I have nothing but the greatest faith in Mark Carney’s economic acumen. How could one not? This guy probably has the most comprehensive financial experience of anybody on the planet: degrees in economics (including a doctorate) from Harvard and Oxford, governor of not one but two national banks, and extensive executive experience with top financial firms including Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg L.P. and Brookfield Asset Management.

And yet his Canada Strong Fund gives me pause. When he recently announced this new sovereign wealth fund, I felt I had misheard. My first question was, what wealth? Sovereign wealth funds are usually built from surplus capital accumulated from trade surpluses, natural resource royalties or excess fiscal revenue. But we don’t have any surplus capital, we have surplus debt.

Yet Canada Strong was going to be kicked of with 25 billion taxpayer dollars. This will almost certainly require additional borrowing, meaning more debt, for an investment vehicle which is largely undefined.

This is not the country’s first sovereign wealth fund. Premier Peter Lougheed set up the Alberta Heritage Fund in 1976, intended to salt away excess oil and gas royalties for the future. Successive governments began dipping into it for current expenses almost from the beginning and as a result it has only grown to $30 billion. By comparison, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, which also invests surplus petroleum revenues, now holds assets over $3 trillion. This, even though Alberta produces more oil.

In any case, both funds are designed for surplus wealth, something our federal government doesn’t have. Apparently the Canada Strong Fund will be funded by private investors, including individual Canadians, and taxpayer dollars, including from the sale of government properties.

And where is the fund to invest? According to the government, “in Canadian projects and companies driving our economic transformation,” including “projects in clean and conventional energy, critical minerals, agriculture, and infrastructure.”

Why we need a new instrument to invest alongside the private sector when we already have a number of programs that do that is puzzling. We have, for example, the Canada Infrastructure Bank which is mandated to co‑invest alongside private capital in large-scale, revenue-generating infrastructure projects. Similar entities include Export Development Canada, the Canada Growth Fund and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

So are we engaged in duplication here? And couldn’t this start-up gift of $25 billion be better invested elsewhere, like in health care or education or climate action?

Will the fund become a slush fund for corporations? Want to build a pipeline, sir, but don’t like the risk? We have some taxpayer dollars here to ease the pain. Lots of questions yet to be answered.

I trust our prime minister, our financial guru, but I admit this Canada Strong thing raises my eyebrows. I will await with interest, and some apprehension, for the curtain to be raised on the details.