How is Carney's War Bank and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) connected? Through investments in weapons and genocide, as well as the activists and organizations fighting for a Free Palestine.

Teacher and organizer with OTPP Divest, James Campbell gives an overview of the movement to get the OTPP to divest from weapons manufacturers.

With a collection of success stories, it is clear the campaign resonates with teachers in the Province - with two of the largest unions overwhelmingly voting YES to divestment when given the chance.

So where does the resistance come from? Where it usually does - Capital. But also from the CEO of the $300 billion OTPP, Joe Taylor, who has refused calls from the ranks to stop using their name to line the pockets of war profiteers.

As it turns out, OTTP CEO Taylor is also a big supporter of the Defence, Security and Resilience Initiative (DSRB), or as second guest Tyler and his fellow activists with Stop the DSRB call it - the War Bank.

What is it? Its a project of Carney's to get the G7 nations to sign on to this slush fund for the weapons industry. Its clearly stated purpose is to bypass popular (democratic) demands for social service spending and basic rights, in order to secure an endless supply of 'defence' funding. Its all being sold alongside Carney's Canadian militarism narratives, which has made it easier for him to line up supportive politicians from across the spectrum.

This makes the job of activists harder, but not impossible. James and Tyler talk about the tactics they've deployed, and the alliances they are building along the way. There are accessible pressure points to be pushed, tarnishing the reputation of unethical investments being one of them. Another is opposing the pitch for Toronto to serve as the headquarters for the DSRB.

Be sure to stay until the end to hear what else these activists have up their sleeve and learn more about the impacts divestment campaigns are having on the economic and political landscapes.

Hosted by: Jessa McLean

Call to Action: SIGN ON TO STOP THE WARBANK

Related Episodes:

• UNIFOR's Hot Cargo: Labour Internationalism (Aug 2025) Labour for Palestine on their campaign to have any goods or services coming from, or going to Israel, declared 'hot cargo'.
• Nationalism and the Working Class (Mar 2023) Chris Fairweather, academic, activist and labour organizer, talks about the pervasiveness of nationalism and the impact is has on the working class
• No Arms in the Arts (Aug 2024) Hear how the successful campaign to pressure Scotiabank and the Giller Prize to do the right thing.

More Resources:

• Pension Divestment FAQ - Google Drive
• PACBI: Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel | BDS Movement
• Referenced Report: Special Rapporteur Report on Gaza
• VIDEO: World Beyond War Action Reel (IG)
• Ontario Government's Statement on Bid for DSRB HQ
• Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in the world, 2024 | SIPRI
• Our Call to Workers Everywhere – Stop the Genocide — Workers in Palestine

For more content from these creators, be sure to subscribe to the Blueprints SUBSTACK.

All of our content is free - made possible by the generous sponsorships of our Patrons. If you would like to support our work through monthly contributions: Patreon

Follow us on Instagram or on Bluesky

Greetings, friends. My name is Jess McLean, and I'm here to provide you with some blueprints

of disruption. This weekly podcast is dedicated to amplifying the work of activists, examining

power structures, and sharing the success stories from the grassroots. Through these discussions,

we hope to provide folks with the tools and the inspiration they need to start to dismantle

capitalism, decolonize our spaces, and bring about the political revolution that we know

we need. Okay, good morning. Gentlemen, welcome to Blueprints. Can we get you to introduce

yourself to the audience first? Hi, I'm James Campbell. I'm a high school teacher in Toronto,

a member of the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers Federation, um involved in the OTPP Divest

campaign and a bunch of other things, but here primarily to speak about the OTPP Divest work.

Hey, Jessa. Hey, James. um I do some organizing in West Toronto through uh my Palestine Solidarity

Group, through a parent group, through a union and so on. And I'm here as part of the Stop

the DSRB campaign, which is sort of a coalition of some, they happen to be local Toronto groups

um who are opposing this DSRB war. War Bank. I think that best describes it. Acronyms are

my downfall. So we will get into exactly what that is and what it has to do with divesting

from pension plans. Trust me, it's connected very closely. And that's why these two folks

are working together. This is the act of divesting from pension plans from war specifically.

