"THE DARK SIDE OF YOUR CANADA PENSION PLAN"
(The Ottawa Citizen, November 4, 2006)

"Killing people is wrong.
Killing the planet is wrong.
It should follow naturally that investing in killing is also wrong."
(Dylan Penner, Act for the Earth)

***

BELOW: A 2-part article on the nature of global north investment funds, and
the profits they reap for investors from companies that contribute to and
cause grave human rights violations.

RIGHTS ACTION COMMENTARY:
Readers are encouraged to ask to see the full profiles of companies that
their funds are invested in.

It is not a far leap to recall that European countries and the
soon-to-become USA built and grew their economies in the 1600s - 1800s, in
significant part based on the slave trade and slavery and based on the
annihilation or exploitation of Indigenous peoples in the Americas (and
elsewhere).

Today, European and North American countries continue to build and grow our
economies at the expense of exploitation and suffering of majority
populations in countries in the global south.

Our unjust enrichment is due to the very workings of the unjust and unequal
global economic system; in general, our unjust enrichment is not due to
'mistakes' or 'errors'.

In the on-going struggles for global justice, equality and
enviro-well-being, one of the greatest challenges is for investors (private
and public), banks and companies to be help criminally and civilly
accountable for human rights violations and enviro-damage and destruction
caused by their investments, financial activities and company actions.

WHAT TO DO & TO MAKE TAX-CHARITABLE DONATIONS:
. for development, enviro- and human rights organizations in Guatemala,
Honduras, Chiapas, El Salvador, Haiti ., see bottom.

To get on-off this elist: info@rightsaction.org.

===

THE DARK SIDE OF YOUR CANADA PENSION PLAN
Nine years ago reforms steered the fund built up by CPP contributions into
the stock market. Now your retirement nest egg includes nuclear-arms makers,
top polluters and more than $350M in tobacco stocks.

(By Kelly Patterson, The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, November 04, 2006)

If you chip in to the Canada Pension Plan every week, then your investment
portfolio includes 15 of the world's top 20 weapons-makers, tobacco giants
such as Rothmans and Imperial Tobacco, and nine of the top 10 air polluters
in the U.S.

It also includes companies whose operations have been linked to allegations
of human-rights abuses in Amnesty International reports. Reforms in 1997
shifted the focus of the reserve fund built up by CPP contributions away
from government bonds, and steered it into the more lucrative stock market,
in anticipation of the baby boomers' retirement needs.

It's been a successful strategy, one that -- along with higher contributions
-- has helped boost the pension fund out of financial crisis. Now the fund
is a stock-market juggernaut, with nearly $60 billion invested in publicly
traded companies.

But under the law that created it, the CPP Investment Board, which oversees
the fund, has an "overriding duty" to bring in bumper returns; as a result,
it does not exclude firms on ethical grounds.

Critics say that, in the race for revenues, the fund has sunk millions into
firms that are embroiled in war, environmental devastation and human-rights
abuses. "The legislation is too rigid," says NDP MP Pat Martin, adding that
many Canadians would be shocked to know what their pension fund holds.

Mr. Martin, along with a growing number of environmental groups and
human-rights watchdogs, is calling for changes to the act that governs the
fund.

"Killing people is wrong. Killing the planet is wrong. It should follow
naturally that investing in killing is also wrong," says Dylan Penner of the
Toronto-based environmental group Act for the Earth. Mr. Penner says
working Canadians should not be forced to invest their pension savings in
weapons-makers such as nuclear-arms manufacturer Northrop Grumman Corp. and
Star Wars contractor Lockheed-Martin, or Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., now in a 50-50
joint venture with a firm owned by the savage military regime of Burma.

His organization is part of a coalition of groups, including Friends of the
Earth, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, InterPares and the church group
KAIROS, that is pushing for changes to the rules that govern the fund's
investments.

The fund has also come under fire from the Canadian Medical Association for
investing almost $370 million in the tobacco industry. Last year the CMA
called on Canadians to ask the government why it allows "pension
contributions, your money, to be invested in an industry that kills more
than 45,000 Canadians every year."

Ian Dale, spokesman for the CPP Investment Board, says the act that set up
the board was designed to protect its investments from political
interference. The fund only shuts companies out if their activities would
be illegal in Canada, he says. For example, the fund does not invest in
landmine manufacturers because Canada has signed an international ban on the
weapons. Similarly, it does not invest in companies involved in cloning or
forced labour.

The only other factor the board considers is financial performance. "We do
take into account (social and environmental) issues but we do so ... only
from a risk-return perspective."

