Independent candidate Angela Lindow proposes $50,000 Canadian Graduate Capital Dividend funded by redeploying $777 billion in offshore-invested pension assets
TORONTO, Feb. 19, 2026 /CNW/ - For forty years, a Canadian parent wakes up, goes to work, and contributes to the national pension system. Every paycheque. Every year. They believe something simple: that this country is a ladder. That if they climb, their children will start higher.
Today, their children graduate into the most educated generation in Canadian history -- and the first one locked out of homeownership, locked out of asset-building, and increasingly locked out of the careers they trained for. One million young Canadians have disappeared from the labour force. Those who remain face a job market being reshaped by artificial intelligence, a housing market that treats them as tenants for life, and the growing certainty that the degrees they worked for may be obsolete within years.
And the money their parents saved? It exists. It is real. It is working -- building toll roads in Australia, rental developments in Korea, and infrastructure in Texas. Eighty-eight per cent of Canada's $777 billion in public pension assets are invested outside the country. The wealth that Canadian families built over decades is building other nations' futures while their own children cannot afford rent.
Angela Lindow, independent candidate for the federal riding of University–Rosedale, believes this is a broken promise -- and she has a plan to repair it.
"The country our parents built should be able to launch their children," Lindow said. "We already saved the money. Now it must save us."
Lindow's proposal, the Canadian Graduate Capital Dividend, would provide $50,000 to every eligible Canadian graduate, funded not through new taxes or government borrowing, but by redeploying a portion of Canada's public pension assets domestically. It is not a spending program. It is a rules-based, actuarially grounded, fiscally neutral capital allocation model that simultaneously addresses three of Canada's most urgent structural challenges: declining productivity growth, the underutilisation of highly educated labour, and long-term public balance-sheet sustainability.
The framework draws on the Quebec pension model, which for over six decades has successfully combined fiduciary return obligations with domestic economic development.
"The model exists. It is operational. It is Canadian," Lindow said. "If anyone says this cannot be done, it worked well enough to make them wealthy. Now it must work for the people who built the system."
Lindow is calling on all candidates and party leaders to answer a single question: what is their plan -- with a specific number and a transparent mechanism -- for the one million young Canadians who have disappeared from the labour force?
The challenge comes in direct response to Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he described Canadians as "the most educated people on earth" while referencing pension capital without proposing a mechanism to deploy it for domestic human-capital recovery.
"Before entering politics, Mr. Carney chaired one of the largest recipients of global pension capital. That was his right," Lindow said. "But when the system leaves Canadian graduates locked out of their own economy, Canadians are entitled to ask: who does the capital actually serve?"
The campaign -- built without corporate donations and powered by publicly accessible AI policy tools -- has released an interactive CGCD calculator, a real-time policy modelling system, and the full framework at lindow.ca. In University–Rosedale, home to the University of Toronto, voters now have access to a deployable economic model that combines human capital, fiscal prudence, and productivity growth in a system designed to scale from the local to the global.
"I am not asking for donations," Lindow said. "I am asking an entire generation to register, show up, and demand a clear, numerical answer from the people who govern their country. Because a country is not a pension fund. A country is a promise. And it is time we kept it."
MEDIA INQUIRIES
All media inquiries are handled by Philippa, the campaign's AI VP of Program.
In an era where political statements are routinely taken out of context and reduced to sound bites, Philippa ensures every journalist receives the same depth, accuracy, and consistency of information -- instantly, 24 hours a day, in multiple languages, with zero risk of misquotation. What she says is what Angela stands by.
Speak with Philippa: lindow.ca/philippa.html
CAMPAIGN INFORMATION
Candidate: Angela Lindow
Riding: University–Rosedale, Toronto
Election: 2026 Federal
Affiliation: Independent
Website: lindow.ca
Slogan: Not red. Not blue. Something new.
SOURCE Angela Lindow
Media contact: Angela Lindow, [email protected]
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