Trust conversions have not just been relatively benign for investors. A growing number are actually generating windfall gains.

In less than a decade, China has increased its share of global consumption of metals to 25 percent from 10 percent. That’s two-thirds of the growth in the globe’s base metals consumption and half the demand growth for steel, copper and aluminum.

All of the oil and gas producer trusts I track have one thing in common: They’ve survived some of the toughest conditions ever faced by any industry and have come out the other side in working condition.

One group of companies looks ready to profit regardless of how the details on the Democrats’ plans to overhaul the US health care system shake out: Canadian providers of health care products and services.

Canada offers two compelling opportunities for a windfall. And best of all, the primary targets are income trusts paying big dividends backed by strong businesses, investments even the most conservative can buy and hold comfortably.

The US is no longer the only market for Canadian exports, the only source of new products or the sole font of new investment. Rather, its share of all three has been steadily shrinking due to even faster growth in Canada’s trade and investment with other nations.

Whether they’re trusts or corporations, energy producers can only pay in dividends what they earn in cash flow. And that cash flow is determined by three factors: how much they produce; what it costs them to get it out of the ground; and the price that output fetches on the market.

The ability to maintain distributions after converting to a corporation is the ultimate test of strength for a trust’s underlying business. Only the exceptional have thus far been able to accomplish the feat.

Energy is Canada’s chief cash crop. But it’s far from the only natural resource the country has in abundance. At last count, Canada produced more than 60 different metals and minerals and operated more than 180 producing facilities, from peat bogs to quarries and steel mills.

Like politics, everyone these days seems to have an opinion on energy: Where the price of oil is headed, what the government should or shouldn’t be doing about it, why dependence on Middle East Oil is good or bad, why global warming does/doesn’t matter, why renewable energy is good, you name it. As investors in Canadian oil and gas producer trusts and dividend-paying corporations, it’s critical that we don’t buy into all the bull.