We know climate justice activists do a lot of divestment work as well. But Let's be a

little bit more specific in terms of the OTPP here in Ontario. Who all is working to divest

that massive pension plan from weapons? So we, the OTPP divest campaign emerged um in

the winter of 2023. A bunch of teachers just absolutely horrified about what was going

on. with the genocide in Gaza and trying to figure out how to be addressing this in our

schools, how to support Palestinian students and their families, trying to figure out a

way to have, take on a role as educators, as caregivers of children to find a space to

speak and talk about this and just confronting all sorts of the profound anti-Palestinian

racism, cultures of silence in our schools about addressing this just started meeting almost

on a weekly, bi-weekly basis, just trying to support each other and figure out what work

we could be doing around this. Teachers who have been organizing for years around a whole

bunch of issues. And out of that, we created a group called Educators for Palestine. A bunch

of us had been involved years ago with Teachers for Palestine. And then from that group, a

smaller sort of subcommittee developed around uh focusing on the pension plan and focusing

on the pension plan precisely because, and you did a great episode on this maybe almost

a year ago, because it was, so many teachers were finding it absolutely impossible to speak

and talk about this in our schools. There was such a culture of repression, uh colleagues

getting targeted for even. saying the word Palestine, right? So there was a real feeling

of focusing on our pension plan. This is a way for us to break the silence about the genocide,

break the silence about the war crimes being committed in our names, that this could be

a way to start having this conversation. So we just emerged as uh almost a subcommittee

of educators for Palestine, um focusing on the pension as a place to do education among members.

as well as trying to heed the call of the General Union of Palestinian Teachers from

October 2023 of asking us to do everything we can to restrict and the transfer of arms

to Israel and that includes uh divestment. And I can get into more about how the campaign

has sort of evolved from there, but it emerged from just a group of teachers. uh deeply concerned

about what was going on in the world and therefore in our classrooms and with our students. 2023,

we're three years in almost. What's the response been like from teachers finding out how their

pension plan is invested? Because that's tough, right? Like they need their pension plans.

They want their pension plans to do well. Lord knows weapons make money, right? But they've

also witnessed what at least some of them have been witnessing what we've seen. And generally

weapons manufacturing, they're not too hard to cast as villains, right? Some folks will

offer, know, Carney is pushing and as we'll talk about the war bank, he is pushing that

industry as the answer to absolutely everything. But generally anti-war divestment campaigns

have resonated with people. Have you found that's the case with teachers in Ontario? 100%. I

mean, we can get into this later, but the structure of our plan is uh pretty inside baseball. uh

teachers, our unions have fought uh for years to ensure that we have this incredible pension.

And I think teachers are quite rightly proud of it and see this as a key part of our deferred

salary. This is what is... part of the work of our union and of our labor movement to create

this for education workers, for teachers in particular. um And yet when we find out that

our pension plan is using our name to invest in companies that build products that literally

murder teachers and destroy schools, it is hard. And so in so many ways, once teachers

find out about it, it's been very easy to get teachers on board. There's of course

resistance. Our unions are big tent organizations and there's a lot of different politics within

them. But once we've got motions to the floor, they pass with huge majority. So once, uh

you know, local unions in both our provincial unions, the motion to divest from weapons.

