My bank offered me a $30K line of credit with 3% up front over 10 months. I'm paying $900. What should I do with that $30K to invest over 10 months yet write-off that $900? Do you have any non-deductible debt? (No.) If so, pay it off. Interest is only deductible only for things that earn capital gains. So bonds and GICs make no sense; buy stocks. Buy if you're in the stock market for only 10 months, then you're speculating, not investing. Look for things that are cheap, but buy two or three things totalling $30K--and pray it works out. He won't say which geographies to buy, but diversify to lower risk.
An ETF that's been around forever, trading in US dollars. He doesn't know if this will go up or down, but his question is: What is your time horizon? This will do well in the long run.
He likes socially responsible ETFs, but not this one. This is not a true ESG ETF. Rather, this is a proxy for Canadian large-caps, like bank and big corporate stocks that have governance rules like equal-opportunity hiring. For a true ESG product, find one that's actively (not passively) managed. It's worth the higher management fee.
Another S&P index ETF, also excellent. It depends on how you want to play the US market and what you think will happen to the US dollar. Hedge if you think the USD will hurt you. This is steady and good.
A low-cost mutual fund? The DFA (Dimensional Fund Advisors) family, which are cheap and structured in cost like ETFs (very low); and are exposed across many geographies. DFA is the world leader in factor-based investing. He uses DFA a fair bit.