Richmond Coun. Kelly Greene tried to convince her fellow council members the city’s investments shouldn’t be supporting the fossil fuel industry in light of its climate emergency declaration.
Reviewing the third-quarter finances of the city on Tuesday afternoon, she put forward a motion to have staff review its investment portfolios with RBC, TD Bank and CIBC.
Because council has declared a climate emergency, Greene said the city is “betting against itself” by allowing its money to be invested in banks that are underwriting fossil-fuel infrastructure – without this, the projects would not be built.
“We are betting that fossil fuel investments will be financially successful which will mean that we will have failed to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050,” she explained after the meeting. That is the timeframe specified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to keep the planet from warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius.
If the planet is kept below the 1.5 degrees, it will mean “fossil fuel investments will have a bad return,” she added.
Almost half of the city’s $1.26 billion in investments is with chartered banks. About $70 million (8.44 per cent of total investments) is invested in RBC, $41 million in TD Bank (4.97 per cent) and $20 million (2.4 per cent) in CIBC.
Staff clarified that investments follow the community charter and the city’s own investment policy, adding that funds are diversified to ensure the preservation of capital.
Coun. Alexa Loo argued against the motion to review investments and pointed out staff had clarified the money was put into “ethical investments.”
“It seems to me, before we make ourselves into climate martyrs here, that we still want to have buses riding on our roads and those are going to use fossil fuels for the short term, so we might as well be investing same as everyone else is investing instead of putting in a whole lot of work that’s going to achieve nothing,” she said.
Coun. Bill McNulty said that, before throwing the baby out with the bathwater, he would like to have the “total picture” of all 14 institutions where the city has invested taxpayers’ money, to see if there are “skeletons” in any of them.
“I’d like the motion to be proactive and come up with principles,” he added.
Coun. Chak Au argued against the review, saying the “rate of return should be our major consideration.”
The motion failed on a tie 4-4 vote (Coun. Linda McPhail was not at the meeting.)
