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.

While some encouraging elements are included, OPTrust’s Climate Strategy update and 2022-2023 TCFD report demonstrate a process-heavy approach that has resulted in few hard climate targets and no progress toward excluding new investments in fossil fuels, thus demonstrating that the fund is still struggling to align its $25-billion portfolio with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Shift welcomes OPTrust’s commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 and the pension fund’s recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis, which OPTrust calls “an immediate threat to [its] portfolio that it cannot afford to ignore.” However, OPTrust’s Climate Change Strategy continues to fall well short of a credible climate plan, lacking core elements such as interim targets to reduce emissions and clear goals and expectations for climate engagement of owned companies.