This open letter from the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade to the CPP Investment Board is part of a campaign to oppose CANSEC 2009, Canada's largest war industry trade show (Ottawa, May 27-28, 2009).
Please sign COAT's ONLINE PETITIONs:
Stop Ottawa's Arms Shows
    
Stop CPP Investments in War Industries!

Let them know what you think: Here's CPP Investment Board email address.

 

Dear CPP Investment Board (CPPIB),

CPP investments now include a Canadian war industry known around the world as the exclusive supplier of a rocket weapons system that delivers a variety of warheads including those dispensing antipersonnel cluster munitions, antipersonnel fragmentation bombs and other warheads containing a mixture of white phosphorous and high explosives.

The most recent available "Canadian Equity Holdings" report of the CPPIB (March 31, 2008, p.7) states that the CPP's public equities include 1,134 shares of Magellan Aerospace Corp.  This report states the value of these shares as exactly $1 million.
http://www.cppib.ca/files/PDF/CDN_Equity_Holdings_March31_2008_ENG.pdf

The website of Magellan Aerospace Corp., which manufactures the CRV-7 missile, has numerous promotional web pages with detailed factsheets and other materials lauding this weapons system and extolling the virtues of its specialized anti-personnel warheads.
http://www.magellan.aero/content/objects/CRV7_Rotary_Wing.pdf
http://www.magellanaerospace.com/content/objects/CRV7_Fixed_Wing.pdf

Literally hundreds of military-related websites around the world cite Magellan, and its Winnipeg-based subsidiary Bristol Aerospace, as the creator and source of the CRV-7 weapons system.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=bristol+crv7&meta=

I presume that your board knows full well that it is investing in this particular weapons maker. And, I presume that you have no problem with this. Many Canadians however may well have serious problems with such investments done in their name.

I'm sure that you will have no problem finding legal opinions and other experts to assure you that such an investment in Magellan is legal, even though it is so closely linked to antipersonnel cluster munitions.  But whether it is illegal or not is totally irrelevant.  It is morally reprehensible and that's bad enough. So please don't waste my time (or yours) telling me this is all very legal. Slavery was legal too, but that didn't make it okay or worth investing in, did it?

The CRV missile (which stands for "Canadian Rocket Vehicle") was created by Bristol using Canadian government funds. So, you may contend, this is a very nationalistic endeavour. I'm sure you realise that the CRV-7 air-to-ground rocket has also been fired from military helicopters and fixed wing warplanes that belong to various governments around the world that are currently engaged in major wars, including the war in Iraq which has so far killed an estimated 1.3 million since 2003.

The Magellan Aerospace Corporation is a Canadian company that trades on the TSE under the code MAL. (Of course you see the irony here because you know that in French, "Mal" means "sick" or "bad.")

With no trace of irony, Magellan Aerospace describes its unique weapons as the "most compliant with Insensitive Munitions" and the "Safest to Use." Presumably, Canadians would not want their retirement savings invested in a weapons company known for either sensitive munitions or ones that were unsafe.

As for its safety features, when the antipersonnel cluster bombs and antipersonnel fragmentation bombs within the warheads carried by the Bristol's CRV-7 missiles explode, they create thousands of tiny, sharp, fast-flying metal fragments that the company says are specifically designed to maximize the shredding of human flesh. Now they don't exactly put it in those terms. They sanitise the message for their buyers by saying that each submunition contains "B-4 high explosive, and a scored interior body wall to optimize fragment size against personnel."

Does this sound "safe" to you?  Perhaps it is safe for the warfighter, but what about the children on the ground who are ripped apart when these things go off?

Is this how the CPP Investment Board thinks that Canadian workers, parents and grandparents want their retirement savings invested? 

I want you to aslo consider your own kids and grandchildren. Perhaps some day when they surf the internet they may find reference to these facts and they may wonder how it was that you as a Board Member were able to countenance investing in such horror and mayhem. How, they will wonder, could you have accepted to do this?

Now Magellan of course is only one of dozens of war industries and weapons manufacturers that you are forcing Canadians to invest in.  I hate to focus on just one company. There are actually so many far worse war profiteers on your list of foreign public equities. Some of the world's largest weapons manufacturers are on your list. It is frankly appalling and disgusting.

But it is never too late to divest from war profiteers and to use some moral and ethical sense of what is right and decent in order to balance your perceived need to invest in profitable corporations without any regard for the human consequences of such investments. 

Yours sincerely,
Richard Sanders
Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)
http://coat.ncf.ca

P.S. COAT is now involved in a campaign to oppose CANSEC, Canada's largest war industry trade show, coming to Ottawa May 27-28, 2009.
COAT's latest report exposes about 50 Canadian military exporters and their complicity in dozens of major foreign weapons systems.  Please look over this list, but NOT for ideas about new companies in which to invest our pension monies:
http://coat.ncf.ca/ARMX/cansec/topCANSEC.htm

CC.: All MPs, City of Ottawa Councillors, 6000 Canadian activists and NGOs, hundreds of media contacts