"Canada’s pension funds, those paragons of risk aversion."

???

Ok maybe there was some truth to that decades ago, but Canada's major public sector pension funds are HARDLY risk-averse in recent years!  Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan and Caisse de Depot et Placement in particular have been extremely aggressive in their investments and risk-taking.

They have also been reasonable activist-investors for some time, though arguably not quite as much as some of the big private equity funds.  However since the private sector equity funds have shown little interest in touching Bombardier with a 10-foot pole it shouldn't be too big of a surprise that it was the public sector pension funds that stepped up to demand change.