The fund does not hand-pick its public holdings, which account for more than
90 per cent of its equities; instead, it is a "passive investor," buying a
one- to two-per-cent stake in some 2,600 stocks carried on the indices of
major stock exchanges, such Dow Jones and the Toronto Stock Exchange, and
giving them roughly the same weighting.

Last year, the board unveiled a "responsible investing policy," under which
it commits to making social, environmental and corporate-governance issues a
key factor in its investment decisions, and in its interactions with
companies as a shareholder -- but only as they affect the board's mission to
protect its investments from risks such as lawsuits or consumer boycotts.

"Our investment mission is to help ensure the future pensions of 16 million
Canadians," he says.

The move was hailed as groundbreaking by responsible-investing experts. "We
really commend the CPPIB for its efforts," says Eugene Ellmen of the
Toronto-based Social Investment Organization, an association of more than
400 Canadian members with an interest in corporate social responsibility.
The board "is one of the leaders in the pension industry in Canada," he
says, noting that it was one of the first signatories to the UN Principles
for Responsible Investment, which were unveiled this year.

But Pat Martin says such initiatives don't go nearly far enough, especially
given the fund's burgeoning importance on the stock market.

The CPP fund is the 22nd-largest national pension fund in the world; with
bonds, private equities, infrastructure investments and real estate as well
as public equities, it is worth almost $100 billion -- a figure that is
expected to rise to $250 billion within 10 years. "This fund will soon be
almost as big as Canada's national budget. It will have the ability to make
or break whole industries, sectors and regions of the country."

The sheer size of the fund also means it would be relatively painless to
weed out those stocks most Canadians would not want, he argues. Tobacco
firms, for example, account for only nine of the fund's 2,600 public
holdings.

He tabled a parliamentary motion in 2004 to change the pension fund's rules,
but it was not adopted. He plans to reintroduce it this session. Changes to
the act require the consent of the federal government and two-thirds of the
nine participating provinces (Quebec has its own pension fund).

The issue promises to heat up as the board forges ahead this year with plans
to become a more active investor, beefing up the handpicked portion of the
fund, which now makes up less than 10 per cent of the reserve -- stocks in
private companies, infrastructure projects and real estate.

In October the board embarked on its first major infrastructure venture,
spending $1.05 billion for a piece of British water giant AWG Plc. The move
has drawn fire from groups such as the Council of Canadians, which objected
that Canadians' pension fund shouldn't be used to fuel the privatization of
a vital basic need.

The group also argued that privatization in Britain led to sharp hikes in
water prices and mass disconnections in the 1990s. Last year, water
companies ranked as the worst polluters in Britain for violations such as
illegal sewage disposal, according to Ralph Nader's group, Public Citizen.

But Mr. Dale says the CPP board researched its investment thoroughly, and is
confident AWG has a "sound environmental track record." He also notes that
the British Office of Water Regulation has attributed price hikes to
upgrades and the expansion of water systems.

He says the board believes environmental, social and corporate-governance
factors affect a company's performance, and will study those issues closely
as it selects stocks.

Meanwhile, it has been doing everything in its power to ensure the companies
in which it invests observe high standards, he says. In its responsible
investing policy, the fund pledged to push the publicly traded companies in
which it invests to observe high standards through "quiet diplomacy," and by
voting as a shareholder at annual meetings.

It also helps fund research on the financial impact of social, environmental
and corporate governance issues, and participates in coalitions of
like-minded fund managers, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project, which
rates the climate-change efforts of more than 900 companies worldwide.

But some say the board's latest efforts amount to a feeble effort at damage
control. "My feeling is that (the board) has probably been embarrassed into
taking a position on socially responsible investment, and to date I see no
evidence of this affecting its investment decisions, although this might
change," says Jack Quarter, a professor at the University of Toronto who is
heading a major international research project on the socially responsible
investment of union pension funds.

Pat Martin scoffs at the key strategy in the board's policy -- quiet
diplomacy with the company. "So they shake their heads and go tut-tut-tut
now and then over some of their investments ... or maybe have a coffee with
the directors and say, 'Please be more responsible' Come on ... "They've got
to say, 'We're going to sell our shares in your crappy company until you
elevate your standards.'"

To date, the board has not screened out or divested from a single stock
because of social or environmental troubles. But there are several cases
where critics say it should, if only to protect returns. Pat Martin cites
the example of tobacco firms, which have faced a series of
multimillion-dollar lawsuits in recent years.