manufacturers and impose a screen on all future investments in war is a pretty no brainer for

the vast majority of teachers that we know that all wars are essentially wars against

children, uh wars against civilians and teachers just know that's a fundamental uh fundamentally

not in line with what our profession is fundamentally about, which is about, you know, care, care

and well being of kids and trying to create more fair futures for those kids. So um it

really does resonate once teachers find out. It's such an uh obvious uh abuse of our name

and our reputation to be investing in war. The contradiction is evident to everybody. It's

hard to untangle as well, right? You don't always know where the investments are going. Is this

a transparent pension plan? know like the university pension plan, there's a piece in the maple

that we'll link. They're doing some work around the students and the workers of post-secondary,

their pension plans. They're sometimes disclosing, getting the institutions to disclose the divestment

is half the battle. How is it with the OTPP? Similar uh and it can be a slippery fish.

we've got the plan does publicly list all its investments over 250 million dollars. So on

the website, they list major investments. It's uh overall, it's about a 300 billion dollar

plan. So it's huge. um And then we've we know about other investments, uh at least in publicly

listed American companies through going through it. uh the Securities and Exchange Commission

filings every quarter. And yet those can be challenging because in one quarter the plan

might be invested in something and then another quarter they might and they use the time lag

very effectively. So when we show up at our annual meetings and sometimes name specific

companies that we know the plan has been invested in, uh we will hear some answers along the

lines of, we're invested in a lot of different companies and Those filings are only a momentary

glimpse of any company that were invested in at any time. there is a certain level of transparency

and yet ah it's not entirely transparent. And so for example, we know the plan has some

investments in Israel, but only because they told us when we were able to get a meeting

with them. But uh those are not publicly listed. uh Those are not available. And so it's the...

Many of most of our information is based on those, the research of just peace advocates.

There's been all sorts of the climate campaign that's being run by uh Shift Action has been

amazing in terms of their research and getting information about the climate, dangerous climate

investments uh of the plan. So there is, we're often using research of others, but uh yeah,

it's not always transparent. I love to hear that you're able to lean on others' reachers.

mean, if someone is going through all of the investments and they find anything, know, send

it our way. um We've done a million episodes on how these movements are actually interconnected

as well. But um it's gaining traction right across Canada, right? There's moves to divest

and divest from really big pension plans, like $300 billion, the politics that must surround.

this $300 billion must be intense. ah Where is the resistance if teachers are on board

and it seems like a no brainer, right? Where is the resistance coming from then to clean

up these pension plans? It's a great question. the resistance unsurprisingly is from the

plan itself. Essentially these plans have been set up Tom Fraser and Kevin Skerritt have

done some really interesting research about this. In the 90s, the plans were set up specifically,

essentially to take uh this huge bucket of money that was essentially from a bunch of public

sector workers and make it available to financial capitalism. So these are huge buckets of

money that... don't necessarily rely on the amount that they take off my paycheck every

month to fund it. So they actually don't need teachers' uh monthly contributions to

fund the plan. It's a huge bucket of money. And so the resistance comes from the plan itself

of uh saying, we think we've heard this many times from the stage, both on climate and on

war. We think there is money to be made in war. We think there is money to be made in climate

destruction. so they're not wrong. They're not wrong. We will continue to invest in it

because we see there uh being profit to be made there. I mean, it's almost quite literally

the main enemy is capitalism and finance capitalism itself. um But thus the core contradiction

here. You know, workers have worked hard to make this pension plan possible for us. oh

Workers work hard throughout their career and we all deserve, every worker deserves

a healthy wage in retirement, right? This is a fundamental social benefit that everyone

deserves. And yet there's this core contradiction of once we give this up to the market, the

market is gonna do what it wants. or at least try to do what it wants. I know the enemy is

capitalism, but someone got up on a stage and who is articulating this on behalf of the

plan? plan is here. We can name some names. No, like, is there a board? Is it not created

of teachers? Can you explain to the listener how who is managing this plan and has the

goal to say, I don't care really what it's invested in. It's making. us money. That sounds

like Mr. Burns. this is all I'll try it. It's almost I'll try and keep it quick. And then

there's a lovely segue to Tyler to talk about war bank pieces. So essentially the plan was

set up. There's two main sponsors. There's the Ontario Teachers Federation, which is made

up of all the major uh teachers unions. We appoint uh half of the board members through

the Ontario Teachers Federation, and then there's the Government of Ontario, which appoints the

other four board members, and then there's a chair of the board. So that's at the board

level. And then we've got the pension executive itself, the board hires the pension executive.

