The applicants are young contributors to the CPP, all of them born after 1990 and therefore ineligible to receive CPP benefits until after 2050. The applicants are each concerned about the impacts of climate change on their future and financial well-being. They are asking for CPPIB to ensure that it is managing their contributions in their best long-term interests and will be available to help provide financial security in their retirement.

Aliya Hirji is a coordinator working on place-based conservation, living and working in British Columbia. They have contributed to the CPP since September 2024. Aliya will be eligible to start receiving CPP retirement benefits in 2069.

Chloe Tse is a community organizer, living and working in Ontario. She has contributed to the CPP since 2019. Chloe will be eligible to start receiving CPP retirement benefits in 2066.

Rav Singh is a self-employed farmer, living and working in Ontario. She has contributed to the CPP since 2017. Rav will be eligible to start receiving CPP retirement benefits in 2058. 

Travis Olson is a grocery store employee, living and working in Alberta. He has contributed to the CPP since 2021. Travis will be eligible to start receiving CPP retirement benefits in 2068.

Canadians who are just entering the workforce, such as the four applicants, will retire into a world shaped by today’s investment choices. CPPIB’s short-term focus on fossil fuel assets undermines the retirement security of young Canadians who will live with the long-term effects of climate change. Without urgent action, the next generation faces a weakened pension system, ecological collapse, economic instability and financial insecurity.

The applicants allege that CPPIB has failed to act in the best interests of young Canadians in particular, whose ability to collect their CPP benefits is at risk due to climate change. They are asking the court to confirm that CPPIB has a legal obligation to prudently manage climate-related financial risks when investing CPP funds.

The applicants seek a ruling that declares that CPPIB has breached its statutory and fiduciary obligations by not aligning its investments with the long-term financial interests of contributors. This case could influence how pension funds across Canada and globally approach climate risk and fiduciary responsibility.

This case could set a precedent that requires pension funds to consider the systemic impacts of runaway climate change and prudently invest in ways that do not enable fossil fuel expansion and destabilize the climate.

The applicants are asking the court to confirm their allegations that CPPIB has breached its legal obligation to identify, assess and manage climate-related financial risks to its holdings when investing CPP assets. In particular, the applicants allege that CPPIB:

• Recklessly and inadequately underestimates the severity and extent of climate risks to the CPP;

• Continues to invest billions of dollars in the expansion of fossil fuels, despite their role in causing worsening climate impacts and increasing systemic risks to the economy and financial system;

• Fails to implement established measures to mitigate climate risks, including fossil fuel exclusions, meaningful engagement and stewardship of companies, and credible climate targets and transition plans for CPP assets and investee companies;

• Misrepresents the extent and nature of fossil fuel assets in the CPP portfolio, the severity of potential climate impacts on the CPP, and the ability of their financing of fossil fuel expansion to align with the rapid energy transition required to protect the climate system;

• Fails to adequately disclose climate risk assessments, all of its scenario analysis and CPPIB’s basis for reversing its net-zero by 2050 commitment.

CPPIB is mandated to maximize CPP returns without undue risk of loss – but appears to be failing to adequately manage the growing financial risks posed by climate change.

Pension fund managers have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their members. The case alleges that continuing to invest in industries that drive climate breakdown – while downplaying the associated financial risks – may breach that duty. As a long-term investor, CPPIB’s investment horizon aligns closely with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels by 2050. For CPPIB, managing climate risks should require it to support decisions that help ensure both stable, long-term investment returns and the retirement security of CPP members in a safe climate future.

CPPIB exists to ensure that all Canadians will have a stable pension when they retire –  a responsibility that spans across all generations. But CPPIB’s failure to align investments with a credible path to climate safety puts future pensions at risk, especially for younger Canadians. CPPIB claims that the CPP is sustainable for 75 years – but that assumption relies on outdated models that don’t account for the possibility of 3℃+ global warming.

Despite previously calling climate change “an existential threat” and “the single biggest investment risk that we face,” CPPIB’s public disclosures and communications do not demonstrate a pension fund managing climate risks in line with best practices. 

Shift tracks dozens of areas of best practice in detail. CPPIB has consistently scored toward the bottom of the pack in Shift’s annual Canadian Pension Climate Report Card and has seen some of its scores drop in recent years, as it backs away from earlier commitments.

In May 2025, CPPIB abandoned its commitment, made in 2022, that the CPP portfolio would reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. CPPIB neglected to mention this net-zero retreat in its 2025 Annual Report. CPPIB has also removed all information from its website about a previous commitment to invest $130 billion in “green and transition assets”. CPPIB never disclosed what assets it was counting toward that commitment, nor has it disclosed any intention to ensure all of its assets have credible net-zero targets or transition plans. 

CPPIB has provided inadequate evidence that its portfolio companies are credibly managing climate risks or navigating the energy transition in the best interests of CPP contributors. CPPIB continues to invest billions of dollars in companies that lack credible climate transition plans, while voting to re-elect directors responsible for oversight of climate risk at these companies. Click here for a summary of CPPIB’s privately-owned fossil fuel assets.

Numerous companies privately owned by CPPIB have a long and well-documented history of financing fossil fuel expansion, lobbying against climate policy, and misleading investors and the public about their approach to climate risk. See CPPIB Watch for details.

