Carney will launch a Sovereign Wealth Fund to take Canada’s economy away from the US

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said on Monday that his country will establish a series of currencies similar to those used by major oil traders such as Norway to invest as he wants to make Canada’s economy less dependent on the United States.

Known as a private equity fund, it will focus on investing in Canadian infrastructure and will be operated as a private company. Canadians will also be able to invest in this fund.

Sovereign wealth funds are large pots of investment money that are often independently regulated, although they sometimes receive broad guidance from governments about where to put their money.

In building one of them, Canada is following the lead of other countries, among them the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.

“This will be the Canadian Government’s fund, but most importantly, it will be the people’s fund, it will be your fund,” said Mr. Carney told reporters in Ottawa. “A lot of countries that are blessed with natural resources, like Norway, have it. Canada doesn’t have it yet.”

Mr. Carney linked its creation to his plans for major infrastructure projects such as pipelines, ports, new nuclear power generation and high-speed rail. They are aimed at strengthening the economy in light of President Trump’s trade war with Canada.

“For the first time in the history of Canada,” said Mr. Carney, “Canadians will not only contribute to the realization of these projects, they will directly benefit from their return.”

He said that its investment will be done in collaboration with investors of private companies and other funds.

With an initial infusion of $25 billion — about $18 billion — Canada’s new fund will be a fraction of Norway’s, which at $2 billion is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

It will also vary in its source of income. Norway deposits all government oil revenue into its own account. But in Canada, underground natural resources are owned by the provinces, and they collect and keep the royalties paid to the oil companies.

Alberta, the center of Canada’s oil and gas industry, established a sovereign wealth fund in 1976. But over the next decade, the province stopped transferring any oil payments to the fund and governments began withdrawing money from it. The Alberta fund held about $32 billion at the end of last year.

Although Mr. Carney said the fund would focus on investing in Canada, but did not provide specifics. He also did not provide details about the source of the initial fund of 25 billion Canadian dollars. The fund is expected to grow by retaining a large portion of the profits from its investments, officials said.

Mr. Carney, a former central banker and investment executive, has been on a global tour aiming to attract 1 trillion Canadian dollars, about $730 billion, in investment to Canada over the course of a decade. As part of that effort, he will host a meeting of investors and executives in September.

So far, Qatar, India and the United Arab Emirates have made broad commitments to invest in Canada.

A recent report by the Royal Bank of Canada found that foreign investment in Canada reached $100 billion, about $73 billion, last year. The bank said, it was a big change from a decade ago, when more than $1 trillion of investment money left the country.

“Canada is increasingly attracting the attention of global investors and companies looking to rebalance their portfolios amid global uncertainty,” the report said.

Mr. Carney made his announcement standing between two trains on display at the science and technology museum in Ottawa. He used them to revive the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the first transportation link to unite Canada, involving both private and public financing. In the 1870s, the government gave railroad promoters more than 25 million Canadian dollars, 25 million hectares of land and huge tax breaks.

“As we are faced at the time with economic stress and threats to our sovereignty from our neighbor to the south, Canadians choose to build,” said Mr. Carney. “And the Canadian Pacific Railway became the connective tissue of the new world.”

After the reporter reminded the prime minister that the awarding of the railway contract also caused a political scandal, Mr. Carney said the government will do things differently today.

“We also rely on private companies to build and run these businesses,” he said. “But at the same time, we have learned from our past.”