And so all of this has been set up so, as they've told us, so that plan investment decisions

cannot be influenced by politics. And yet... We have a CEO named Joe Taylor who has heard

loud and clear from the labor side of the plant sponsors that we don't want to be invested

in war. We don't want to be invested in war crimes. We don't want to be invested in products

that are used to murder children and teachers and involved in what the UN has called the

scholastic side. or the bombing of the uh school in Iran. That's not in our best interest,

if that's what we're saying fiduciary duty is. And Joe Taylor, the CEO of Ontario Teachers

Pension Plan, has heard that loud and clear. He's known it for three years. He's gotten

hundreds of letters about this. He knows it loud and clear. And yet, from the stage at

this year's pension plan, we heard him say explicitly that The plan is committed to investing in

defense because and I'm quoting him here. We've been asked to do it by our governments to

help them build national security and the defense of Canada. So there's this we're being told

on one hand, no, no, no, we have to be independent. We can't be influenced by any by any of the

the plan sponsors. And yet here he is saying the government wants us to be invested in

war. And so we're going to invest in war. And after hearing for two years directly from

teachers, having the two largest uh teachers unions in the province, the Elementary Teachers

Federation of Ontario, Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers Federation, both voting overwhelmingly

and writing to the plan formally, officially, please divest from any weapons manufacturers

and please impose a screen on a future investments in weapons. He's heard that loud and clear.

He then comes out and this is a handoff to Taylor as a public booster of this war bank

and saying uh that he is very excited to be a public face and using his name and using

the name of Ontario Teachers as a sponsor of the war bank. Ontario Teachers pension plan

is literally called Ontario Teachers in the finance world. It's known as Teachers. um

So it's kind of galling for him to have heard loud and clear from Ontario teachers and then

turn around and use our name to say, uh we want to create this very shady, shadowy, non-transparent

bank, which is essentially going to go to uh the weapons industry. uh And Tyler, I'll hand

it off to you to hear more about this uh war bank. Yeah, I mean, I think I can pick up

both of that handoff from James and then the question from Jessa about where the resistance

is to this, of course, finance capital on one level. um Because one thing that's remarkable,

and this is sort of like the motivating problem that the war bank takes itself to have its

directors and founders, um is that there is more of a reticence these days and it will

quite explicitly say this, that people are less comfortable uh having their money, whether

it's just in their savings account or whether it's in their pension plan, uh going to climate

catastrophe pipelines, private prisons, uh and weapons. uh And the interesting thing is,

and they're like remarkably transparent, they're remarkably frank in their conversations with

one another, even in the literature they put out, that This like huge to them, the impediment

is ESG and James will have much more to say about this, is like environmental social governance

regulations, which I guess is this recent requirement that has like maybe five, 10 years at most

has become a problem for them. And they blame this for declining investment in the weapons

industry. They will sometimes, I mean, this is so crass. They will sometimes say the two

problems are ESG and DEI, you know, so like diversity, equity and inclusion and these other

regulations. So anything getting in the way of capital, um these impediments. they really

are just like acting out the forces, the deeper forces. So I'm just going to, they openly

acknowledge the huge drive, right, to fund the important things like healthcare and education

and the infrastructure that we actually use. I don't mean weapons. facilities, you know,

and they're like, I know you're feeling a lot of pressure from your population to do the

right thing. We're here to help you make sure you can keep those dollars in defense spending.