CPPIB claims its climate approach supports innovation and energy transition, but it refuses to limit fossil fuel investments, demonstrate how oil and gas assets are aligned with safe climate outcomes, or support the required phase-out of fossil fuels. CPPIB has justified ongoing fossil fuel investments by claiming that exiting fossil fuels would be “a short on human ingenuity” – while ignoring their real-world climate and financial consequences.

For further information on CPPIB’s approach to climate change, see this detailed analysis by Shift.

This is the first court case in Canada to:

• Take a Canadian financial institution to court alleging the mismanagement of climate-related financial risks

• Challenge Canada’s largest pension fund manager on its fiduciary duties in a public interest court case.

• Seek to interpret the expression “undue risk of loss”, which appears in over 40 federal and provincial Canadian laws, but on which there is no substantive case law.

Climate change is not a political issue. This case is about ensuring CPPIB meets its legal obligations to Canadians by responsibly managing material financial risks to the CPP over the long-term.

Climate change is a global crisis driven by physical changes to our atmosphere, primarily as a result of producing and burning fossil fuels. It has wide-reaching implications for the well-being of communities, economies and ecosystems globally.

Pension funds like CPPIB have an established fiduciary duty to act in the best long-term interests of their members. Legal experts agree that, for pension fund managers, this duty requires them to prudently manage climate-related risks.

Climate scientists and financial experts have long warned that the climate-related downside risks for the global economy and large institutional investors are profoundly negative. The best financial and personal interests of Canadians lies with stabilizing global temperatures as quickly as possible. As defined in the Paris Agreement and in Canadian law, this requires efforts to limit the global temperature increase to as close to 1.5°C as possible.

Pension plan members’ long-term best interests are most likely to be met if global warming is mitigated as quickly as possible. Without additional and urgent action, experts predict global average  temperature rises of 2-4°C by the end of this century. These seemingly small increases in temperature hide the dire and existential consequences that scientists warn will occur for global ecosystems, societies, and economies if this warming is allowed to happen. Every tenth of a degree of warming increases the systemic, compounding effects of more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, flooding, extreme weather, sea level rise and other severe physical risks felt around the world simultaneously. In higher warming scenarios, these changes threaten the stability of global food systems and the habitability of entire regions.

At this level of warming, studies show that global GDP could be reduced by 70% by 2100, and global equity returns by 60% by 2060. These profoundly negative effects on the global financial system will affect us all– including large pension funds and their members.

CPPIB itself is politicizing its approach to managing climate-related risk. The CPP’s board appears to be entangled with the fossil fuel industry, while CPPIB published greenwashing pieces about oil and gas companies, holds events celebrating Canada’s oil and gas industry, and misleads Canadians about the ability of fossil fuel companies to transition.

The fossil fuel sector has significantly underperformed all other sectors on the U.S. stock market over the past 20 years. The industry has a negative long-term financial outlook as the energy transition accelerates globally. As pension funds are required to invest for the long-term, many funds have successfully reduced their financial risks and boosted returns with climate-safe investment strategies.

Other large pension funds have concluded that restricting investments in fossil fuels is compatible with safeguarding returns. Following a process that began in 2021, the largest pension fund in Europe exited all liquid assets in oil, gas and coal in 2024, selling holdings worth about €10 billion and stating that “Anyone who looks back about 10 years will see that investments in oil and gas producers did not perform exceptionally during that period.”

Similarly, Canada’s second largest pension manager, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (formerly CDPQ, now La Caisse), which manages the Quebec Pension Plan, committed in 2021 to divest all investments in oil and coal, and followed through by 2024. La Caisse said that it “no longer want(s) to contribute to the supply of these two types of energy, which are not energies of the future. To preserve the long-term value of our assets, we have positioned them advantageously by limiting their exposure to climate and transition risks” (pdf p.44). La Caisse’s board chair wrote in its 2024 Annual Report (p.2) that the board “shares CDPQ’s convictions and supports its efforts to contribute to the necessary energy transition, especially since the organization has amply demonstrated that this can be done to the benefit of its depositors." La Caisse also said in 2024 that: “In terms of the returns on our overall portfolio, over five years, our investments in renewable energy generated more than 18% while the oil producers in the index made around 8%.”  

Even if some fossil fuel companies are profitable in the short-term, their core business is fundamentally incompatible with the retirement security of Canadians in a safe climate future. The stability of the global economy and the financial sector rests on achieving a stable climate as quickly as possible. The best predicted financial outcomes for institutions are associated with achieving the lowest possible amounts of warming. An investment in companies undertaking fossil fuel expansion is an investment in companies that are causing undue risk of loss to the CPP.

That explains why In February 2025, the head of sustainability at La Caisse said the Quebec pension manager would maintain its exclusion on oil and coal investments, explaining that the oil industry is “going full steam ahead as if there was no climate issue, drilling more, producing more, lobbying more, so the reason why we're out is the drive of the industry to increase production.”

Shift is not an applicant in this climate litigation against CPPIB.

For years, Shift has monitored the climate-related actions of CPPIB and has supported beneficiaries (including one of the applicants) to engage with CPPIB on its management of climate risk, similar to the concerns raised by the case.

Shift’s mission is to protect pensions and the climate. Shift has undertaken research, analysis and advocacy focused on Canadian pension funds for more than six years. This case is consistent with Shift’s mission.