No clear answer after five-year long campaign
The University of Guelph currently invests roughly $38 million in 41 fossil fuel companies including Haliburton, BP, Shell, Suncor, TransCanada, and Enbridge. Fossil Free Guelph (FFG) has been demanding the Board of Governors to instigate an immediate freeze in coal, oil, and gas investments; and fully divest from fossil fuel industry assets over five years. The mostly student-organized group has been campaigning around this cause since November 2013.
Ironically, if the U of G had taken initiative and committed to divestment when the question was first raised, they could have been done the process by now and would have been the first Canadian university to do so. This has been a missed opportunity to show environmental leadership that cannot be understated. Still, five years later, the Board of Governors continues to delay their decision, avoiding committing to either a “Yes” or a “No” on the issue of divestment.
Following calls for divestment, the U of G created the Working Group on Responsible Investing (WGRI), which looked at investments more broadly and put forward seven recommendations in April 2015 on how the university could improve the environmental standards of their investment portfolio. Of these seven points, the University chose to focus on the call to implement a policy which would allow stakeholders to raise concerns about investments. Dubbed the Special Action Policy (SAP), it was put in place in April 2016.
One year later in April 2017, FFG became the first group to use the SAP when a request to divest from the fossil fuel industry was put forward. A committee was subsequently formed to collect feedback, analyze the issue, and report back with a recommendation.
The SAP recommendation on fossil fuel divestment suggested that the U of G maintain the status quo and not divest. This was presented in January 2018 for the Board of Governors to vote on, but the decision was delayed since a motion was made to give more time to discuss the issue.
Now, in January 2019, the SAP committee has returned with a new recommendation, one that has broadened in scope and does not specifically address the question of fossil fuel divestment. The recommendation, which will be presented to the Board of Governors on Jan. 23, reuses very similar recommendations to the WGRI report of 2015.
For example, the 2015 WGRI report calls for an assessment of the University’s investments in light of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors; the 2019 SAP report calls for ESG baseline measurements of investments. Which begs the question, if recommendations were made four years ago and not implemented how can anyone be sure these newer, repurposed recommendations will lead to any tangible outcome? Once again, Fossil Free Guelph is left wondering if they will ever get a clear answer.
The Board of Governors will vote on the Ad-Hoc Committee on Special Action Requests on Jan. 23 at 1 p.m.
Photo courtesy of Fossil Free
Photo edited by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion