All-equity mutual funds net fees will, on average, return more than 5¼%. (Should be about 7-8% on average). That said, that comes with a lot of volatility (value fluctuations) and you can expect sometime in the next 50 years to have a year that's down as much as 50%, but over the same 50 years it will outperform any GIC.

They're still a terrible product, though. An ETF will do the same, but be worth about 3-4× as much after 50 years due to mutual fund fees eating most of the compound gains.

Anyway, the ethics of mutual funds are why I quit the finance industry before even really getting started in it. I did financial analytics as a co-op student for one of the major banks in the mutual funds group and had the skills and connections to make a career in finance, but I couldn't stomach making a career working on financial products that are predatory.