The Common Wealth Fund

Summary

The Common Wealth Fund is Common Wealth Canada's proposal for a permanent, professionally-managed Canadian sovereign wealth fund that captures the country's resource and publicly-created rents, invests them, and distributes the returns to every citizen as a universal dividend. Each Canadian adult would hold one non-transferable share entitling them to annual payments.

Scale

The proposal targets a fund of about $2 trillion in assets — placing it among the world's largest — generating an estimated $60–90 billion per year in distributable returns (assuming 6–9% returns with ~50% reinvested to preserve principal). That implies a dividend rising from roughly $2,600/year toward larger sums over time, or lump sums up to ~$42,000 per adult after a decade.

Funding Sources

Crucially, the fund is capitalised by capturing economic rents — not by taxing earned income or private wealth. Sources include natural-resource rents (oil sands, critical minerals, forestry), public-property use fees (spectrum auctions, Crown-land leases, hydro royalties), digital/AI levies, windfall-profit and financial-transaction taxes, and corporate equity stakes. This rent-capture framing is what ties it to the Georgist tradition and the land-rent-funds-government thesis.

Governance

The fund would operate at arm's-length under a fiduciary board, with a cooperative federal–provincial structure respecting provincial control over resources — independent provincial funds under a shared administrator. It would invest in a globally diversified portfolio and use a multi-year moving average to smooth dividend volatility, echoing the Alaska Permanent Fund.

Precedents and Foundations

The proposal cites the Alaska Permanent Fund, Norway's Government Pension Fund, and Canadian funds (Alberta Heritage, Quebec Generations, NL Future Fund), and the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents rather than consume them). It builds intellectually on resource-rent dividends, Peter Barnes's cap-and-dividend, Guy Standing's basic income, and Joseph Stiglitz's argument that broad ownership generates "buy-in to the economic system." It updates Milton Friedman's "helicopter money" and James Meade's property-owning democracy for an age of automation.

Significance

The Fund is the redistributive half of Common Wealth Canada's programme — where the LVT work shows how much rent exists, the Fund proposes the institution to collect and share it as a citizen's dividend.

See Also

• Common Wealth Canada · Citizen's Dividend · Resource rent dividends work · Alaska Permanent Fund · Natural Common Wealth and Economic Rent in Canada

Sources

1. Common Wealth Canada, The Common Wealth Fund: Investing for Canada's Future. commonwealth.ca/fund