Today more than 170 people rallied outside of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) Annual General Shareholder meeting (AGM) in Toronto after a series of creative non-violent actions all morning. Inside, First Nations Chiefs and community representatives from four different Nations demanded RBC phase out of its Tar Sands financing and to recognize the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for Indigenous communities. Afterward, Indigenous leaders lead the crowd in a march to rally outside both RBC Headquarters buildings.

Other cities across Canada supported the First Nations voices inside the AGM as well with solidarity actions from (click on a city for pictures) London, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria and more. Check out photos from those and our events in Toronto.

And see some preliminary media coverage from the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo.

See beautiful photos from Allan Lissner here.

Since 2007 RBC has backed more than $16.7 billion (USD) in loans to companies operating in the tar sands—more than any other bank. Called, ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ Alberta’s tar sands projects will eventually transform a Boreal forest the size of England into an industrial sacrifice zone complete with lakes full of toxic waste and man-made volcanoes spewing out clouds of global warming emissions.

Outside the shareholder meeting school children, bank customers of every age, First Nations community representatives joined Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, No One Is Illegal, and Council of Canadians made their outrage at RBC’s investments heard – to the thumping beats of street Samba band, the crowd shouted “Cultural Genocide: who do we thank? Dirty investments from Royal Bank!”

Inside the shareholder meeting, Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation, Alberta,Vice Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council of BC, Hereditary Chief Warner Naziel of the Wet’suwe’ten First Nation of BC, and Gitz Crazyboy of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation addressed RBC CEO Gordon Nixon directly about the way tar sands extraction projects have jeopardized their health and their rights.

Downstream communities have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, declines in wildlife populations such as moose and muskrat, and significant declines in fish populations. Tar sands has all but destroyed the traditional livelihood of First Nations in the northern Athabasca watershed.

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I just finished spending two weeks with some of my favorite organizers in Toronto. In the midst of strategizing to have an impactful presence at the Royal Bank of Canada’s Annual General Shareholder’s meeting (AGM), we went on a training tour to reach out communities all over Ontario. The response has been tremendous.

RAN Toronto led organizing and strategy trainings in places like Lindsay, London, Kingston, with other cities like Barrie, Montreal, and Ottawa also getting organized. Why?

Because right now energy in Canada is exploding around not just the Tar Sands, but by confronting those who invest and support the most destructive project on earth.

The trainings had upwards of 40 participants, and evolved into planning sessions about groups of people coming to Toronto to let RBC shareholders know that the bank’s continued investments in the Tar Sands and disregard for Free Prior and Informed Consent of First Nations communities is unacceptable.

The invitation will soon be public to join community members and activists in Toronto on March 3rd, to participate in a series of actions and large rally at the AGM. Stay tuned.

In the last couple of weeks a slew of articles have come out announcing last year’s earnings for some of our favorite CEO’s.

• JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon received a bonus of over $16 million ;
• General Mills Inc. chairman and CEO Ken Powell received $13.4 million in compensation, up 105 percent from $6.5 million in fiscal 2008;
• and, Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) CEO Gord Nixon was paid C$10.4 million in 2009

From investments in mountaintop removal coal mining and coal-fired powerplants if you’re Chase’s Jamie Dimon and financing of the horrific Alberta tar sands if you’re RBC’s Gord Nixon to supporting Indonesia’s rampant rainforest destruction for palm oil if you’re General Mill’s Ken Powell, profiting from environmental destruction is alive and well.

While it is no surprise that big businesses and big banks are raking in billions even as the unemployment rate hangs around 10%, I can’t help but be a touched shocked at the flagrant arrogance of these CEOs. Even as many of us dream of a new set of values and a new model for our economy and our society, business success is still measured by the old paradigm of continuous growth and maximized return on investment. You grow and you get rich or you die.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. More »

After more than a year of denial, RBC may be admitting that it has a problem in the tar sands. Tomorrow, we’ve learned that RBC will host a group of more than a dozen international banks for what it calls a “day of learning”. The meeting comes just eight weeks after our letter to 68 banks signed on to the Equator Principles requesting that they forgo financing in the controversial industrial project.

