Thank you for your gracious comment.  I'm not very familiar with this asset class, but your comments sparked my interest and I did some quick reading here.  If this correctly describes the Canadian trusts you are describing, i would agree that it has some very interesting features.  It seems to combine, or blend, some of the features of equities and bonds,,,allowing the investor to get higher than bond returns, without the full risk of equities.  That could be particularly attractive, as you say, for investors such as pension funds and perhaps retirees investing their own funds.

I don't know the Canadian tax laws, but it appears that the vehicle allows the penalty of double taxation to be avoided.  That would be a very large benefit, if the tax rates on corporations, and then a second tax on distributions to shareholders in Canada are particularly high.  This double taxation is a foolish idea in a capitalist system, imho, because it just creates unintended consequences, in the sense that corporations take other alternatives to avoid this double taxation.  Unfortunately, to those that react to sound bites on the news (rather than understanding the economics), something like "only the rich get dividends, so they should pay high taxes on their dividends" is very appealing.  But right now, in the US, we have lowered taxes on dividends to 15%, rather than taxing them at the higher ordinary income tax rates.  So though it is still a problem, it is less so,,,and corporations are starting to pay dividends at higher levels now.

I'm hoping to go through your diary, which looks very interesting, but I need some time to spend on it.  I started, but it requires some thought--ie. is not a quick read.  So I'm putting it off until I can spend some time with it, and absorb it.  Thanks for writing it.