that did I paraphrase that pretty well? Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, on the one hand, they've got

like the active, the active, the activists, the people who are actually, you know, using

the ESG regulations that have been taken on. And on the other hand, they, they acknowledged

that the population much more widely has seen, for some reason, has this concern about housing,

social spending, and so on, and it's gonna be tough to wrench the money away from them at

this point, they say. And they will just explicitly say this, like the Atlantic Council released

this report where they will, you know, I have a quote somewhere, where yeah, they will just

actually talk about groceries being this concern that the population has. James. Can I read

it out? The quote, I mean, it's just, so this is, it, It's been the idea of it has been

around forever. So originally in internal circles, it was called the NATO bank. So it emerges

out of NATO emerges from the Atlantic Council. This is the document. It's in like the opening

page of the Atlantic Council. It says this issue, which was the inability of national

governance to spend more on military largely stems from political rather than economic factors.

Despite Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions with China, the public

in many European nations in Canada prioritized spending on healthcare, education, and public

infrastructure over defense. The report posits that expecting a drastic shift in these domestic

spending priorities remains unlikely. They are explicit about needing to create this bank

to get around democracy and get around the impulse of people to say, we want our government

spending money on preserving and promoting life, not destroying it. Is a lot of this under

the premise that the fucking weapons industry is short on cash? Like, like I've read some

of the literature around the war bank and it's like, oh, they're small and medium sized. Is

this this mom and pop shit that they're trying to, there's mom and pop weapons manufacturers

that just can't get off the ground. And we're here to stimulate that economy. Like I. They

have lost their minds trying to frame it like this. cannot believe ah that would get any

traction with people. Like, I don't think anybody thinks of that industry as not being already

immensely uh profitable. And we know capital is insatiable, but it's not a struggling industry.

Right? There's other motivations there, right? Like, why are we beefing up our dispense and

military spending? This goes beyond the kind of capital. question, but Tyler, like how does

this then, how do you end up starting to work with the same folks that are divesting from

pensions? Like, did you feel like you had to bring the bank in this issue of the war bank

into it? Well, yeah, you know, so we have sort of a little bit of a ragtag team here of local

activists who've been working on this, researching it in some sense, hoping some academic would

show up. who would just like do the thing, do the thing for us, um did not happen. So we've

sort of like bootstrapped our little organization and then we had World Beyond War uh national

sort of come in and do some of that for us. m And so I in the process, yes, thank you,

Rachel. So in the process of sort of like having conversations, really hoping that some savior

would come in, um I think we had enough conversations. And I think James and the OTPP divest people

sort of like independently landed on the war bank, this DSRB being a problem for one thing,

because Joe Taylor is just an explicit backer of it. um One of two pension plan presidents

who are just like revealing the grift, maybe, I'm not sure how they thought they could get

away with this, but it's Joe Taylor and then the head of OMERS are backing that Toronto

should be the headquarters of this Global War Bank, where the global headquarters would be

here in Toronto. And the thing that they pointed to is look at all of this pension money. James

can maybe correct me on this as well. think it's $2.3 trillion of public pension money

is here in Toronto, this huge pot of money. uh And the way that they're trying to entice

European nations, Indo-Pacific nations, which seems to be like South Korea, Australia, Japan

at the very least. to locate themselves here is in significant part because of this big

pot of pension money, which is like a world, you know, one of the world's biggest sort of

pots of that sort of finance capital. And so Toronto is relevant, pension plans are relevant.

The Atlantic council themselves will also say, not only are commercial banks becoming reticent

because of this ESG problem to invest in weapons, but so are pension plans. And it's because

of people like James in this group who are actively trying to divest and certainly resist

any further divestment. So there's an obvious uh illus sort of pension plan sort of fall

out of this quite naturally. And actually also this is important, a point of resistance against

the bank. Because if we can have enough pension plans, raise enough of a racket, promise enough

of a fight. You know, the big eight pension plans in Toronto, for example, public pension

plans, if they can promise that they're going to raise a fight, if the war bank actually

ends up here, that might make the worldwide directors say, wait, Toronto's maybe not the

place for us. Taking Toronto off their map as a potential location is significant because

to your more general point, Kearney is backing this bank hard. uh He may be, in fact, like

the biggest backer of this bank in the world right now. At one point, I think there was

a lot more appetite from many different countries. But I think European countries have founded

their own little coalitions to have their smaller scale banks. Geographically, Canada is a little

bit more isolated. uh And so Carney is really the one left flying himself out to Luxembourg.