RBC’s invitation-only meeting clearly aims to develop begin developing a coordinated response among banks to the growing controversy over tar sands financing. We got a peek at a draft agenda featuring Deputy Ministers from Alberta’s Environment and Energy Ministries, tar sands developers, selected environmental groups and at least one “First Nation representative”.

While we didn’t get an invitation to the meeting, volunteers are planning to make our presence known by distributing a special message to bankers in attendance.

We don’t know for sure which banks will show, but we’re expecting most of the 26 ranked in our earlier post on international banks backing the tar sands.

We’re happy to see RBC starting an important conversation in the banking industry, but actions speak louder than words. These banks should stop bankrolling dirty oil and shift those funds into clean energy.

Progress or PR? You decide! Tell us what you think in the comments.

Illustration by Stefan Lorant

As an ode to the  “rank ‘em and spank ‘em” strategy coined by our outgoing Executive Director Mike Brune, we proudly present the following roster of international banks backing expansion in the tar sands.

The table below is based on credit extended underwritten by each bank to companies operating in the tar sands since 2007 according to Bloomberg. Restrictions at Bloomberg now prevent us from publishing deal-by-deal details to the web, but are available upon request if you leave your email in the comments.

Each of these banks received letters from RAN, IEN and BankTrack late last year requesting information about how they are addressing the damage caused by tar sands development. Responses (or lack thereof) will help us identify which banks are serious about responsible banking, and which may need more convincing. Responses received to date are also linked in the table after the jump.

UPDATE: There’s been some questions about how these numbers are derived.  We have answers, following the table. More »

Tar Sands Financing Causes Global Embarrassment for Nation’s Largest Bank

It isn’t often that Rainforest Action Network heads to Davos for the opening of the World Economic Forum (WEF). But that’s just what our tar sands campaigner, Brant Olson, is doing. Why? Because as world leaders gather at Davos today to discuss the year’s economic fortunes, one financial institution, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), will be singled out for their outstanding contributions to increasing climate change.

In a ceremony held concurrently to the World Economic Forum, RBC was awarded the Public Eye Global Award presented by the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace. As a result of our increasingly successful efforts to highlight RBC’s role in financing tar sands extraction projects, RBC was named the year’s most environmentally and socially irresponsible company.

RAN’s Brant Olson is accepting the award for RBC as the bank’s representatives declined to attend the ceremony. As Brant said in a press release earlier today:

“Global banks can no longer ignore the impact their financing has on the climate, people and the future of this planet. The Public Eye Award demonstrates the increasing global concern over the billions of dollars of financing flowing into destructive tar sands projects, which Royal Bank of Canada is playing a leading role in. The world is watching RBC.”

RBC is the leading financier of companies extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands. Since 2007, RBC has backed $14.3 billion (USD) in credit to companies operating in the tar sands, and earned more than $84 million (USD) in underwriting fees. As a result, RBC has enabled the production of the world’s dirtiest oil. Oil extraction from the tar sands generates three times the CO2 emissions as conventionally extracted oil, which will soon make Canada the biggest contributor to global warming.

The Global Public Eye Award is essentially a shame-on-you-award given to the nastiest corporate players of the year. The Public Eye Awards are a critical counterpoint to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. The Public Eye Awards are held in Davos, Switzerland, on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF). At this counter-event to the WEF, the organizers of The Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland remind companies of their duty as truthful corporate citizens. Awards are given to multinational companies that have excelled in irresponsible social and environmental behavior. The Public Eye Global Award included nominees from three continents, but this year RBC took the prize for. RBC declined to attend the event.

Mining oil from tar sands requires churning up huge tracts of ancient boreal forest and polluting so much clean water with poisonous chemicals that the resulting waste ponds can be seen from outer space. The health impacts to Alberta’s First Nation communities are severe, with cancer rates up in some communities as much as 400 times its usual frequency. In addition, communities living near oil refineries face increased air and water pollution from tar sands oil, which contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel and

So I really like the Winter Olympics – they really put the Summer Olympics to shame. Hockey, luge, figure skating, bobsledding, downhill skiing… and even that sport that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting! (Whose idea was that??)

