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LETTER: Canada’s banks finance fossil fuel industry

Canadian banks are funding oil and gas
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Dear Editor:

Where do you bank? Does it make a difference? Perhaps you started at one bank because someone you knew suggested a particular one. Or you found the tellers and money lenders more friendly there.

If you have savings, you might have found that one bank gives you a better return, or the mortgage rate at another gives you a slightly better rate.

But you should really know something more about your bank than that.

Did you know that the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is now the biggest bank in the world financing the fossil fuel industry? It provided $42 billion to oil and gas companies last year alone.

Scotiabank and TD also made the “Dirty Dozen” list of the world’s dirtiest banks in 2022. Bank of Montreal and CIBC just missed that honour, ranking 15th and 16th respectively.

Altogether, Canada’s banks have sunk $1 trillion into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

This also means that the money these banks make off your savings and investments is not only partly to blame for climate change but is going into the pockets of the CEOs at millions of dollars a year.

You know, you do not have to have a Visa or Mastercard from RBC or BMO.

You can get credit cards from your local credit union and feel good about supporting local as well as not contributing to climate change.

Frank Martens

Summerland

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