This fall a U.S. court gave the green light to what could be the biggest
such case yet -- a class-action lawsuit for as much as $200 billion against
the makers of "light" cigarettes for allegedly marketing light cigarettes as
a healthier alternative (the tobacco-makers are appealing the class-action
designation). Named in the suit are two tobacco companies in which the CPP
fund holds a total of $31 million worth of stocks.

Ivanhoe Mines is another example, says Beatrice Olivastri of Friends of the
Earth. Vancouver-based Ivanhoe is in a 50-50 joint copper-mining venture
with a firm owned by the pariah state of Burma, notorious for human-rights
abuses such as forced labour and torture.

In 2005, the regime collected $5 million U.S. in royalties from the mine's
operations; the state-owned mining company's share of the profit was $10
million U.S. The CPP fund held $32 million worth of stock in Ivanhoe as of
March 31, 2006, the last date for which the fund's portfolio profile is
available.

Ivanhoe says it's a model corporate citizen, bringing jobs and top-notch
workplace standards to a desperately poor country, adding that its
environmental management, workplace safety and occupational health programs
are inspected every year by an independent, Australia-based analyst.

But Ms. Olivastri says there's no way of knowing for sure that Ivanhoe's
venture has not benefitted indirectly from forced labour, in its access to
infrastructure, for example.

"Ivanhoe ... has monitored operations since inception," replies Williamson.
"Ivanhoe also has satisfied itself that the (mine) is not using
infrastructure built by involuntary labour ... nobody has ever produced any
evidence to the contrary."

But Ms. Olivastri says rights groups only have Ivanhoe's word for it,
arguing that, in a country like Burma, international human-rights groups
have no way of verifying the firm's claims. For that reason, she argues, the
board can't be certain the venture would pass the "legal-in-Canada" test.
Nor should it pass the cost-benefit test, she argues, pointing out that last
year, U.S. sanctions against Burma threatened to hinder the importing of
mining equipment.

Ian Dale says the CPP board did approach Ivanhoe about the sanctions, adding
that "our discussions will be ongoing." But Ms. Olivastri says that, above
and beyond the ethical concerns, Ivanhoe's venture presents "an incredible
investment risk. What if people rise up and attack the facilities? What if
there's a civil war down the line?"

- - -

What would happen if the Canada Pension Plan fund screened its stocks?

Ian Dale says any change to the fund's mandate to protect returns could
spell disaster for the nest egg it has built up for retirees. "We think
screening increases risk and reduces return" because it limits choice, he
explains. "There may be some exceptions, but (ethical funds) tend to
underperform," agrees David Bruce, a senior investment adviser at
ScotiaMcLeod in Toronto.

Mr. Bruce says screening out stocks or whole sectors limits an investor's
choice; and the screening itself adds to the cost of managing the fund.

Christopher Geczy of the prestigious U.S.-based Wharton School of business
co-authored a study of ethical mutual funds last year. The report found that
portfolios limited to ethical funds that were also tailored to an investor's
preferences, such as rapid-growth stocks, can be expected to lag
significantly behind portfolios of their conventional counterparts -- as
much as 40 per cent over 10 years.

He did find that ethical market index funds -- those that simply track a
large array of acceptable stocks in the market -- delivered returns
comparable to those of conventional market index funds.

"That was a shocking result," recalls Mr. Geczy. "The difference was only
about five basis points per month." But even that, he cautions, can add up
to a 20-per-cent gap over 30 years -- "and that's the minimum difference."

"That's nonsense," says Jack Quarter of the University of Toronto. "There's
quite a large literature that shows screening doesn't affect performance in
an adverse way," says Mr. Quarter, whose three-year, $900,000 project on
pension funds and responsible investing involves seven universities in
Canada, the U.S., and Britain.

He says a 2003 comprehensive review of more than 50 studies on the question
found it pays off to invest in corporate virtue.

"The California state pension fund (CalPERS) is one of the largest state
pension funds in the world. They are very aggressive in terms of screening,
and they do very well financially."

CalPERS shocked the business community in 2002 by deciding to ban entire
countries from its portfolio, recalls Tessa Hebb, an Oxford University
professor and pension-fund expert who is involved in Mr. Quarter's project.

Based on factors such as political stability, labour practices and
transparency, CalPERS shut out businesses with dealings in 12 "emerging
markets," including China, Russia and Thailand. Since then, it has also
excluded businesses involved in Sudan, saying companies may be "unwittingly
furthering or condoning the egregious human-rights violations in Sudan."

