Building a $42,000 TFSA That Generates Passive Income
Written by Sneha Nahata at The Motley Fool Canada
Building a $42,000 Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) portfolio for generating passive income without tax worries involves investing in top Canadian dividend stocks. These TSX stocks have solid dividend payment and growth history, supported by their fundamentally strong businesses, growing earnings base, and sustainable payouts.
Moreover, TFSA investors should focus on diversifying their TFSA portfolio to spread risk and generate steady income in all market conditions. For instance, investors could consider blue-chip stocks such as Enbridge (TSX:ENB), Fortis (TSX:FTS), and Royal Bank of Canada (TSX:RY). These companies have resilient businesses, which enable them to generate stable earnings regardless of market conditions, thereby rewarding shareholders through consistent dividend increases.
Notably, energy infrastructure giant Enbridge has increased its dividend consistently for three decades. Moreover, the company aims for mid-single-digit growth in its annual dividend in the long term. Similarly, Canadian electric utility company Fortis has raised dividends for 51 consecutive years and is expected to continue growing them by 4-6% annually through 2029, driven by its expanding rate base.
Moreover, the Canadian banking giant Royal Bank of Canada has increased its dividend by about 7% annually since 2014. Its high-quality assets, strong deposit base, and operational efficiency will drive future earnings, supporting higher payouts.
Besides these top TSX dividend-paying stocks, let's look at a few more names that offer resilient payouts and attractive yields to generate tax-free passive income.
Brookfield Renewable Partners (TSX:BEP.UN) is an attractive stock for building a passive-income portfolio. Its highly diversified portfolio of renewable power assets, substantial operating capacity, and long-term, inflation-linked contracts position it well to generate solid funds from operations, which enables it to pay higher dividends.
Notably, the company has increased its distributions by at least 5% annually for the past 14 years and currently offers a high yield of 5.8%.
Brookfield Renewables is well-positioned for future growth thanks to its large development pipeline, rising demand for renewable energy, and a highly contracted portfolio with an average term of 14 years. Moreover, about 70% of its contracts are tied to inflation, supporting organic growth. In addition, its low operating costs and ongoing asset recycling efforts further strengthen its growth prospects.
Thanks to its resilient earnings base, Brookfield's management expects to deliver a total return of 12% to 15% annually in the long term, implying that the company can continue to grow its dividend at a healthy pace.
In short, its consistent dividend growth history, sustainable payouts, high yield, and visibility into future payments make it a solid investment for TFSA investors seeking steady passive income.
Telus (TSX:T) is another top pick for investors seeking dependable, long-term passive income. The telecom leader has a strong track record of rewarding shareholders. Telus has raised its quarterly dividend 27 times since 2011. Moreover, it currently offers a juicy 7.5% dividend yield.
Telus plans to grow its dividends by 3%–8% annually through 2028 while keeping a healthy payout ratio of 60–75% of free cash flow.
Notably, its ability to profitably expand its user base, low churn rate, and disciplined capital spending will support future dividend payments. Moreover, Telus is investing in network upgrades and spectrum to stay competitive and expand its 5G offering. Additionally, its focus on diversifying the revenue base and reducing costs bodes well for growth, enabling the company to consistently reward its shareholders.
The post Building a $42,000 TFSA That Generates Passive Income appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada.
