A joint fossil fuel divestment campaign is underway at Ottawa universities, led by Climate Action Carleton and Climate Justice Climatique UO.
Launched with the support of the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and the University of Ottawa Students’ Union, #MakeMyDegreeFossilFree has called on Carleton University and U of O to divest from fossil fuels by 2025.
Divestment is when an institution withdraws its financial support by selling stocks, bonds or other financial holdings of an organization.
In a Sep. 8 open letter sent to administration at Carleton and U of O, the student organizations urge the universities to divest or withdraw “all investment funds from the fossil fuel industry” and invest in sustainable energy alternatives instead.
A petition in support of the open letter has also been signed by more than 850 undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, alumni and community members.
Kathleen Weary, CUSA president, said CUSA was granted access to the university’s investment portfolio following a meeting with Michel Piché, vice-president (finance and administration), Suzanne Blanchard, vice-president (students and enrolment) and Betsy Springer, Carleton director of pension fund management.
Despite gaining access to the University’s investment portfolio, Weary said Carleton administration has not yet disclosed all documents. It is still unclear exactly how much the university has invested in the fossil fuel and extractive industry.
“As a student union that is looking to support climate justice and sustainability, divestment is one of the most impactful projects to work on since it involves so much money, which therefore can create a substantial change,” Weary said.
Carleton’s divestment from the fossil fuel industry was among one of Weary’s campaign promises when running for CUSA president in 2020. Under her campaign goals, CUSA created two new student positions responsible for researching climate and sustainability initiatives called climate officers.
In a meeting with the school’s investment committee in December 2020, Weary and CUSA’s climate officers called on the school to explore the possibility of a long-term commitment to divestment.
“The university’s current approach is responsible investment, pushing for ethical principles as active investors,” she said. “However, we are pushing for proof of their active ownership or records of them engaging with such an investment.”
Weary describes the response from the investment committee as “positive but cautious.”
“The university is delaying a decision as long as possible until students lose their momentum,” she added.
Steven Reid, Carleton’s media relations director, said in an emailed statement that the school is “in discussion with CUSA concerning the responsible investing approaches that are most effective in addressing climate change concerns within the context of the [e]ndowment [f]und.”
Samuel Taylor, executive director of Climate Action Carleton, said responsible investment is an approach that is deeply problematic and depoliticizes the issue of fossil fuel investments.
“The university has failed to propose any satisfactory alternatives to divestment and continues to preach the benefits of the free market, ‘responsible investing,’ and other half-measures instead,” he said.
Taylor said he finds the university’s current stance to be disappointing.
“We would like to see universities step up to the plate, not only because it is a good moral decision or a good environmental decision but because it’s a good financial choice,” he said, citing research on the financial benefits of a global divestment movement.
Steph Vienneau, divestment campaign manager of Climate Action Carleton, said student support for divestment movements are imperative to its success.
“We need student support for the administration to feel pressure behind this because they won’t make decisive change until they feel that this is what the majority of students want. We have that power,” Vienneau said.
Aryan Bajpai, a first-year global and international studies student at Carleton, said he learned about the #MakeMyDegreeFossilFree campaign after posts from the Divest Canada Coalition Instagram page started to appear on his feed.
Since then, Bajpai has signed the joint petition, promoted the initiative on his own Instagram story, and has reached out to Weary to share his research.
Climate Action Carleton, the Ottawa chapter of the Global Climate Strike movement, has further facilitated its expanding university network of 30 student groups in support of on-campus divestment campaigns through the creation of the Divest Canada Coalition.
Sophie Price, founding member of the Divest Canada Coalition, said the coalition’s main goal is demanding Canadian universities to divest from the past and invest in the future.
“Divestment is not the final solution,” Price said. “It is a single step in the process of breaking the hold of the fossil fuel industry on the economy and our lives.”
Featured photo by L. Manuel Baechlin.dives
