equity at 19%, venture growth at 6%, fixed income at 23%, inflation-sensitive at 20%, real assets at 23% (10% real estate, 13% infrastructure), credit at 14%, and absolute-return strategies at 9%.^[2] CPP Investments’ fiscal 2026 asset class composition is in the annual report; the press release narrative points to public equities (particularly US, in IT and communication services in H1) and real assets (energy and infrastructure) as the period’s drivers.^[1] CDPQ does not publish a public mix on its performance page, but the sub-page links go through it; the headline narrative attributes the 2025 result primarily to public markets.^[3]

What the OTPP asset-class breakdown actually shows.

The OTPP table is the cleanest of the three for cross-asset-class read. Private equity returned -5.3% versus a 23.7%-equivalent benchmark in 2024 and 18.0% benchmark in 2025; venture growth returned 30.2% (vs benchmark 18.5%); commodities 27.0%; real estate -3.1%; infrastructure 1.8%.^[2]

Several signals an allocator can use:

• Venture growth was a 2025 winner. OTPP’s 30.2% on venture growth is unusual for a calendar year that the family-office surveys described as cautious; it included Anthropic Series F and StackAdapt as named participations.^[2]
• Private equity disappointed at the headline level. OTPP’s -5.3% reflects what the CEO described as “challenging sector headwinds” and “disciplined year-end valuation adjustments.”^[2] This is consistent with the J.P. Morgan 2026 GFO observation that family offices viewing inflation as primary risk tilt heavily to alternatives; the OTPP data say the experienced allocator is also marking the asset honestly.
• Infrastructure was below benchmark. OTPP infrastructure 1.8% vs benchmark 7.8%. The CPP Investments press release flags infrastructure more favourably, calling it a meaningful FY2026 contributor.^[1] The two read different periods (CPP fiscal 2026 ends March 31, OTPP calendar 2025) and may also reflect portfolio mix; the divergence is worth tracking.

Where this leaves the household substrate.

The Statistics Canada SFS 2023 result is the central data point: median Canadian family net worth was $519,700 in 2023.^[4] Underneath that median, the SFS surfaces the structural reality of Canadian household wealth.

For families with the major income earner aged 55 to 64 (nearing retirement):

• Own a principal residence AND have an employer-sponsored pension plan: median net worth $1.4 million.
• Own home, no employer pension: $914,000.
• Have employer pension, do not own a home: $359,000.
• Neither home nor employer pension: $11,900.

The 117× gap between the lowest and highest groups inside the same age band is the household-wealth signal that matters for any Canadian buy-side publication. The institutional Top-Three exists alongside this distribution; the family-office readership that TheBuySide is for is mostly drawn from the top quartile of the top quartile of that distribution.

For families with the major income earner under 35:

• Real median net worth +179% from 2019, reaching $159,100 in 2023.^[4]
• Young homeowners gained $142,800 to reach $457,100.
• Young renters with no employer pension reached $27,000 (up from $10,500).

The intergenerational wealth-transfer story that the UBS and RBC plus Campden surveys spend pages on has a household-wealth substrate that is moving fast. The SFS sample is too thin to give a representative read of the very top, but the trends in the lower-stratum data still matter for the family-office conversation. Statistics Canada is explicit about its top-end limitation: “the sample size is insufficient to have a representative sample of economic families with very high wealth. Therefore, measures like ‘the share of wealth held by the top 1%’ will be understated in this data source.”^[4]

What the Canadian-specific RBC plus Campden cut actually says.

The RBC plus Campden Wealth 2025 North America Family Office Report is the publication that most directly speaks to the same audience as TheBuySide. Its North American sample includes 141 family offices, “the vast majority from the U.S.,” with average wealth USD 2.0 billion.^[5]

The Canadian-specific reads from that report are the ones to lean on:

• Expected 2025 returns average 5%, down from 11% the prior year.
• 15% of respondents anticipate a negative outcome (vs 1% in 2024).
• Primary objectives: improve liquidity (48%), de-risk portfolios (33%); majority believe cash will offer best 12-month return.
• 69% have a succession plan in place (up from 53% prior year).
• 47% expect transition to next generation in the coming decade; 22% in five years.
• Private market participation 88%; 29% of average portfolio (down from 30%).
• AI: 29% use generative AI for investment reporting, 30% for research.^[5]

The report does not break out Canada-only allocator results in the public press release, and the methodology note in the press release (“the vast majority from the U.S.”) is honest about what the data can support. Canadian-only inferences from this report are extrapolations and should be framed as such.

