Perhaps TD Bank’s fast footwork allowed it to escape RAN’s crosshairs. But more likely RBC was selected for the full Citigroup treatment simply because it’s the biggest of the country’s banks. RAN’s campaign literature claims the bank is a leading financer of the oil sands, at US$7.9 billion since 2007. RBC disputes that and puts the number at less than US$2 billion. RAN’s methodology in comparing the banks’ oil sands investments “was so broken and distorted that another NGO commented privately to us that they couldn’t believe RAN published it,” says bank spokeswoman Katherine Gay.
RAN’s campaign against RBC started small—an operative from San Francisco attended the bank’s annual meeting last February in Vancouver and caused a scene briefly by laying out the group’s demands. That was followed up by some picketing in front of bank branches. Then last June, Brune sent Nixon a two-page letter with formal demands: to require RBC clients to get “free, prior and informed consent” from First Nations on all corporate projects and activities affecting them; to phase out financing and advice to oil sands projects with adverse environmental impacts; and to reduce “financed emissions”—essentially asking the bank to be responsible for the emissions of its clients.
Last summer, RAN zeroed in on Nixon’s wife, Janet, with the poster offensive and an Internet campaign, using the conceit that Mrs. Nixon was a passionate environmentalist (more like a moderate environmentalist, sources close to her say) who could influence bank policy. The net effect of involving his wife, according to those who know, was to produce a furious CEO, who told friends the action was un-Canadian and wouldn’t work here. Nixon wouldn’t speak on the record about this tactic but his spokeswoman said, “We view these campaigns as emotional extortion, inflammatory and ultimately not useful to either party.”
Publicly, the bank did not respond to RAN, as part of a strategy of non-engagement. Similarly, when earlier this fall RAN sent two of its First Nations members up flagpoles at Royal Bank Plaza to protest oil sands financing, RBC stayed mute. But the organization kept at Nixon. In September, two RAN protesters ambushed the CEO at a financial industry summit, asking leading questions. (One: “What rate of cancer is needed in communities in Alberta before RBC realizes that financing tar sands is a bad idea?”)
But behind the scenes, the bank has been waging its own intelligence and opinion battle. Various sources say Nixon made it clear he wanted this fixed by staff in charge of environmental affairs. The bank began disputing RAN’s calculations of its involvement in the oil sands as “unconventional math,” calling the group “imported activists,” listing the environmental accolades RBC has collected and arguing for a “balanced approach” because banks can’t be ultimately responsible for the environmental actions of their clients, and shouldn’t be policy-makers.
Early in December, RAN fired another shot over the bow with a letter sent to all Canadian banks, this time including foreign-owned
subsidiaries, restating its demands. The letter also warned that in January it will publish a briefing summarizing oil sands financing. It promised to also show who’s been good and who’s been bad—“we urge you to distinguish yourself.”
For now at least, RAN seems to have convinced RBC to move off its non-engagement strategy. In December, Nixon sent a letter to Brune promising that senior bank executives would meet with him in San Francisco in early February “to determine what, if any common ground we have”—if the group agreed not to ramp up its campaign in the next six weeks or so. That time period coincides with the Vancouver Olympics, of which the bank is a sponsor, and the bank’s annual meeting.
Nixon criticized the group for using “extremely personal and objectionable tactics” and said the bank would not move on demands to get prior consent from First Nations groups as a precondition to oil sands financing. But he did offer to discuss a draft corporate lending/environmental risk policy that he said was already in the internal discussion phase. RBC says the response came after RAN made friendly overtures in its own letter. Even so, holding out the prospect of meeting personally with RAN, Nixon offered Brune this: “With respect to phasing out oil sands and advisory projects with irreversible environmental impacts, we may indeed be able to have a productive discussion.”
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