Dividend-paying stocks compete with bonds and other fixed-income instruments for investor interest. However, investors focused on high dividends and share price gains benefit more from holding sustainable dividend payers—as long as they can avoid the risky strategies of some ETF managers looking to boost income for investors (see supplement on page 90).


Here are three ETFs that aim to provide investors with attractive yields.

BMO MSCI Emerging Markets ETF $25.05 (Toronto symbol ZEM; TSINetwork ETF Rating: Aggressive; Market Cap: $1.55 billion) tracks the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. That index includes large and medium-sized companies listed on the public markets of 26 developing countries.
Technology companies form the largest part of the portfolio at 25%, while Financials (24%), Consumer Goods (17%), Communication Services (10%), Industrials (7%), and Materials (6%) are the other key segments.

Chinese companies have the largest weight in the ETF (28%), followed by Taiwan (19%), India (17%), Korea (12%), Brazil (4.3%), Saudi Arabia (3.7%) and South Africa (3.3%).

AMPLIFY AI Powered Equity ETF $43.89 (New York symbol AIEQ) uses IBM Watson—with its machine learning, sentiment analysis and natural language processing—to select securities for the EquBot index.

The EquBot model aims to use AI to analyze data points across news, social media, industry and analyst reports, and financial statements on thousands of U.S. companies, markets and more.

The fund, launched in October 2017, has an asset base of $113.1 million and charges an MER of 0.75%.

Utilities typically struggle when interest rates are high or are increasing rapidly. The reverse is also true—they gain when rates fall. So with interest rates falling in Canada, and likely poised to fall in the U.S., the outlook for high-quality utilities is very attractive for investors seeking high dividend yields and growth prospects.

In addition, after a decade of little growth in electricity demand, U.S. power producers—or Canadian utilities with U.S. operations—are getting a huge boost from the rapid development of energy-intensive datacentres that host supercomputers used for artificial intelligence (AI).

Below we discuss two utilities-focused ETFs. The Supplement on page 89 also looks at the key characteristics of quality exchange-traded funds.

We’ve long recommended Telus as a buy for income-seeking investors. In fact, for 2025, we selected it as the #1 Income Buy for our Successful Investor newsletter. That decision was largely based on its steady cash flow and long-term commitment to twice-yearly dividend increases. For instance, the company recently announced plans to raise its annual dividend rate 3% and 8% starting 2026.


Telus’s cash flow should also continue to improve now that it has converted most of its legacy copper lines to high-speed, fibre-optic systems. At the same time, it has upgraded its wireless networks to ultrafast 5G speeds.