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