Similarly, Norway's $200-billion national pension fund excludes companies
that it sees as complicit in human-rights abuses, environmental violations
or armed conflict. The fund has shut out 18 companies so far, from Wal-Mart
to Boeing.

In the year that ended in December 2005, the fund's stock portfolio
outperformed standard benchmarks, posting a 22.4-per-cent rate of return,
according to British-based Mercer Investment Consulting. "By and large, the
vast majority of studies show (socially responsible) companies perform
better than those that ignore the new reality of the market," says Michael
Jantzi, founder of the Toronto-based Jantzi Social Index, a selection of 60
companies rated as having high corporate standards.

He applauds the CPP fund for committing to taking social, environmental and
governance issues into account. "If you don't look at these issues, you put
yourself at risk," he warns, recalling how the Canadian mining firm
Manhattan Minerals ignored local opposition to a proposed mine in Peru,
until tensions became so high that it was forced to abandon the plan.
Similarly, he says, "How can you look at an oil and gas company or a
utilities company without taking climate change into account?"

Mr. Jantzi warns that even the most rip-roaring "sin stocks" can be
vulnerable. He gives the example of tobacco, which has brought bumper
returns in recent years. But he warns there are long-term risks to consider.
"Jurisdiction after jurisdiction has banned public smoking. Who would have
thought, for example, that Ireland would ever ban public smoking? And yet
they did."

YOUR PORTFOLIO AT A GLANCE: Among the Canadian Pension Plan Reserve Fund's
stock market investments are weapons-makers, cigarette producers, top air
polluters and firms whose activities have been linked to allegations of
human-rights abuses.

NUCLEAR ARMS
Northrop Grumman (U.S.) Develops, maintains nuclear arms - $44 million.
Lockheed Martin (U.S.) Produces cluster weapons and munitions coated with
depleted uranium, a radioactive and toxic material - $27 million.
EADS (Netherlands) Involved in joint venture to produce nuclear missiles -
$26 million.
BAE Systems PLC (UK) Involved in a joint venture to produce nuclear missiles
- $24 million.
Finmeccanica (Italy) Involved in joint venture to produce nuclear missiles -
$18 million.

HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS
Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (Cdn) Involved in a 50-50 joint venture with firm owned
by pariah state of Burma - $32 million.
Glamis Gold (Cdn) Local opposition to Guatemalan mine led to shootings, car
bomb last year - $63 million.
Anvil Mining Ltd. (Cdn) Military court in Congo wants three ex-staff
charged for complicity in war crimes; firm denies charges - $4 million.

TOBACCO MANUFACTURERS
Altria Group (U.S.) $196 million
Imperial Tobacco (UK) $28 million
Rothmans Inc. (Cdn) $27 million
British American Tobacco Plc. (UK) $49 million
Japan Tobacco Inc. (Japan) $26 million
Altadis (U.S.) $15 million
Gallaher Group (UK) $15 million
Loews Corp. (U.S.) $6 million
Swedish Match (Sweden) $6 million

TOP U.S. AIR POLLUTERS **
Exxon-Mobil (U.S.) $500 million
General Electric (U.S.) $364 million
ConocoPhillips (U.S.) $126 million
E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. (U.S.) $44 million
Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (U.S.) $31 million
Alcoa Inc. (U.S.) $24 million
Ford Motor Co. (U.S.) $14 million
Tyson Foods (U.S.) $8 million
Eastman Kodak (U.S.) $6 million

** Holdings as of March 31, 2006 the last available public record **

C The Ottawa Citizen 2006

===

"VOTING FOR CHANGE"
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has committed to 'responsible
investing' -- so why does it vote against so many shareholder proposals
aimed at getting companies to clean up their acts?

(By Kelly Patterson, The Ottawa Citizen, Sunday, November 05, 2006)

Part two of a series on the Canada Pension Plan. Yesterday: Nine years ago
reforms steered the fund built by CPP contributions into the stock market.
Now your retirement nest egg includes nuclear-arms makers, top polluters and
more than $350M in tobacco stocks.

Should ExxonMobil look more closely at its impact on the environment? Should
Dow Chemical take more steps to prevent industrial disasters? Should
Monsanto be more transparent about its political contributions?

On behalf of the reserve fund built up by some 16 million Canadians through
their Canada Pension Plan contributions, the CPP Investment Board said No to
these and scores of other environmental, social and human-rights proposals
this year, drawing fire from such groups as Amnesty International and the
Sierra Club.

