$100bn HOOPP feels the fossil fuel heat from vocal members

Nurses and healthcare professionals in Ontario are piling pressure on their retirement scheme, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), to alter its current investment strategy.

A rapidly growing group of HOOPP members, the Canadian pension fund with C$136bn, around $100bn, in assets under management, demand that the scheme will divest all of its C$1.6 billion in fossil fuel assets within the next 13 months.

A number of vocal nurses are increasingly voicing their concerns as they publicly demand the pension fund to change course. Some have labelled HOOPP’s current investment plans as “greenwashing nonsense”.

Dr. Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO), said HOOPP has become “a tragically literal example of investing in one’s own demise.”

Grinspun, together with RNAO’s president Claudette Holloway, recently sent HOOPP an open letter in which they urged the pension’s president and CEO, Jeff Wendling, to immediately halt any fresh investments in oil, gas and coal.

Moreover, they argued HOOPP – which has around 435,000 members across 630 employers in Ontario - should divest all of its fossil fuel assts before 2025.

“The first mandate of a health professional is ‘do no harm', so HOOPP’s current investment strategy is at odds with members’ professional values and our commitment to serve the public,” they wrote.

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However, CEO Wendling stated earlier that “our climate change strategy has been built on the belief of doing what’s good for our pension plan and good for our planet.”

In its current investment plan, HOOPP has the intention to make its entire portfolio net zero by 2050.

Moreover, the fund has, so far, also committed to allocate C$23 billion to sustainable investments before 2030.

Grinspun, however, is not having it.  She dismissed Wendling’s remarks as “disingenuous double-speak”, pointing to the pension fund’s pledge to have “exclusions on new direct private thermal coal and oil exploration and production investments” in place by 2025.

Grinspun said: “The scientific consensus is categorical: stopping the worst impacts of climate change requires an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion and a rapid phaseout of existing production."

HOOPP previously indicated its net zero pledge “may make exceptions for high-emitting assets with credible and fully costed decarbonization plans.”

In addition, Holloway stressed this does not mean C$1.6 billion in fossil fuel assets will be divested anytime soon. “These holdings are incompatible with HOOPP’s stated priority, and they send the wrong signal about HOOPP’s credibility.”

'Promise to members'

HOOPP did respond to the letter, posting a 'promise to members' message on its website which stated that the pension fund will be “guided in all [it] does by one singular purpose: deliver on the pension promise to the healthcare workers of Ontario, and continue to do so long term.”

It added that “HOOPP is guided in everything we do by one singular purpose: deliver on the pension promise to the healthcare workers of Ontario, and continue to do so long term.”

With regards to green investments and its approach to net zero, HOOPP said its decisions are "credible and science based to ensure the long-term financial health of its investment portfolio."

The note read: “HOOPP will fight climate change in support of members’ pensions and will do so through engagement and collaboration, not divestment."

Via engagement and collaboration, HOOPP is working to use its large-investor influence in order “to steer companies towards credible net-zero plans," the posting stated.

"Divesting may reduce emissions in our portfolio, but it will not reduce emissions in the real world. And we want to make a real-world impact," it concluded.

However, for Grinspun "enough is enough." She called on HOOPP to “divest now,” so that “instead of being a pariah, HOOPP may become an example for the world.”

HOOP has scored a D in Shift Action's latest Fossil Fuel Score Card. Shift Action, a Canadian campaign group which assesses the climate ambitions of Canadian pension funds, said that the healthcare fund fails to meet Paris aligned targets, lacks clear interim targets, does not operate a fossil fuel exclusion policy and has not demonstrated sufficient stewardship efforts. 

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