Canada’s largest pension fund is being sued by four young Canadians who claim the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is failing to properly manage climate-related financial risk.
The four allege in a lawsuit filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Monday that the investment manager for the Canada Pension Plan is breaching its duty to invest in their best interest and subjecting their contributions to undue risk of loss by its approach.
“I do not want to be suing my pension manager, but I want to retire on a stable pension into a livable future,” said 20-year-old Aliya Hirji, one of the four plaintiffs, at a news conference in Toronto.
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The lawsuit, filed with the support of Ecojustice and Goldblatt Partners LLP, claims the CPPIB is drastically underestimating the financial implications of climate change, as well as worsening its harms by continuing to invest in the expansion of fossil fuel production.
Karine Peloffy, a lawyer and sustainable finance lead at Ecojustice, said the lawsuit will be a legal test on how the fund should approach climate risks, given its obligations. “It is the first time in any court anywhere that future beneficiaries will argue that one of the largest investors is breaching its duty of intergenerational equity,” Peloffy said.
CPPIB spokesperson Michel Leduc said the fund will address the matter through the courts, if necessary, but that it has a rigorous approach to integrating climate risk as one of many material factors it considers.
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“Our focus remains steadfast on integrating climate-related considerations into our investment activity,” he said.
The lawsuit comes after the CPPIB quietly dropped its 2050 net-zero target for carbon emissions earlier this year, but Leduc said the change in language didn’t change the fund’s focus on climate change. He said climate risks are one of many risk areas the fund has to manage as it invests to maximize long-term investment returns without undue risk. Leduc said the fund will push back against efforts that it sees as limiting its ability to meet those obligations.
“An action against CPP Investments, and our efforts to maintain the sustainability of the Canada Pension Plan, is an action against the retirement security of 22 million Canadians,” Leduc said.
Travis Olson, another one of the plaintiffs, said Monday that he doesn’t believe the CPPIB is meeting those obligations when managing investments the fund will one day rely on to help pay his benefits in retirement. “My pension manager’s practices are incompatible with an economically stable, climate-safe future that my generation is relying on,” the 22-year-old Olson said.
“I’m looking forward to the day our pension manager stops betting against the world my generation will inherit, and until they do so voluntarily, we’re asking the courts to step in and protect our contributions.”