to try to have these conversations, seemingly try to keep other countries on board. So

there's all this motivation anywhere here in Toronto, here in Canada, to really land hard

blows against the bank worldwide. That really sucks though that they're able to point to

these investments that for three years you've been trying to remove as proof that there's

even appetite for weapons investment, not just a lot of pension plan money here. But look,

these teachers, love investing in weapons. Look at how much money we have invested in

weapons. They're looking at the dollars and not listening to the voices that are coming

out of these conventions and all these AGMs that are making these declarations. Yeah,

I was just going to say on the first part of that, mean, the connection is very much through

the incredible work of World Beyond War who from the jump, from the beginning, have been

supporting the teachers divestment campaign. We're all full-time classroom teachers. Some

of us are retired, but everyone is busy. And the work of World Beyond War Canada in terms

of supporting our work for the past two years and then through that, raising the issue

of and connecting us to the issue of the war bank. um has been, that's been a really key

vector and supporter, including um labor against the arms trade and um labor for Palestine.

the all, everyone trying to work on all of these different things all at the same time,

it's been incredibly inspiring really in moments where it's hard to find beauty. It's felt like

quite. beautiful solidarity of everyone sharing information, supporting each other's work,

uh yeah, trying to lift each other's work up. And back to the point about the reputation,

they're called the Maple Eight, the sort of Canadian public pension, and they trade on

that reputation of... sort of Canada being this nice responsible country and we have a uh

competent leader like Mark Carney, we don't have the irresponsible, erratic Donald Trump,

right? It really is trying to frame this as, hey, we're the good, stable, responsible actors

here, invest here, when the reality is this is all invested in the highest crimes in the

world, right? genocide, uh wars of aggression, um the most financially irresponsible in so

many ways, decisions to invest in war and destruction and annihilation or uh annihilation through

uh fossil fuel investment. That's what the maple later are heavily invested in. And

what's interesting for us is that when we were able to get a meeting with the plan early

in our campaign, They were explicit with us that their reputational concerns are central

to many of their investment decisions. They were explicit about, look, we may or may not

be interested in um abiding by international law. We may or may not be interested in, even

though we've signed on to the principles for responsible investment for the UN that says

fiduciary duty can't just be. maximizing quarterly profits for your trustees. has to be investing

in their best interests, which includes following international law. um To violate that opens

you up to all sorts of risks. They've told us that a real significant investment consideration

is reputational damage. And that while they tend not to like to use the word divestment,

they will divest from something that they use the phrase severe controversies. about 20 years

ago, no, not 20 years ago, 2018. So eight, 10 years ago, the plan divested from tobacco,

very proudly divested from tobacco. And not incidental to that was this Rick Mercer rant

that he did about how crazy it was that Ontario teachers were making money from this harmful

product like tobacco. And so this idea of trying to remove the social license to operate became

very clear to us as an essential way to apply pressure on these organizations that are not

open to democratic control. Like we can't, even though our members have voted to divest from

war and war crimes, that vote is meaningless to a $300 billion pension plan. And yet...

the way they are pressureable and movable um is this branding that they have of being thoughtful,

responsible investors is central to their ability to operate. And so just one of the key strategies

of our campaign is to try and burst that bubble. and trying to name explicitly that these are

some of the most dangerous, life-threatening investments on the planet and that to be invested

in them is as irresponsible as it gets. And when these organizations are explicit, right?

It's in the Atlantic Council memo. People want to invest in the healthcare and infrastructure,

right? And they're saying, we need a way to get around that because there's so much money

for us to be made here. Um, and, and so the hope is I, I, I only heard about this, you

know, within the last six months I had, but it's been an idea that's been around for a

long time. And so back to, to Tyler's point of trying to get the word out about what this

is, um, and, trying to force a conversation about this, um, is going to be central to trying

to stop it. Yeah. So if I can just jump in, I don't want to get too into the weeds of what

the DSRB is doing to sort of try to brand itself, to try to entice that money back in, back

into the weapons industry, but even to like accelerate the flow like never before in line

with, know, Carney's goals of this 5 % GDP towards NATO, NATO spending. But they make

it pretty clear that they're sort of, they are going to directly try to take the reputational

harm of investing in weapons out of investing in weapons. So exactly to James's point, they're

completely sensitive to these exact same topics as the DSRB. And so their like, SAV, their

like way of way of addressing it is going to be the same way Carney has been doing it. This

is about national sovereignty. This is about national security. This is about independence.

You know, a little bit of abatance, which they're going to like allude to the US, even though

the US is going to be directly involved in the bank. So this is clearly not going to be a

significant amount of independence. So, but you know, the Omers president in a particularly

vile quote that he gave to the Ford government talks about uh Western democracy. Like this

is a win-win for Western democracy and investor profits is the DSRB. So the way that the point

here is that the reputation here is because Jesse, you alluded to earlier, like there is

a stigma in arms dealing, obviously, right? This is not something that anyone wants to

put their good name But least it used to be, right? Carney's trying to change all that.

But if you can rebrand it in these other ways. So it's not like I'm just meeting on an airport

runway with someone with a bunch of cargo boxes. No, in fact, this is going to this very specific

campaign that is going to be rearming NATO and allied countries and other G7 countries. really

tightly binding to this particular campaign of democracy, the West, the EU, G7 and so

on, and the sovereignty that we need against some unnamed uh actor, which can't be the US.

So then the second point is to take the financial risk out of this as well by actually having

our governments underwrite the financial risk of investing in weapons. Because once you have

these particularly ornate complicated uh machines of war, like an F-16 or an F-35 that require

all of these different little components, supply chains that are across many different countries,

it's actually a serious financial risk to invest in. You're going to have some little bit of

optic technology because you require all of these other things to sort of like also uh

arrive uh on the tarmac for this plane. logistical nightmare. Exactly. It's a logistical nightmare.

And it's a financial one too, because things can go wrong in that supply chain and then

all of a sudden you're out of luck. And so all of the member governments here are going to

put forward public money, massive amounts of public money in order to underwrite those investments.

So insofar as there are losses, that is going to be eaten by the public. They are quite explicit

about this, that there are going to be risk guarantees against losses so that these more

complicated machines of war are not as much of a financial risk. So reputational risk

and financial risk, they've diagnosed these as the two concerns that pension plans and

commercial banks have. So they're directly going to try to take the bite out of them. And these

are the two paths that we take, right? We try to interrupt the finances and some of us,

the supply chain. Right that we saw this with pipelines right the government was like, oh

look everyone's shutting down these pipelines It's getting longer to build. Oh land claims

will will buy the pipeline. Well, we'll don't worry No one's gonna take any losses on this

come invest your money here If you read the budget like Carney's budget if you read the

awful texts that comes with it This has been this is his plan, right? He has he campaigned

on this and the scary part is all the parties actually campaigned on this to a degree where

they feel like if we just made the weapons here in Canada for Canadian workers, then that

would be the solution to buying jets from the United States. Like there was no real objection

to boosting Canadian businesses. And that's how Carney's framing this. Even though the

components will come from everywhere and war profiteers will profit right across the globe.

