Whilst other Canadian banks are thinking about scaling back their funding of fossil fuel expansion, RBC’s increased by a breathtaking 45% in 2022 (compared to 2021). That’s an insane amount for a bank pretending to understand the climate emergency.
They’re also facing criticisms for trampling all over indigenous land belonging to the Wet’suwet’en tribe, with a giant gas pipeline that they’re funding, called Coastal Gas Link. It’s destroying land, rights and environment, all in one swoop.
That’s why they’re facing backlash at this year’s AGM. And activists won’t stop until RBC cleans up it’s devastating act.
RBC’s AGM is in a place called Saskatoon. It’s not a place companies normally hold their AGMs. So why are RBC holding it there? Because last year, activist pressure in Toronto was so great that RBC were forced to move their AGM to online only. This year, they’re trying to avoid that by heading somewhere remote. But they needn’t worry, wherever climate destroyers go, activists will follow 🙂
There’s a long list of embarrassments where that came from. It was just shown that of all the money RBC is lending to energy companies, it gives the least to clean energy of any bank in the world (as a ratio of fossil fuel funding). RBC is under investigation for greenwashing given that they’re claiming to be sustainable whilst being Canada’s biggest fossil fuel funder. And the UN might dump RBC as research shows their fossil fuel funding should get them thrown out of the UN Net Zero club.
Safe to say, RBC’s AGMs will never carry on as usual while they continue pouring billions of dollars into climate destruction.