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Premier Jason Kenney’s plan to take Albertans’ contributions from the Canada Pension Plan and hand them to Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) could make it difficult for the province’s largest pension manager to match past returns — at least in the short term — according to a pension expert.

Alexander Dyck, a professor of finance, economic analysis and policy at the Rotman School of Management, says it’s questionable whether the influx of an estimated $40 billion — plus another $30 billion in provincial pension money Kenney has earmarked to flow into AIMCo — could be invested as profitably for retirees.

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I would be nervous about AIMCo ... almost doubling in size Rotman School of Management professor Alexander Dyck

“I would be nervous about AIMCo … almost doubling in size,” said Dyck, who has researched large pension fund performance for several years and sat on the board of the Rotman International Center for Pension Management.

“If I give you twice as much money as you had yesterday, you’re not going to be able to deploy that money and mimic the returns that you had yesterday,” he said, adding that investing in private equity, infrastructure and real estate does not necessarily scale as easily as investing in stocks.