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True, the timing of the ad is suggestive, appearing as it is in the very week when workers are likely to notice the CPP taking a bigger bite out of their paycheques than ever before. Employer and employee contributions are rising from 4.95 per cent of pensionable earnings to 5.1 per cent, the first of several annual increases between now and 2023.

But the CPP isn’t a mutual fund: it doesn’t have to persuade Canadians to park their money with it. They have to, by law. No matter how irritated they may be at seeing more and more of their wages going to the CPP, there is no way they can withdraw from the plan, and no prospect of the increases being reversed. So why is the CPPIB paying — or rather, why are we paying — for expensive ads designed to make us feel good about all this “saving” and “investment”?

There’s no mystery where the money has gone: the CPPIB has plunged heavily into risky, illiquid investments such as private equity and public infrastructure

Sheer profligacy is certainly one possibility. Spending at the CPPIB is quite literally out of control, and has been for some years, ever since the 2006 decision to switch from passive to active management, or from simply buying every stock in the market, with the aim of doing no worse than the market averages, to picking stocks selectively in an attempt to beat the market — a task at which, year in, year out, most investment managers fail.

Successive annual reports tell the tale. In 2000, when the CPPIB was founded (previously the CPP was confined to investing any spare change in provincial bonds) it had a staff of five. The CEO was paid $310,000. Total costs were $3.7 million. By 2006, it had about 150 employees, the CEO was making over a million, and costs were $118 million: considerably more, but not wildly out of line, for a fund that by then had nearly $100 billion under management.