This was a closed-door, invitation-only event. The sessions stayed in the room. But when Canadian institutional investors gathered in Toronto for two days, our team made sure to be on the ground, capturing candid, unscripted insights straight from the sidelines.
Canadian institutional investors: Inside Canada East 2026
Toronto in March. Two days. Some of the most consequential pension and institutional investors in Canada — all in one room, discussing the concerns that keep allocators up at night. The 10th Annual Canada East Institutional Forum didn’t disappoint.
The agenda ran deep. On day 1, allocators tackled a private equity market still working through a liquidity backlog. The case for asset-backed specialty finance was compelling. And IMCO’s leadership delivered a geopolitical analysis that reframed how the room thought about trade flows and capital markets. Day 2 opened with a keynote from OMERS Chief Pension Officer Celine Chiovitti. From there, the agenda moved through macroeconomic strategy, fixed income positioning, sustainable investing and the ever-evolving active-versus-passive debate. The CIO Roundtable closed the second day, featuring top investment officers from across the Canadian pension landscape. It was exactly the conversation this forum was built for.
🔥 Request the agenda for Washington D.C. Institutional Forum on May 6, 2026 at District Winery
Running through all of it were two unavoidable forces: uncertainty and opportunity. Whether the topic was emerging markets, private credit or the energy infrastructure buildout being driven by artificial intelligence and U.S. onshoring alike, the room kept returning to the same tension — how do you stay disciplined when the rules keep changing? The answer, judging by the allocators in the room, is that you don’t wait for certainty. You build for resilience and move when others hesitate.
The forum also marked a milestone moment: Markets Group presented its 2026 Strategy Award — among the most recognized honors for institutional investors — to Aaron Bennett, Chief Investment Officer of the University Pension Plan, in recognition of his work building UPP’s investment strategy from the ground up into a $12.8B fund with a 10.3% net return and a fully funded surplus. Want to understand how he did it? Markets Group Deputy Editor Lauren Bailey sat down with Bennett ahead of the event for a full-length conversation on the Allocators Playbook podcast.
Aaron Bennett, CIO of University Pension Plan, with team members following the 2026 Markets Group Strategy Award presentation at the Canada East Institutional Forum in Toronto.
Markets Group Deputy Editor Lauren Bailey was boots on the ground for both days— pulling Sidelines interviews that captured key insights Canada’s top allocators gleaned from the discussions.
Straight from the Sidelines
The energy story everyone is telling — and the One Nobody Is
Andy Greene, Chief Investment Officer, TTC Pension Plan
Andy Greene came off his panel with two things on his mind: energy and humility — both are worth paying attention to, he said.
On energy, Greene pushed back gently on the AI-dominates-everything narrative. The AI tailwind for energy demand is real, he added, but it’s not the whole story. U.S. onshoring is an underappreciated driver of domestic manufacturing growth, and with it, a meaningful and still-underpriced tailwind for energy infrastructure. It’s a thread he flagged as one he intends to explore further.
Greene also offered a reminder that bull markets are quietly brutal for active managers. Benchmarks are relentless. Beating them is genuinely hard, and performance context matters as much as raw performance numbers. His message — and the one he hopes stuck — was a call for patience: measure results over long-time horizons, not last quarter’s headlines.
It’s a discipline the whole industry is wrestling with, he noted. Nobody gets a pass.
📹 Watch the full Sidelines interview with Andy Greene.
The liquidity warning every LP needs to hear
Pierre Barber, Senior Portfolio Manager, Private Assets, Canadian Medical Protective Association
Pierre Barber had one of the most important messages of the forum — a warning that every LP still modeling optimistic distribution timelines should consider: In this environment, signed isn’t closed and expected isn’t received.
“There’s obviously a big focus on liquidity,” he told Bailey. “I think we see a lot of it coming around the corner, but who knows in a very uncertain world if that’ll actually come.”
LPs who aren’t stress-testing their liquidity assumptions against a higher rate of deal failure are carrying risk they may not fully see yet.
It’s a short interview but one every Canadian institutional investor needs to watch twice.
📹 Watch the full Sidelines interview with Pierre Barber.
‘Surprisingly Optimistic’: OMERS on the economic outlook
Sandra Ramirez, Vice President, Economic Research, OMERS
If you’ve spent any time doom-scrolling headlines in 2026, Sandra Ramirez has a message for you: the room is more optimistic than news feeds.
Ramirez stepped off a panel exploring the global economic outlook and its risks with a takeaway that cut against the prevailing anxiety. Yes, there’s a lot of noise out there, she acknowledged, noting every allocator in the room is navigating a similar set of risks. But the posture she observed wasn’t paralysis — it was nimbleness.
“Everyone is seeing this volatility as a chance to make changes and maybe buy things that they couldn’t have before,” she told Bailey.
What surprised Ramirez most was the mood. Despite the headlines, the uncertainty and the macro backdrop that has rattled markets for months, the investors gathered in Toronto were ready to move. “What was surprising to me is how optimistic people are despite all the news and the headlines,” she said. “That was really hopeful.”
In a market where uncertainty has become the baseline condition, that posture is itself a competitive edge. The allocators treating volatility as signal rather than threat are the ones positioning for the next cycle — not just surviving the current one.
📹 Watch the full Sidelines interview with Sandra Ramirez.
The 10th Annual Canada East Institutional Forum was held March 9–10, 2026 at The Quay, Toronto Board of Trade Offices, Toronto, Ontario.
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