The Background

This story starts with a filing. On July 11, 2025 - exactly 120 days after Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister on March 14, 2025 - the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner published the official appendix to Carney's Summary Statement under the Conflict of Interest Act. It's a 16-page document, publicly available on the parliamentary ethics commissioner's website, and it lists every asset Carney placed into his blind trust before taking office.

The headline number that spread quickly afterward was this: of the 567 companies in Carney's investment portfolio, only three were Canadian - meaning just 0.5% of his holdings were in Canadian companies. Opposition politicians had a field day. The optics, for a man who has spent months talking about standing up for Canada against American tariffs, were not great.

We pulled the actual PDF directly from the ethics commissioner's website and went through every single company ourselves. Here is what we found.

What the Disclosure Actually Covers

Before we dig into the numbers, one critical piece of context. The 567-company list comes from what the disclosure calls "an investment account managed by a third party in respect of which the Prime Minister did not control or direct the selection of investments." In plain English - this was a professionally managed account, not a stock-picking portfolio that Carney personally assembled.

That said, it would be reasonable to assume Carney had some general input into the overall investment philosophy - the account presumably reflected his financial situation, tax considerations, and risk tolerance - before it went into the blind trust. It is not accurate to say he had zero say over what was in there. But it is also not accurate to suggest he was sitting at a desk hand-selecting each of the 567 names on this list.

The Country Breakdown - Our Independent Count

We classified all 567 companies by their primary operational headquarters - where the company is actually run from - using legal incorporation as a tiebreaker where headquarters and incorporation differ. Two entries are worth flagging upfront: Coupang is incorporated in Delaware but operates entirely in South Korea, so we classified it as South Korea. MercadoLibre is incorporated in Delaware and listed in the US but is operationally an Argentine/Latin American company, so we classified it as Argentina. Lululemon is incorporated in Delaware but has its corporate headquarters in Vancouver - we classified it as Canada. Reasonable people could count these differently, but our methodology is consistent throughout.

Nine out of every ten companies in this portfolio - 515 out of 567 - are American. Ireland comes in second at 2.1%, which is worth noting: many of the "Irish" companies on this list are well-known American multinationals that redomiciled to Ireland for tax purposes. Accenture, Eaton, APTIV, Linde, CRH, Experian and several others are included in that Irish count. Strip out the tax-motivated incorporations and the American dominance is even more pronounced.

The 4 Canadian Companies

The most widely reported figure was three Canadian companies. We found four. The one that gets missed is Waste Connections - which redomiciled from California to Ontario, Canada in 2016 following its merger with Progressive Waste Solutions. It's legally incorporated in Canada and dual-listed on both the TSX and NYSE, though its operational headquarters is in The Woodlands, Texas. Whether you count it as Canadian or American is a legitimate debate - but by incorporation, it's a Canadian company.

What's Conspicuously Absent

This is probably the most interesting part of the story. Carney's managed portfolio includes hundreds of American banks, utilities, retailers, and tech companies - but not a single share of Canada's most prominent public companies. Not one. Here's a sample of what's missing:

Canadian banks alone make up roughly 30% of the TSX Composite index. Carney's managed portfolio holds shares in Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, US Bancorp, and several more American regional banks - but zero Canadian bank shares in the managed account.

Companies That Might Raise an Eyebrow

When you have 567 companies in a portfolio, there are bound to be some names that catch people's attention. These are some of the holdings that have generated conversation - or that we found interesting ourselves.

It is worth repeating the important caveat here - Carney did not personally select these stocks. The managed account was run by a third-party investment manager. But the portfolio did reflect his financial situation before the blind trust was established, and the ethics commissioner's office notes that the prime minister "did not control or direct the selection of investments" in this account - which implies a manager was making the calls.

The iShares ETFs - A Wrinkle Worth Mentioning

Five entries on the list are not individual stocks at all - they are iShares ETFs managed by BlackRock. Those five are:

No iShares Canada ETF. No TSX Composite fund. No S&P/TSX 60. There is ETF exposure to Japan, the UK, and emerging markets - but not Canada.

The Full Country Breakdown

The Bottom Line

The claim that Carney has just 0.5% of his portfolio invested in Canadian companies is essentially accurate - our own count puts it at 0.71%, not 0.5%, but it is in the same ballpark and the broader point stands. For a Prime Minister who has made economic nationalism a central theme of his government, the managed investment portfolio tells a different story.

Three important caveats to keep in mind as you form your own view. First - this was a third-party managed account, not a hand-picked portfolio. Second - the 0.71% is by company count, not by dollar value. We simply do not know whether the four Canadian companies represented 0.71% or 7.1% or 0.1% of the actual dollar value, because values are not disclosed. Third - the controlled assets section of the disclosure (which sits outside the 567-company managed account) includes Brookfield Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management. Both are incorporated in Canada - however it is worth noting that Brookfield Asset Management moved its operational headquarters from Toronto to New York City in December 2024, a high-profile move announced while Carney was still serving as board chair (Carney has said the formal board vote occurred after he left the chair role in January 2025). Brookfield Corporation remains headquartered in Toronto. Carney's Brookfield holdings alone were worth roughly $6.8 million US in unexercised stock options at the time of the last available 10-K filing - so his actual Canadian dollar exposure is almost certainly higher than the managed portfolio count suggests, though the primary vehicle for that exposure is now a company whose head office is in Manhattan.

With all of that said - 515 American companies versus 4 Canadian companies is a striking gap for a man currently leading trade negotiations against the United States. Make of it what you will.