Statement: Pension funds gamble on their members’ future with risky LNG Canada investment
By investing billions in LNG Canada through American private equity funds, four of Canada’s largest pension funds have ignored their core obligations to their contributors and beneficiaries. These pension funds are gambling their own members’ retirement savings on a high-risk, highly-polluting LNG facility that’s harming local residents and contributing to catastrophic climate change.
Analysis of BCI’s 2025-2026 Stewardship Report: misguided engagement during a climate crisis
BCI’s climate engagement program is weakened by its failure to plainly state that climate-related impacts will continue to get worse until fossil fuel production and combustion are phased out. Read our analysis of BCI’s 2025-2026 Stewardship Report.
Key takeaways from the 2026 Canada Pension Plan Investment Board public meetings
Over the last month, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) held public meetings in eight cities across Canada. These meetings, which CPPIB is required by law to hold every two years, are a rare opportunity to engage directly with the staff and executives that manage the $864-billion Canada Pension Plan (CPP) on behalf of over 22 million contributors and beneficiaries. Hundreds of Canadians showed up to these public meetings to demand accountability for how CPPIB is protecting our retirement security amidst a worsening climate crisis.
Submission to the Legislative Committee on Bill C-39
Shift has submitted a brief to the Legislative Committee reviewing Bill C-39, raising serious concerns about the bill’s implications for environmental protection, Indigenous rights and public accountability. Our brief warns that Bill C-39 would weaken environmental safeguards, expand ministerial discretion, limit meaningful Indigenous consultation and allow potentially irreversible environmental harm before assessments are complete.
Hits and misses in UPP’s climate stewardship update
Ontario’s University Pension Plan (UPP) has been a leader on climate engagement – but its new stewardship plan is too light on specifics to know if UPP is stepping up or backing down.
Climate Pension Quarterly - Issue #21
In this Climate Pension Quarterly, we examine the backdrop to the upcoming Canada Investment Summit, where the Prime Minister, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP) will host high-profile executives who manage nearly $120 trillion in assets. The Summit occurs at the tail end of a summer that forced investors to confront the immediacy of the climate crisis, with more than 60% of Canadians personally affected by climate disasters this year and wildfires and heat waves having engulfed parts of Europe.
CPPIB Watch: A quarterly update on CPPIB-owned fossil fuel companies (September 2026)
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is making a risky bet on gas to power the build-out of data centres for artificial intelligence (AI). By supplying the insatiable demand for energy associated with AI via gas-powered data centres, CPPIB is contradicting its own Climate Change Principles, crowding-out renewable energy, and locking-in carbon pollution that increases climate risks to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and its members.
CPPIB’s climate disclosure shows a snapshot without a strategy
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments, or CPPIB) announced an additional climate disclosure earlier this month. This is a small but welcome improvement in transparency that appears to be a response to the climate litigation launched against CPPIB in October 2025. But for Canadians concerned about the sustainability of the Canada Pension Plan amidst a worsening climate crisis, the new disclosure provides little indication that CPPIB is treating climate change with the urgency or gravity that is required.
REPORT: Indigenous rights at risk as government looks to pension funds to invest in “major projects”
Today, Shift released a new report, Indigenous Rights and Canadian Pension Funds. The report finds that none of Canada’s large pension managers have publicly disclosed investment policies ensuring alignment with Indigenous rights, leaving pension beneficiaries’ retirement savings exposed to financial, legal and reputational risks. Policies aligned with Indigenous rights would provide pension managers with critical guardrails - especially now, as the federal government pressures them to invest in “major projects”.
As Ontario burns, OPTrust-backed company moves ahead with gas plant to power Meta data centre
While OPTrust members choked on toxic smoke in Toronto, bailed out flooded basements in Ottawa, and helped evacuate communities fleeing wildfires in northern Ontario, a company owned by their pension manager decided to build new fossil fuel infrastructure. Kineticor Asset Management, owned by OPTrust, the manager of the $27-billion OPSEU Pension Plan for 118,000 active and retired Ontario public servants, is developing a gas plant to power a future massive Meta AI data centre.
