Pensions and landmines

When I'm old, my cats and I do not want to be living on catfood purchased with landmines.

More than half of the $90 billion in assets controlled by the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board is invested in over 1800 companies, including such arms dealers as Halliburton (in whom we invested $8 million), Raytheon ($4 million), Northrop Grumman ($5.4 million) and General Electric ($323 million).

I was prepared to overlook the $8 million to Monsanto, the $19.5 million to WalMart and the more than $90 million the CPP Investment Board has invested on our behalf in the tobacco industry, but I really do have to draw the line at the $5.5 million we are giving Lockheed Martin to make more landmines and cluster bombs.

Lockheed Martin - counting some people, blowing other people up.

On April 27, 2006, the CPP Investment Board announced that it had signed a global set of Principles for Responsible Investing published by the United Nations Environment Programme Financial Initiative (UNEPFI).
You can contact CPPIB here and ask them how this will affect their policy of investing in warmongers.

Slowgirl provides a link to the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, or COAT, where you can follow the money from the CCPIB to the arms dealers and back to the politicians, and sign the petition.

And if you're wondering how your Canada Pension Plan shares are doing in Exxon or McDonald's or Nike or Dow Chem, the CCPIB site provides this handy list from March 2005.

The futures are so bright, we gotta wear shades.