More reading
Made in Canada: 5 Homegrown Stocks Ready for the 'Buy Local' Revolution [PREMIUM PICKS]
Market Volatility Toolkit
Best Canadian Stocks to Buy in 2025
Beginner Investors: 4 Top Canadian Stocks to Buy for 2025
5 Years From Now, You'll Probably Wish You Grabbed These Stocks
Subscribe to Motley Fool Canada on YouTube
Fool contributor Sneha Nahata has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Renewable Partners, Enbridge, Fortis, and TELUS. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
2025

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Mark Carney's conversion from eco warrior to oil and gas champion
Once considered the Bank of England's greenest-ever governor, Mark Carney has seemingly undergone a Damascene conversion. During his time at Threadneedle Street, he called on the world to leave 80pc of oil and gas in the ground. But now, as Canada's new prime minister, he wants to pump as much as he can to protect the country's economy from Donald Trump's trade war. Canada is going to become an energy powerhouse, Carney told reporters last week. And he didn't mean just in renewables. 'When I talk about being an energy superpower, I mean in both clean and conventional energies,' he said. 'And yes, that does mean oil and gas. 'It means using our oil and gas here in Canada to displace imports wherever possible, particularly from the United States. 'It makes no sense to be sending that money south of the border or across the ocean, so yes, it also means more oil and gas exports – without question.' This embedded content is not available in your region. Credit: CTV news These comments are remarkable given they come from a man who repeatedly called for an end to drilling during his tenure as Bank governor between 2013 and 2020. One such call came in a 2015 speech at Lloyds of London, when he described 80pc of the world's known fossil fuel reserves as 'unburnable'. He said: 'The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no incentive to fix.' Given Carney's influence, his dramatic warnings inevitably shaped UK government decision-making at the time, as he championed the cause of net zero to a total of five different energy secretaries. Claire Perry, who served as Tory energy minister between 2017 and 2018, recalls: 'Mark had a huge impact on global climate issues. 'He created all the momentum around carbon markets and energy transition investment.' Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader who served as energy secretary in the 2012-15 coalition government, echoes this. 'Mark Carney had a real understanding of where the wind was blowing globally on energy, and recognised the risks to the economy of over-reliance on fossil fuels,' he says. After leaving the Bank, Carney also wrote a book called Value(s): An Economist's Guide to Everything That Matters, where he advocated powerfully for the introduction of carbon taxes. 'One of the most important initiatives is carbon pricing,' he wrote. 'The best approach is a revenue-neutral, progressive carbon tax.' The UK has since faithfully implemented that plan with a raft of carbon levies on consumers and industry, which many argue has left Britain burdened by some of the highest energy prices in the world. Jump ahead to 2025, however, and Carney – now a Canadian politician instead of a British bureaucrat – has adopted a wildly different approach. Immediately after succeeding Justin Trudeau as prime minister and winning Canada's election in April, he wasted no time in signing a directive cancelling Canada's existing carbon tax and confirming rebates for many of those who had paid it. He's now gone even further by pledging to build oil and gas pipelines, LNG export terminals, and to relax the emissions restrictions that have angered many of Canada's biggest fossil fuels producers. And his plans don't stop there. 'All this is not enough just to make Canada an energy superpower,' he said. 'It's not enough to build our full potential. 'It's not enough to truly get incomes growing across the country. We can do much more. We are going to be very, very ambitious. Build, big, build, bold.' Carney, who also previously ran the Bank of Canada, reconciles such ambitions with simultaneous pledges on green technologies that could theoretically reduce emissions, such as carbon capture and storage. But these will take years or decades to implement. According to experts, Carney's conversation has been driven by the economy, as oil and gas accounted for up to 7.5pc of the country's GDP in recent years. In 2023, crude oil exports alone were valued at $124bn, representing 16pc of Canada's total exports. That figure rises to 20pc if gas exports are included. What's more, Canada has about 171bn barrels of oil in recoverable reserves – far greater than America's 44bn. It means Canada can rely on oil for decades, whereas US production is expected to peak in the next few years. However, most of that oil and gas comes from one province, Alberta. That region alone holds billions of dollars, although its voters blame Carney's and Trudeau's Liberal party for climate restrictions that curbed economic growth. A recent opinion piece for Canada's Globe and Mail by Preston Manning, a retired politician who helped found Canada's conservative movement, warned that his 5m fellow