In part one of this two-part series, we examined the Canada Pension Plan's (CPP) investment in drones, computerized soldiers, land occupation and an infamous prison scandal. Part two is dedicated to the many potential conflicts of interest -- yours, mine, the executives' and the PMO's. Some might be moral. Some might be something more.
If you look at the CPP Investment Board of Directors, you will find that all but one executive was appointed since the determined change in strategy under the Harper government. These board members are skilled leaders from different industries, but no matter their background, most of them share something in common.
Robert Astley was the President of Sun Life. CPP purchased $109 million worth of stock in Sun Life. (See CPP domestic portfolio and foreign portfolio, PDF)
Ian Bourne is Chief Executive Officer of SNC-Lavalin. CPP invested $21 million in SNC-Lavalin in spite of the company being plagued by ties to the Gadhafi regime and fraud charges that are still winding through the courts.
Bourne is also the Director of Canadian Oil Sands Limited, which has a large stake in theSyncrude project -- the project at the heart of a lawsuit involving Greenpeace and the death of wildlife. Syncrude was convicted and fined more than half a million dollars. Our CPP investments in this company total $80 million.
David Suzuki continues to educate about the misnomers of "ethical oil" and points to other companies in business with the Alberta oil sands. Exxon Mobil has a history of major oil spills. CPP gave them $553 million. Exxon funded a lobby against the Kyoto Protocol, and Canada eventually cancelled our commitment to the international community.
BP is responsible for the tragic Gulf Coast oil spill that may cost more than $7 billion in legal settlements to cover the damage. And if we look in our CPP foreign column, we'll find $347 million invested in BP.
Nexen is another curious entry with $62 million in CPP investments. It's unclear what will happen to this particular investment, since Harper made waves by allowing the company to be purchased by China. The deal was embroiled in controversy regarding national security. CSIS raised concerns about compromising Canadian intelligence, while the United States rebuked the purchaser's energy partnership with Iran. Still, it went unreported that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had to freeze assets to investigate cases of Nexen insider trading that resulted from our sell-off.
CPP also has $218 million invested in TransCanada Corp. They're the ones fighting for the Keystone XL pipeline that was met with public backlash across the continent. We have another $201 million socked away in Enbridge, which has challenged Natives land rights in preparation for the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Moving along in our Board of Directors, we arrive at Pierre Choquettewas the CEO of Methanex. Douglas W. Mahaffy is the current director of Methanex. The company is the world's largest producer of methanol for petrochemical use. It received $38 million from CPP. Choquette further served as a director at TELUS, which received $116 million from CPP. TELUS employs two former consultants linked to the E-Health scandal that rocked Ontario.
Heather Monroe-Blum sits on the Board of Directors for the Royal Bank of Canada. RBC received $707 million from CPP and is the Plan's largest domestic holding. That's putting a lot of our eggs in one basket, which seems unwise, especially when that one company has been implicated in the LIBOR scandal .
Karen Sheriff heads Bell Aliant as the CEO and president. CPP has invested $21 million with that company. Joe Mark Zurel is listed as the Director of Major Drilling Group, which has also received $12 million from CPP. Nancy Hopkins is the Director of Cameco Corporation. CPP invested $43 million there. Robert Brooks was the Vice Chair of Scotiabank. CPP invested $537 million in the company. Brooks also headed Dundee Wealth. CPP invested $20 million with Dundee's parent company.
In addition to these revelations, the CPP is a substantial partner of Onex. The Onex Corporation purchased Raytheon's air division in 2006. Raytheon is a defence contractor. It's the world's largest producer of guided missiles and nuclear warheads. These weapons are involved in conflicts from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Libya to Syria and everywhere the U.S. military sets foot. The acquisition of Raytheon's flight technology created the Hawker Beechcraft company, putting Onex in the business of peddling combat planes to governments.
The managing director of Onex was Nigel Wright. He took leave from the position to become our Prime Minister's chief of staff, exactly two months after CPP entered a multi-billion dollar partnership with his company. While the Conservatives called this "great news for Canada's economic policy," the NDP's Charlie Angus cautioned Wright to "follow the rules" regarding conflict interest.
Wright was recently cleared in an ethics probe about the same issue with Barrick Gold (in which CPP holds a $330 million stake). The founding family of Barrick sat on the Onex board of directors and there were questions about personal lobbying that could have led to the PMO.
Despite the investigation's positive outcome for Wright, MP Angus took issue with the commissioner's process. When additional conflict issues were raised by OMERS, they were dismissed as mistakes in a hasty response from the Prime Minister on Wright's behalf.
As we've seen , Harper's chief of staff is also connected to Lockheed Martin (Incidentally CPP holds $78 million in that company as well). Nigel Wright's duties as director of Onex included oversight of Hawker Beechcraft, the partner to Lockheed Martin, which produced the fighter jets at the centre of F-35 debacle. This places the CPP in a bizarre love triangle with Onex and Lockheed, well beyond anything we purchased in stock.
Hawker Beechcraft's Onex deals with Lockheed include supplying the US Air Force and Homeland Security with cannon equipped fighter jets. They produce a handful of warplanes with rocket capability and their accounts include the Canadian, American, Greek, Israeli, Iraqi, Moroccan and Mexican military. One of the shared executives (PDF) managed the Lockheed F-35 file before coming to head government relations at Onex's Hawker Beechcraft.
So that introduces our business partner.
In July 2010, CPP and Onex purchased Tomkins PLC together, for $4.5 billion (£2.9 billion) with our retirement dollars. We are equally listed owners and our acquisition provides hydraulics to the oil, gas and mining industries. Tomkins was also the previous owner of Smith and Wesson guns before we bought them out.
In November 2012 CPP deepened its relationship with Onex to acquire Tomkins Air Distribution for an additional $1.1 billion (PDF); meaning when Nigel Wright leaves his position with the Prime Minister's Office, he'll presumably return to managing our CPP partnership from the private industry end.
With the 2012 expansion, Onex and the CPP came to own all subsidiaries under the parent heading. One of those spinoffs is Titus, a company that provides data security to the military in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Belgium and Denmark. Titus provides services to the whole of government, aerospace, police and financial industries.
The moral of the story is we've got to come clean about the unethical use of our retirement funds. There isn't enough money to expand CPP because the surplus was earmarked to boost the military-industrial complex. When our hard-earned money isn't being used to cause bloodshed, it's going to companies affiliated with the CPP's own CEOs and the Alberta oil sands.
Grandma and Grandpa might not sleep so well knowing all that.