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The minister didn’t approach them personally, you understand. All that happened, rather, was that Greenhill & Co, the investment bank the minister hired to find a buyer for the pipeline, approached the CPPIB on the minister’s behalf, scant days after the government’s purchase of it from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion and a few weeks after the minister had boasted publicly about all the unnamed “pension funds” that were lining up to buy it. But no pressure.

OK. But then there’s the new Canada Infrastructure Bank, with a mandate to raise private capital, mixed with $35 billion in federal funds, to finance investments in public infrastructure. And which “private” investor was among the first to be mentioned as a possible source of capital? Why yes, it was the CPP.

Well, probably doesn’t mean anything. Still: is the CPPIB really going to turn up its nose at an investment with a federal guarantee, even federal money behind it? If that means the CPP is being subsidized out of the federal budget — making investment decisions, that is, that depend on the government’s willingness to participate — well, what of it? That doesn’t mean the government is influencing it … much.

OK. But now suppose the shoe is on the other foot, and the CPP has a project in need of financing. And suppose, finding itself unable to finance it privately, it goes to the government for funds. (This is hardly a fanciful scenario: Quebec’s Caisse de Dépôt demanded, and won, funding from the federal and provincial governments for its Montreal light-rapid transit line, to the tune of $1.3 billion apiece.) Well, the minister might say, I’d be delighted to invest in your project — provided you are willing to invest in this little project of mine.

Nobody’s telling anyone what to do, mind. They can each be passed off as a purely commercial decision. And so, little by little, the CPP is brought within Finance’s sphere of influence.

But what are the odds? Relax! It probably won’t happen!