The proposals were put forward by shareholders at the annual meetings of
companies in which the fund voted as an investor. The investment board's
decisions came despite a pledge last year to use its clout as a shareholder
to ensure the firms in which it invests strive for high social,
environmental and corporate-governance standards.

Now worth almost $100 billion, the CPP reserve is a major player on the
global market, where it is the 22nd-largest national pension fund in the
world, with shares in some 2,600 publicly traded companies, as well as bonds
and other holdings.

Proxy voting, in which the board, through an intermediary, supports or
opposes proposals at the annual meetings of the companies in which it
invests, is a central part of the fund's fledgling responsible-investing
policy, which was widely praised by ethical-investment experts.

But a review of the fund's voting record for 2005-6 shows it backed
management more than 80 per cent of the time, on a total of nearly 12,400
agenda items.

It opposed proposals involving social or human-rights issues more than 65
per cent of the time; as for issues related to health and the environment,
it voted against almost 80 per cent of the proposals. In total, it
supported 20 per cent of the proposals related to health, environmental
human-rights and social issues.

By contrast, the BC Investment Management Corporation, which handles more
than $76 billion in pension funds, trusts and other assets for that
province's public sector, supported 46 per cent of the social and
environmental proposals it has voted on so far this year.

"The CPPIB appears to consistently oppose resolutions in favour of ...
labour standards, reporting of political contributions and reporting on
corporate environmental impacts," says Dylan Penner of Act for the Earth, a
Toronto-based environmental group. His organization, along with such groups
as Friends of the Earth, InterPares and Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada,
has been pushing the fund to do more to ensure its portfolio reflects strong
ethical values.

Among other controversial votes, the board opposed:

- Shareholder proposals on social and environmental issues at three
different companies -- Dow Chemical, Chevron and Nortel -- that were
endorsed by Amnesty International as addressing serious human-rights
concerns;
- Proposals that ExxonMobil report on the environmental impact of its
activities, and that the company make its political contributions more
transparent;
- Proposals at Dow Chemical and E.I. DuPont de Nemours to consider
anti-terrorism measures such as moving potentially hazardous operations away
from highly populated centres, and to do a report on ways to prevent their
genetically modified crops from contaminating traditional crops;
- A resolution that U.S. weapons-maker Lockheed-Martin disclose workplace
environmental and health policies related to its production of depleted
uranium, a radioactive and chemically toxic material used to coat some U.S.
army munitions.

Ian Dale of the CPP Investment Board says the board voted against these and
other proposals because they either duplicated existing information, were
too costly, too broad in scope or simply not useful to shareholders.

But as part of its responsible investing policy, the fund is firmly
committed to supporting "the reasonable disclosure of information related to
(environmental, social and governance) factors" and "the adoption of ethical
policies," he says.

The ultimate goal, the board specifies, is to respect its mandate to
safeguard its investments, which could suffer from the consequences of poor
corporate behaviour, such as lawsuits, consumer boycotts and regulatory
fines.

"This is a leading-edge activity in Canada," says Mr. Dale, noting that the
fund was one of a handful asked to help the UN draft its Principles on
Responsible Investing, which were launched in April.

This year, the fund backed a variety of social and environmental proposals,
such as a proposal for ConocoPhillips to report on damage from oil drilling,
and for Power Corp. to draft a human-rights report related to its operations
in China.

It also supported a proposal endorsed by Amnesty International for Alcan to
conduct an independent study of the impact of a controversial project in
India. While the proposal was defeated, broad support among minority
shareholders prompted Alcan to reverse its stance.

Mr. Dale admits such victories are rare: The CPP fund holds no more than two
per cent of most of the public stocks it owns. But he hopes that in the
future, the fund will gain more heft by joining coalitions of like-minded
fund managers.

Shareholder activism among public-pension funds is still "an early science,"
says Eugene Ellmen of the Toronto-based Social Investment Organization, a
group of more than 400 Canadian agencies with an interest in responsible
investing.

In a 2004 study, he found the CPP fund supported 10 out of 22 selected
shareholder proposals on social or environmental issues -- a rate of about
45 per cent.

That may not seem like a high score, but he says some Canadian pension
funds, such as the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan fund, routinely vote
against social and environmental proposals. "Our view is that CPPIB should
improve its proxy voting, but compared with many pension funds, (it) is
moving in the right direction," Mr. Ellmen says.