CPP Investments’ own framing of the moment.

Two CPP Investments observations from the fiscal 2026 press release are worth carrying forward as standing context for any Canadian-pension reader in the coming year.

Cost discipline. Operating expense ratio of 23.1 basis points, below the prior year (26.1) and the five-year average (26.5). Net investments managed per employee grew from $269 million in fiscal 2022 to $364 million in fiscal 2026, a 8% growth per year.^[1] Whatever one thinks of value-add results, the cost discipline is on the record and improving.

Long-term sustainability. The Office of the Chief Actuary’s December 2025 triennial review reaffirmed sustainability of both base and additional CPP at the legislated contribution rates, assuming a base CPP 4.05% real return over the 75-year projection following December 31, 2024 (additional CPP 3.53%). Federal and provincial-territorial governments proposed a reduction in base CPP contribution rates from 9.9% to 9.5%, with CPP Investments noting that investment income has come in approximately $80 billion higher than expected over the three years since December 31, 2021.^[1]

The latter is one of the few public Canadian pension data points that materially affects ordinary Canadians’ near-term cash flows, and it is worth flagging that the policy lever was pulled because the investment result outperformed actuarial assumption, not in spite of it.

What this column will track next.

The Top-Three coverage in this piece is the entry point, not the boundary. The Big-Eight Canadian institutional pension cohort (CPP Investments, OTPP, CDPQ, plus BCI, OMERS, HOOPP, PSP Investments, AIMCo) gets a separate primer series with one Manager Watch profile per institution. The first of those, CPP Investments, is already in the archive; OTPP follows in the next two weeks.

Alongside the pensions, the column will surface the larger Canadian multi-family-office and asset-manager universe (Prime Quadrant, Mawer, Letko Brosseau, PH&N, Polar Asset Management, Picton Mahoney, and others) as the research-spine registry fills in. Each fund or firm covered will land first as a structural Manager Watch primer and then as a deeper piece when there is a specific publication to read.

Comments, corrections, and pointers to coverage worth folding in at [email protected].

Sources

1. CPP Investments, CPP Investments Net Assets Total $793.3 Billion at 2026 Fiscal Year End, press release, Toronto, 21 May 2026. https://www.cppinvestments.com/newsroom/cpp-investments-net-assets-total-793-3-billion-at-2026-fiscal-year-end/. Saved as cppib-f2026-net-assets-press-2026-05-29.md in the research library under pensions/2026/.
2. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Ontario Teachers’ announces positive 2025 results, press release, Toronto, 10 March 2026. https://www.otpp.com/en-ca/about-us/news-and-insights/2026/ontario-teachers-announces-positive-2025-results/. Saved as otpp-2025-results-press-2026-05-29.md.
3. La Caisse / CDPQ, Performance: Generating sustainable value, performance page, results as at 31 December 2025. https://www.cdpq.com/en/performance. Saved as cdpq-2025-performance-2026-05-29.md.
4. Statistics Canada, The Daily — Survey of Financial Security, 2023, released 29 October 2024. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241029/dq241029a-eng.htm. Saved as statcan-sfs-2023-daily-2026-05-29.md under macro/2024/.
5. Campden Wealth and RBC Wealth Management, 2025 RBC and Campden Wealth Report: North American family offices adapt to uncertainty and embrace AI, innovation, press release, Toronto and Minneapolis, 16 October 2025. https://www.campdenwealth.com/press/2025-rbc-and-campden-wealth-report-north-american-family-offices-adapt-uncertainty-and. Previously saved under family-office/2025/.