Albertans had had enough of rule from Ottawa and were considering secession. Some go further. Alberta, they point out, shares a border with the US and perhaps has more in common with the likes of Texas than Toronto. These growing tensions have created a political opportunity for Alberta's conservative leaders. Less than 24 hours after Carney's election, Danielle Smith, Alberta's premier, introduced a bill to the province's legislature, making it much easier for a citizens' movement to trigger an independence referendum. The new rules slash the number of citizens' signatures required to trigger a referendum, from 600,000 to 177,000 and give petitioners 120 days to collect them rather than the previous 90. She has done so to pile pressure on Carney, handing him a list of nine energy-related federal laws she wants overhauled to unleash more drilling in Alberta. 'We cannot keep the over $9 trillion worth of oil wealth we have in the ground,' she said. 'Mark Carney has acknowledged that the federal government must address key policy barriers. 'That must include abandoning the unconstitutional oil and gas production cap, repealing the tanker ban, and scrapping Canada's net-zero power regulations. 'I believe in a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, but we cannot persist with the status quo. I won't allow that status quo to continue.' Smith is also exploiting the tensions generated by Donald Trump, the US president, whose talk of making Canada the 51st state resonates with some Albertans. This embedded content is not available in your region. She sees her demands as a test of the scale of Carney's commitment to oil and gas: 'Given his past actions, I've asked myself what version of Mark Carney are we going to get. 'Will we get the pragmatic Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney? Or will we get the environmental extremist keep-it-in-the-ground Mark Carney? 'I don't know the answer yet. He's saying some of the right things, but we need to see meaningful action.' Such tensions have been around for a long time. What Canada's politicians say and do are often very different things, says Brendan Long, a leading energy analyst and Canadian, whose new book Energy Shocks, compares the politics of energy in the UK, US and Canada. He points out that Canada has a long history of electing prime ministers with stridently green manifestos who then preside over huge increases in oil and gas production. 'While previous premier Justin Trudeau had explicitly anti-fossil fuel agendas, domestic Canadian oil and gas production grew dramatically under his leadership,' he said. 'Today, Canada is ranked fourth in terms of global oil production at 5.8m barrels of oil per day and growing.' By contrast, Long points out that the UK is the only large global oil producer to have deliberately cut its production in recent years, signalling the long-standing net-zero legacy left by Carney. 'It means that while Canada's oil and gas industry is ramping up production under Carney, the UK remains aligned with the anti-oil and gas ideology he promoted when he was the governor of the Bank of England,' he says. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hurdles, slumps and slowdowns: FP Video looks at the Canadian economy
This week FP Video takes a close look at the state of the economy, from interprovincial trade barriers, stagnant job growth with higher unemployment numbers among young Canadians, and how investors can brace for a likely unavoidable recession. Marc Lee, senior economist at Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, talks with Financial Post's Larysa Harapyn about how politicians have vastly overstated the problem of interprovincial trade barriers and explains what they should be focusing on. Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed Canada, breaks down the May job numbers. Ed Devlin, founder and chief executive of Devlin Capital, talks about how slow economic growth has made Canadian bonds an attractive investment option. Unpacking the Bank of Canada's interest rate hold: FP video Should Canada Post stop delivering letters? FP Video looks at what's ahead for the postal service and economy
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
The week in stocks: Dollarama still cashing in and silver gets buffed up
Every weekend, the Financial Post breaks down the most interesting developments in this week's world of investing, from top performers to surprising analyst calls and stocks you should have on your radar. Here's this week's edition. Shares of Dollarama Inc. (DOL) have been unstoppable since the early days of the pandemic when inflation took off and price-shocked consumers turned to dollar stores for better prices on everyday household items. Since mid-March 2020, when COVID hit, the stock is up 438 per cent, including a 10 per cent leap on Wednesday when the discount retailer released earnings that beat analysts' estimates. The report showed that consumers have continued to flock to Dollarama stores despite inflation slowing. Earnings particulars included a 27 per cent increase in profit and an 8.2 per cent increase in sales in the first quarter. Still, the company's chief financial officer said the Canadian consumer appears 'fragile' and that could pose a challenge for the Montreal-based chain. The question now: Where does Dollarama go from here? 