But Isla Carmichael, program manager for a major international research
project on responsible investment and union pension funds at the University
of Toronto, disagrees. As Canada's premiere pension fund, representing some
16 million people, the CPP fund should have taken a strong leadership role
on responsible investing long ago, she says. And she's not impressed with
the initiative the fund unveiled last year. "It's a very cautious first
step, which is disappointing."

Ian Dale says the board has a responsibility to reject shareholder proposals
that would waste company time and money. "We ask, 'Is the information
requested useful to shareholders? Does it go beyond current disclosure?
What's the cost-benefit of the work required?'"

For example, the board says it sometimes votes against proposals for
companies to report their political donations because that information is,
in many cases, already available from regulatory and securities filings.

But Peter Chapman of SHARE, a Vancouver-based shareholders' rights
association, says hunting down contribution records for large firms with
holdings in different countries can be a logistical nightmare. "You have to
collect the information from different jurisdictions, and different
jurisdictions have different rules."

A random survey of votes at 55 annual meetings in 2006 shows the board
opposed reports on political contributions 13 out of 16 times.
The CPP board also cited existing information as the reason it opposed a
proposal, co-sponsored by Amnesty International, for Dow Chemical to
describe any steps it plans to take to address the lingering fallout of the
Bhopal tragedy in India.

In 2001, Dow bought Union Carbide, which was the majority owner of the
Bhopal plant at the time of the disaster. More than 7,000 were killed in the
1984 industrial accident, which released a toxic gas cloud over the city.
While Union Carbide settled a civil case with the Indian government for $470
million, several lawsuits are still pending in Indian criminal court and in
the U.S., and the site itself remains extremely toxic, the proposal notes.
It says 100,000 people are still suffering from the fallout of the accident.

Dow replied that when it bought Union Carbide, "16 years after Bhopal, legal
liabilities to the victims had been settled and provisions had been made for
the victims' medical needs, including future illness. Another report would
add no new data."

Ian Dale agrees: "There had been extensive disclosure and associated legal
proceedings since the Bhopal tragedy and further disclosure was not going to
bring new information to light that would be of use to shareholders."

But the shareholders who proposed the report say the situation could affect
Dow's reputation in the region, damaging its prospects for growth in Asia.

Fiona Koza of Amnesty International says such decisions cast doubt on the
CPP fund's commitment to social and environmental excellence in its
investments.

Amnesty urged its members to support eight shareholder resolutions this
year; in most cases it did not put these forward itself, but urged members
who are also shareholders to push for their passage. Of these, the CPP fund
holds stock in six.

The fund supported half those resolutions: proposals for human-rights
policies at Bombardier and Power Corp., and one for an impact report on
Alcan's Indian project.

"Amnesty welcomes the fact that CPP has started to bring
(corporate-responsibility) considerations into their investment decisions,"
says Ms. Koza. "However ... we wanted CPP to vote for all the resolutions.
Each one raised serious human-rights issues that can have impacts on the
investments of Canadians."

Others argue that, moral reasons aside, many of the shareholder proposals
the board has opposed simply make good financial sense. For example,
shareholders at the International Paper company, a U.S.-based lumber giant
that operates in Canada's boreal forest and the southern U.S., asked the
firm to look into having all its virgin tree fibre certified by the Forest
Stewardship Council, the only such system recognized by conservation groups.

The CPPIB agreed with the firm that the voluntary, industry-designed system
the firm now uses is sufficient, despite shareholders' argument that major
customers, such as the Home Depot, Ikea and Lowe's have a policy to buy
FSC-certified products where possible.

And the CPP fund's board sometimes opposes proposals for reports on climate
change because it feels that issue is covered by the Carbon Disclosure
Project, an initiative by more than 200 large fund managers that surveys
hundreds of firms on their emissions and greenhouse-gas policies.

Ian Dale says the data collected by the project is more useful than
individual company reports because it imposes a standardized way of
measuring performance, adding that the sheer might of the funds behind the
project, which command a combined $31 trillion in managed assets, will
ensure firms take the matter seriously.

John Bennett of the Sierra Club calls the project "a good first step," but
notes that all it does is survey and compare companies. The board should be
pushing harder for action, he argues: "Investing taxpayers' money in a
company that does not get moving on climate change is like investing in a
buggy-whip factory at the turn of the century."

C The Ottawa Citizen 2006

===

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CANADIAN PENSION PLAN:
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, overcoat@rogers.com,
http://coat.ncf.ca/, tel (Ottawa) 613- 231-3076;
ACT for the Earth, http://www.actfortheearth.org/,
campaigns@actfortheearth.org, tel (Toronto), 647-436-6398.

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