But this year, a wide variety of activists, in B.C. and beyond, are reminding us that the 2010 Vancouver Olympics aren’t all fun and games. In fact, they’re resulting in huge developments on unceded First Nations land, massive spending on hyper-militarized security, and displacement of poor people and increased homelessness in Vancouver.

And, of course, it’s an opportunity for some good ol’-fashioned corporate PR. Companies from around the world with gruesome environmental and human rights track records – like Dow, Coca-Cola, and General Electric – are lining up to spend millions on funding the Olympics and sprucing up their tarnished images.

And the lead sponsor of the Olympic torch run: Royal Bank of Canada, the ATM for the Alberta tar sands. In fact, their website for the torch run calls on people across Canada to “make a pledge” to “make a better Canada,” and touts RBC’s “Blue Water Pledge” to “support watershed protection” – a little bit hypocritical, given that RBC has pledged $3.8 billion in financing to tar sands companies in the last six months alone.

So a group of folks in Vancouver decided to call RBC on their greenwashing. They issued a callout last week – endorsed by RAN - calling for protests at RBC branches across Canada every Friday at noon, to protest RBC’s attempts to use their Olympic funding to greenwash their role as the world’s biggest financier of the tar sands.

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October 12-18 is World Rainforest Week. Every year, we take this opportunity to highlight rainforest destruction around the world – and what we are doing to stop it. And RAN is indeed doing great work to stop rainforest destruction for palm oil in Indonesia (in fact, we just put out a really cool report that talks about the link between agrofuels and rainforest destruction).

But I’d like to use this year’s World Rainforest Week to talk about a little-known threat that tar sands development poses to temperate (i.e. cold, not hot & sweaty) rainforests in British Columbia.

The areas marked in green are existing mature rainforest; the areas marked in red have been deforested.

“Rainforests – in British Columbia??” you might say. (Well, actually, if you’re savvy enough to be reading this blog, then you may well know that rainforests don’t just exist in the tropics.) That’s right: BC is home to the Great Bear Rainforest, an area of spectacular natural beauty and biodiversity, home to many species – like the “spirit” bear – that exist nowhere else in the world.

But this spectacular rainforest is facing an urgent threat: the proposed construction of an oil pipeline that would run from the tar sands of Alberta to Kitimat, a town at the end of a long, narrow sea inlet that passes through some of the most spectacular parts of the Great Bear Rainforest.

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RBC CEO Gord Nixon should be putting his bank’s money where his mouth is. Last week, he offered an incoherent defense of RBC’s “balanced approach” to the environment after RAN activists confronted him on the bank’s financial support for expansion of Canada’s tar sands.

Recognizing his stumble, Nelson hit the papers this week to explain. “You can’t over-emphasize the environment at huge cost to the economy” Nixon told the National Post, “and at the same time you cannot do things economically that are a huge cost to the environment.”

Below the surface, though, RBC’s “balanced approach” is anything but. More »

Rainforest Action Network drops Seventy-Foot Banner Over Niagara Falls to Welcome Prime Minister Harper to the U.S.
Banner: “Canadian Tar Sands Oil Undermines North America’s Clean Energy Future”
See more photos here.

Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, Aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue,” one aide told the Globe and Mail, “will dominate the discussions.” Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the Climate Legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

During Harper’s first official trip to meet Obama in the U.S., the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and energy policy ahead of the upcoming G20 Summit. Canada supplies 19% of U.S. oil imports, more than half of which now comes from the tar sands, making the region the largest single source of U.S. oil imports. The expansion of the tar sands will strip mine an area the size of Florida. Complete with skyrocketing rates of cancer (by 400%!) for First Nations communities living downstream, broken treaties, toxic belching lakes so large you can see them from outer space, churning up ancient boreal forest, destroyed air and water quality, the tar sands have been called the most destructive project on Earth.

Tomorrow’s visit to the U.S. by Prime Minister Harper is the latest attempt by Canadian Federal and Provincial officials to lock in subsidies for 22 new and expanded refinery projects and oil pipelines crisscrossing 28 states, which would transport and process the dirty tar sands oil. Many are concerned that Prime Minister Harper wants to protect the tar sands oil industry from climate regulation, even though it is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

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