CPPIB spotlights oil and gas expansion – again – as Canadians suffer through climate impacts
As more and more Canadians are experiencing the worsening impacts of climate change first-hand, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) decided – once again – to showcase how it’s investing our national retirement fund in the primary cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuels. On June 23, CPPIB published Turning Volatility Into Opportunity: How Long-Term Capital Helped Teine Energy Scale – a spotlight on its investment in one of Canada’s largest private oil and gas producers, Teine Energy.
Submission on the Government of Canada's Discussion Paper: Getting Major Projects Built in Canada
Shift has made a submission on the Government of Canada's Discussion Paper: Getting Major Projects Built in Canada. We submit that the proposals represent the most significant rollback of federal environmental assessment, Indigenous consultation, and major project oversight in a generation. We urge the Government to withdraw these proposals and instead pursue reforms that strengthen coordination and efficiency while preserving rigorous environmental assessment, meaningful Indigenous consultation, and strong national standards.
Your retirement savings and Canada's LNG gamble
Why are Canadian pension funds being pressured to invest your retirement savings in risky liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects during a climate crisis? And if these projects are such great investments, why does the government need to help finance them in the first place? LNG projects are long-term financial bets on uncertain markets – and depend on public support to get built. Despite these risks, the government wants more LNG terminals built and is working to use more public financing and policy levers to transfer the risks for pension funds and other institutional investors to the public.
CPPIB Watch: A quarterly update on CPPIB-owned fossil fuel companies (April – June 2026)
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is financing four liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals – and signalling there could be more to come – despite the industry bringing worsening climate damage and escalating financial risks to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). This reckless bet on fossil fuel expansion by the $793-billion investment manager for the CPP comes despite an accelerating energy transition, expected LNG supply glut, and increased market competition from cheaper, cleaner alternatives.
Climate Pension Quarterly - Issue #20
In this Climate Pension Quarterly, we examine the the risks posed by potential LNG investment and why the pension executives entrusted to manage our retirement savings need to recognize that the fundamentals behind the transition away from fossil fuels haven’t changed. Global energy markets are shifting, and electrification and renewables are the future.
Statement: PSP leaves 900,000 federal employees with no climate strategy for their pension portfolio
After failing to achieve critical targets set in 2022, PSP Investments has “closed” its five-year climate strategy. Canada’s third largest pension manager now has no publicly-disclosed strategy to protect its members’ retirement security from escalating climate-related financial risks. PSP has tossed out a detailed taxonomy and a workable climate strategy backed by measurable decarbonization targets, and replaced them with a vague pilot framework that lacks clarity, stringency, transparency, accountability, and rigour.
CPPIB governance lapses exemplified by deficient approach to climate change
Something is rotten at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). A recent spate of investment controversies, mediocre financial performance, and apparent lapses in governance and disclosure have drawn criticism from disparate voices. Perhaps most consequential for the retirement security of its 22 million members is CPPIB’s deficient approach to climate change – which CPPIB acknowledged is “the single biggest source of risk for the fund”.
OMERS’ divestment of Exolum marks a major milestone for climate-aligned pensions
In a major victory for long-term pension sustainability, one of Canada’s largest pension funds has entered into an agreement to sell its last known remaining privately owned fossil fuel asset. OMERS has held a stake in Exolum, a distributor and transporter of refined oil and aviation fuel in Spain and Britain, since 2016. On May 22, Reuters reported that OMERS had entered an agreement to sell its stake – a decision which makes sense from both a financial and a climate perspective.
Statement: Appointment of oil and gas company director to CPPIB board renews fossil fuel entanglement concerns amid climate-risk litigation
With an ongoing legal challenge in progress over its management of climate-related financial risk, a new climate-conflicted director has been appointed to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the investment manager overseeing nearly $800 billion in retirement savings for more than 22 million Canadians. This latest appointee also serves on the board of Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL), one of Canada's largest oil and gas producers, creating the potential for conflicts of interest for the fund’s management of climate-related financial risk. Three of CPPIB’s 12 directors now have fossil fuel industry entanglements.
Getting real with its members: OMERS talks up renewables and shoots down pipelines at its annual meeting
At OMERS’ annual meeting on April 23, 2026, it was a breath of fresh air to hear senior leadership focus on the underlying drivers of the energy transition instead of the current political noise around building new fossil fuel infrastructure. Stakeholders may still be concerned, however, about OMERS’ intentions regarding investments in liquified natural gas (LNG). Here is Shift’s summary of the climate-related key points from OMERS’ annual meeting.