Desjardins is the largest association of credit unions in North America and a household name in Quebec. It has just done the unthinkable: thanks to pressure from Indigenous communities and activists, it just temporarily halted all loans to pipeline projects.
This is massive. And it gets better: it is considering making that move permanent in September.
But, for some reason, Desjardins is still planning to hand out $145 million in loans to Kinder Morgan.
First and foremost, without First Nations consent for this pipeline, this project cannot go ahead. A public outcry now from us can show Desjardins it needs to follow its customers and values and make this pipeline ban permanent.
Tell Desjardins to cancel its loan to Kinder Morgan and make its pipeline moratorium permanent.
Desjardins is not like other banks. It is a community-first, member-driven collective that cares about justice. That’s how we managed to convince it to pull its ads from extreme right-wing hate site Breitbart News. It’s exactly the same sort of pressure that forced a Norwegian bank to pull its support from the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock.
Desjardins is receiving organized blowback in the business press for temporarily halting pipeline loans. We need to remind it that its customers and Canadians across the country are watching to make sure it does the right thing. And we need to make it perfectly clear to Desjardins that we are ready to follow Indigenous leadership and do whatever it takes to stop Kinder Morgan.
Thanks to people like you, resistance to Kinder Morgan is as inspiring as it is unprecedented. Mayors, scientists, Indigenous leaders, oil workers and ordinary citizens who have never held a protest sign in their lives are banding together to stop this thing. We’ve really not seen anything like it before. That’s how we know we’re on the right side of history -- and that we’re going to win.
Desjardins is the kind of bank that should be on the right side of history. Join the call for Desjardins to divest from Kinder Morgan now.
More information
Financial Post. 10 July 2017.
HuffPo. 10 July 2017.