Oil Sands Divestment, along with a coalition of pension plan members and concerned organizations, is calling for the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) to divest all fossil fuel holdings by the end of the 2022 calendar year.
BCI manages most of the public sector pension plans in BC totalling around $153 billion. This includes the BC’s teachers, nurses, and firefighters’ pension plans. This money, in part, comes out of plan members’ salaries and it is likely that by investing in fossil fuels BCI is not meeting its fiduciary duty to their clients. In fact, the BC Public Sector Pension Plans Act mandates that BCI has a fiduciary duty to invest in the best financial interests of the plan members. However, a financial analysis carried out by Corporate Knights shows that by not divesting from fossil fuels in 2010 BCI may have lost $17,876 per plan member [1].
Similar analyses were conducted using data from Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, California Public Employees’ Retirement System, and the State of Maryland, consequently, they all found the same thing; pension fund investments in fossil fuels are losing beneficiaries money.
Additionally, by investing in fossil fuels BCI is using beneficiaries’ money to fuel the climate crisis. BCI does not make all its investments public so the total it has invested in the fossil fuel industry is unknown. Nonetheless from the available investment inventory, BCI has at least $2 billion CAN invested in this risky industry and the total value could be several billion more [2]. As the world leads towards shifting away from this harmful industry, and towards renewable energy, investments in the fossil fuel industry are becoming increasingly risky.
For more evidence of the financial risk fossil fuel investments pose, click here.
To join the campaign and for more resources, click here.
To determine if your pension is managed by BCI and under what conditions, click here.
Sources:
[1] Based on a loss of almost $16 billion, and 690,000 plan members as of March 31 2021.