The head of a Dutch pension fund says he’s using his appearance at this week’s investment summit to meet with Canadian cabinet ministers and secure final approvals for a plan to lower the tax hit for institutional investors.

Bouwinvest CEO Mark Siezen told iPolitics on Monday that his invitation to the summit in Toronto indicates there’s interest in the proposal and he’s hopeful that he can provide the “final little nudge” that leads to an agreement.

“Maybe I’m naive, but I’m definitely optimistic that the messages that we’ve been consistently bringing across over the last 12 months have reached the right people at he right place who can make those kinds of decisions,” he said in an interview.

“The fact that a somewhat like this is being organized does make you optimistic. You realize these people are very serious about creating an investment environment that’s going to be attractive for international capital to come in and and be successful and to contribute.”

Bouwinvest, which focuses primarily on real estate and oversees $17.8 billion Euros in assets, is proposing that Canada and the Netherlands agree to mutually eliminate taxes on investments made by pension funds from their respective countries.

The company has already invested in housing projects in Metro Vancouver but Siezen said Canada could become a more attractive market if it treated the firm like a domestic institutional investor.

READ MORE: Bouwinvest CEO ‘bullish’ on prospect of Canada-Netherlands tax deal

Investments made by Canadian pension plans are exempted from income taxes as long as they remain part of the plan.

For foreign institutional investors, Ottawa hits them with a 25 per cent withholding tax, though this depends on the location of the pension fund as some countries have specific tax treaties with Canada that lower this rate.

Canada and the Netherlands have an active tax treaty that lowers the dividend tax rate to 5 or 10 per cent depending on the ownership structure.

A Canadian government source told iPolitics in June that officials were assessing the proposal from Bouwinvest but it wasn’t at a serious stage, and nothing imminent was expected.

The office of Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment prior to publication on Monday.

The Dutch Embassy in Canada also didn’t respond prior to deadline. Members of the embassy attended previous Bouwinvest meetings with Canadian officials.

Siezen has now visited Canada three times over the past 12 months to secure support for the plan, which he’s suggested could act as a template for other countries as well.

This week’s summit is a gathering of some of the largest investors in the world with a focus on the opportunities to invest in Canada. The federal government prepared a document detailing 167 projects that are seeking investors that was distributed to attendees.

It wasn’t intended to act as a public-facing document but it was obtained by iPolitics and other outlets.

No physical real estate projects are listed, and the document is mostly made up of mining, energy and data projects.

Given his firm’s focus on real estate, Seizen said his invitation to the summit is a “great sign” of interest in his tax proposal, which could act as a major selling point for other investors in attendance.

“If they weren’t interested, and if they thought this is not very interesting or not very important, then we probably wouldn’t have been invited,” he said.

“Even though we’re real estate investors specifically, and  if you look at the names that are here — whether from the U.S. and from Australia and from other parts of Europe and the Middle East — these are the big guys, right? And a lot of that money is pension fund money, and a lot of it will be looking for equal treatment.”

More to come…