Stop Fossil Fuel Financing Campaign

Calling for 3 key changes to require Canada’s banks, insurance companies and mutual fund companies to disclose their investments in fossil-fuel and other polluting companies, and to require them to clean up their investments.

According to research by the Rainforest Action Network and other organizations, 3 of Canada’s Big 5 Banks are among the top 12 banks worldwide financing the fossil-fuel industry, and the other 2 are in the top 25 banks worldwide. Click here to see their report.

It was difficult for them to find out this information, and Canada’s Big Banks are denying it is accurate. The information also doesn’t include other Canadian financial institutions, such as insurance companies, that support the industry, nor does it cover other major industries that create the pollution that is causing the climate crisis.

At the international meeting on the climate crisis, called COP26 (click here to see the conference website), an alliance of banks and other financial institutions led by former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney announced a plan that will let them continue to hide their investments in fossil fuels and other polluting industries for years, and will do little to stop those investments. Click here to see a critical analysis of the Carney’s and the banks’ flawed plan.

Canada’s Big Banks and other financial institutions wouldn’t exist without Canadians’ money, but they are allowed to keep this information secret, and most other information about how they use your money.

Please join the call for 3 key changes that would solve these problems, and empower financial consumers and investors to ensure their money is used to support sustainable, job-creating businesses:

 

  1. Require banks, insurance, trust and mutual fund companies, and other financial institutions, to disclose their lending, investments and insurance for the fossil fuel industry, and all other major carbon-producing industries (coal, heavy manufacturing), by company as recommended by the international Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD);
  2. Add the Equator Principles and other real sustainability rules to Canada’s and Ontario’s laws to require banks and other financial institutions to lend, invest and provide insurance only to actually sustainable big businesses, and;
  3. Establish a Financial Consumer Organization (FCO) using this innovative method that has been proven effective in the U.S., and an Individual Investor Organization (IIO) using the same method. Together these groups will exponentially increase the information available to financial institution customers and individual investors about how financial institutions use and invest their money, and will also exponentially increase the power of financial consumers and individual investors to have a say in the use of their money, and to push for actually responsible, sustainable investing.

 

Please send your letter now using the form on this page, and please help spread the word by Liking and Tweeting this page.

Also, if you want to push your bank or other financial institution to stop lending and investing in the fossil-fuel industry, or if you want to switch banks, click here to see a list of groups that can help you do this, and also join the campaigns on the websites of Greenpeace Canada and LeadNow.

You can also click here to sign DWatch’s petition on Change.org that calls for these same key changes.