'We believe DOL (Dollarama) has a clear pathway to deliver value for shareholders in the short, medium and long term,' Irene Nattel, an analyst with RBC Dominion Securities, said in a note post-earnings. She cited tailwinds for the stock, including a target to increase the number of stores in Canada to 2,200 by 2034, 'long-term growth opportunity in Latin America' and an agreement to purchase Australia-based discount chain The Reject Shop. 'Guidance points to another solid year of performance tempered by caution around (the) evolution of consumer spending and probable weakening economic backdrop as tariffs take a toll on economic activity,' Nattel said. Analysts who follow the stock raised their price targets following the company's earnings release and Nattel has a target price of $207, up from $198 at the end of May, according to Bloomberg. Dollarama closed Friday at $193.74. Silver has caught the eye of analysts at National Bank of Canada. 'We have an optimistic outlook on the price of silver, which supports, but isn't the only reason, we are also optimistic about silver-focused companies,' analyst Alex Terentiew and associate Marc Ferrari said in a note. Silver hasn't posted the gains gold has since investors flocked to bullion to offset the potential inflationary effects of Donald Trump's trade war. Still, silver is up 12 per cent versus 24 per cent for gold since Trump's election win. National Bank's research team said it has expanded the number of 'silver focused' stocks it tracks, adding Coeur Mining Inc. (CDE) and Endeavour Silver Corp. (EDR) to their coverage, which also includes First Majestic Silver Corp. (AG), Hecla Mining Co. (HL) and Highlander Silver Corp. (HSLV). Terentiew and Ferrari see Endeavour 'as the most undervalued and highest growth silver producer in our coverage, although it's also the company with the most to prove as it ramps up production at its newest mine, Terronera (in Mexico), and also integrates the newly acquired Kolpa mine (in Peru) into its portfolio.' Their target price for Endeavour is $9. The stock closed Friday at $6.55. Several oil companies appear to have plans for share buybacks this year, according to RBC Capital Markets. Highlights from the RBC Global Power, Energy and Infrastructure Conference earlier this month pointed to share buybacks coming down the pipeline from a slew of major oilpatch companies. This includes Suncor Energy Inc. (SU), which is on tap to distribute nearly 100 per cent of its excess free funds flow (post dividends) to share repurchases,' Greg Pardy, head of global energy research at RBC Dominion Securities, said in a note following the conference. Other companies where buybacks or dividend increases are expected include Vermilion Energy Inc. (VET), Athabasca Oil Corp. (ATH) and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNQ). In CNRL's case, the company said it will direct 60 per cent of free cash flow (minus capital and dividends) to buybacks and 40 per cent to reduce net debt. All these stocks have an outperform rating from Pardy and crew. Here are their price targets: Suncor: $65. Suncor closed Friday at $55.67. Vermilion: $14. Vermilion closed Friday at $11.19. Athabasca: $6.50. Athbasca closed Friday at $6.08. CNRL: $64. CNRL closed Friday at $45.96. Donald Trump has been in the driver's seat as far as markets are concerned since his inauguration on Jan. 20. Some stocks, such as Elon Musk's Telsa Inc., have been on a roller-coaster the entire time, subject to the president's whims. With his term nearing the five-month mark, the Financial Post started to wonder which large Canadian companies have come out on top in the early stages of Trump's second stint in the Oval Office. We screened for publicly listed companies on the S&P/TSX Composite index with a market capitalization of at least $20 billion and here's what we got for the Top 20 based on price return from Jan. 20 to June 11. For reference, the S&P/TSX composite index has returned 5.3 per cent during the same period. Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (WPM): 43.5% Kinross Gold Corp. (K): 34.4% Dollarama Inc. (DOL): 30.9% Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. (AEM): 29.1% George Weston Ltd. (WN): 23.5% Loblaw Cos. Ltd. (L): 23.4% Franco-Nevada Corp. (FNV): 21.5% Intact Financial Corp. (IFC): 20.8 Brookfield Renewable Partners LP (BEP-U): 20.2% Power Corp. (POW): 18.9% Barrick Mining Corp. (ABX): 18.1% Cameco Corp. (CCO): 17.5% Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD): 17.5% Metro Inc. (MRU): 16.5% Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. (FFH): 16.4% Thomson Reuters Corp. (TRI): 13.7% GFL Environmental Inc. subordinate (GFL): 13.4% RB Global Inc. (RBA): 12.1% Constellation Software Inc. (CSU): 12.1% Hydro One Ltd. (H): 11.6% The week in stocks: Lululemon gets stretched and is Tesla a TACO trade candidate? Being an armchair hockey critic is like judging investment performance from the sidelines • Email: gmvsuhanic@ Are you an investor looking for stock ideas and market insight? Sign up for the weekly FP Investor Newsletter here to get the best of the Financial Post's investing news, analysis and expert commentary, straight to your inbox. Sign in to access your portfolio