Today, Shift released its annual Canadian Pension Climate Report Card, an independent benchmark for evaluating the quality, depth and credibility of climate policies for 11 of Canada’s largest pension managers.

This second edition finds that despite incremental progress, Canadian pension funds remain off track, especially compared to international peers. Far more work is needed to ensure Canadian pension managers fulfill their fiduciary duty to invest in plan members’ long-term interests and protect Canadians’ retirement security in a pathway aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C.

Today, Shift released its inaugural Canadian Pension Climate Report Card, which reveals that Canada’s major pension funds are not on track to protect pensions from the worsening climate crisis or to align their portfolios with a safe climate future. 

New analysis finds 80 Canadian pension managers with 124 different roles at 76 fossil fuel companies, raising critical beneficiary questions about fiduciary duty and pension administrators’ conflicts of interest on climate-related investment decisions. The report from Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health reveals the deep entanglement between the fossil fuel industry and directors, trustees and investment managers at Canada’s largest public pension funds.

100 faculty and staff from Queen’s University, the University of Guelph (UofG) and the University of Toronto (UofT) are calling on the University Pension Plan (UPP) to exclude fossil fuels from its portfolio and adopt an industry-leading climate policy.