Environment Committee MPs: hold Bank CEOs to account

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This Thursday, Canada’s big five bank CEOs – the world’s biggest financiers of fossil fuels – will testify in Parliament on their complicity in funding the climate crisis.

As scientists insist we step away from fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst climate impacts, Canada's big five banks (CIBC, Scotia, RBC, TD & BMO) have all continued to increase their fossil fuel financing over the past two years.

This Parliamentary hearing is a critical opportunity to put bank CEOs on trial for their climate-unfriendly actions. If we can flood their inboxes, we can demand they hold Canada’s big bank CEOs' feet to the fire, and ask the hard-hitting questions Canadians deserve answers to. Will you take one minute right now to send a message to the Environment Committee MPs, demanding they ask hard-hitting questions of the bank CEOs?

Hold Bank CEOs to account

Demand Environment Committee MPs ask Bank CEOs hard hitting questions when they testify in Parliament on their role in the climate crisis

Subject

Members of the Environment Committee,

We know that Canadian banks have some of the worst climate impacts of any financial institutions in the world, consistently topping the list of the biggest financiers of fossil fuels.

As members of the Environment Committee, you have an important responsibility to ask hard-hitting questions of the bank CEOs summoned to Parliament to testify on sustainable finance later this week.

I ask that you ask these key questions:
1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that globally we must step away from fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst climate impacts. Yet Canada's five biggest banks all rank at the very bottom of global banks when it comes to investing in sustainable energy. Why is your bank not stepping up to invest in clean energy when our very existence depends upon it?
2. Climate change places a huge financial burden on Canada’s economy, with enormous costs for evacuation, fire-fighting, and insurance in areas impacted by flooding and wildfires. Over the past two years, the Big 5 Banks (CIBC, Scotia, RBC, TD & BMO) have all increased their fossil fuel financing. From an economic point of view, how can you explain your bank’s commitment to fossil fuels which are driving runaway climate change and the climate emergency we are living through?
3. Canada’s banks have been complicit in human rights abuses. Investments in pipelines violate Indigenous rights and lead to militarized RCMP violence and campaigns of surveillance, harassment, and brutality. Investments in tar sands extraction violate Indigenous rights, cause devastating health impacts, and have led to ecocide. With legal obligations around free, prior and informed consent, how can your bank defend its record of violations of Indigenous and human rights?

By asking tough questions, we can begin to finally hold the banks accountable, and to lay the foundations for sustainable finance in Canada.

Yours sincerely,

Send to

Members of The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development at Parliament
Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland
NDP Finance Critic Don Davies
and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Julie Dabrusin

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Environment Committee MPs: hold Bank CEOs to account

Hold Bank CEOs to account

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