To your average Canadian, they are hearing that this is going to create jobs. This is going

to stimulate the economy. And on top of it all, the bonus is it will keep us safe. And

you have progressives eating this up to a degree, right? Even though they've witnessed war and

they have all the reasons why they would hate war profiteering, they also see Trump as

a threat and, they're falling into some of the pitfalls that they were meant to fall in.

Do you find you've got to navigate that as well, right across the political spectrum? Absolutely.

mean, I think important, correct me if I'm wrong, Tyler. Olivia Chow was there at the public

announcement of the bid to have the war bank in Toronto. this is, so right there on stage

with Ford and Joe Taylor. This is a, this is a, they have a big tent coalition as well.

uh for war. So we often have it came up at the last pension meeting and it comes up often

in conversations. We will hear from from members and from folks in our pension leadership

saying, well, of course, we don't want to be invested in war crimes and genocide. Of course,

we don't want that. But surely, surely it's OK to be invested in weapons in general. don't

have a problem with the whole category, do we? And so there is that leap that is sometimes

hard for many people to say, all war is a war crime. There is no such thing as a war that

doesn't involve the murder of children and civilians.

Hundreds of years of war has shown us that always, it's kids who are, uh you know, victims of

war. And so that is a big jump. And yet I take great hope from the fact that when presented

with the motion of, hey, do you want to be invested in weapons industry, the vast majority

of teachers say absolutely not. mean, these are and even politically, these are um the

what is it 60 70 % of Canadians, you know, very clearly against this illegal attack on

Iran ah and Lebanon, right? So these are I think increasingly in this moment. um The mask

is off in many ways. about what it means to be invested in war industries. m But it comes

up. This is why for me, you talked about not liking acronyms earlier, right? I think if

we call it the Defense and Security Resilience Bank, well, let's name this for what it is.

It's a war bank. It's a bank that is gonna be primarily interested in funding's war profiteering,

right? And so I think even in our... uh when Joe Taylor got up on the stage and spent a

minute of his presentation talking about his interest in defense, there were teachers

sort of unaffiliated with our group, just teachers who were at that meeting saying, this isn't

defense, these are offensive weapons. That language opens up this whole idea that we

are just defending ourselves from some unnamed enemy. Or others, Canada loves to defend

others. If we get engaged, it's always as the benevolent saviors of some other people suppressed

by a regime. It's so interesting to hear how quickly the Carney framing breaks down or

the framing of this as um these are weapons because of course we need to defend ourselves.

But James, you're suggesting it does not take a long time for people to note that perceptibly

that's not what a huge number of these weapons are in any way involved in. And I mean, the

Carney government just voted down, you know, with the No More Loopholes Act, an actual

regulation that would have helped ensure what the end user actually might be so that uh

weapons don't actually end up just in anyone's hands. But to Jess's earlier point about this

being across the spectrum issue, yes, Mayor Chao, was There was this press conference

in November to announce the DSRB bid to be in Toronto. And Chow was there with Premier Ford,

with representatives from the Karni government, Julie Dzieravitz and Kareem Bardisi. And so

they were all standing on the stage together. I would also note that like, why am I forgetting,

Merit Styles is the Ontario, yes, Merit Styles. So she, she, There is massive amount of

defense manufacturing in Ontario and she has quite clearly had a very difficult time of

not giving explicit support of it. So when Rochelle in Brampton was found to be supplying

armored vehicles used by ICE in Minneapolis, that to my knowledge is the only time she

has stepped up and had any issue with Ontario weapons manufacturing. that same company has

been supplying uh those same armored vehicles to Israeli police in the West Bank did not

raise that as an issue. She has not raised an issue that another Ontario company is uh supplying

uh armored vehicles to the UAE who are using them uh in Sudan to commit horrifying genocide.

So the only time her sort of like political conscience was piqued. was when it was ICE,

when it was Minneapolis. Other than that... When it was very popular and safe to do so.

Yes. Exactly. One, like, just all of the pieces were in place. we, you know, it was literally

just within two days of... um I'm forgetting the guy's... the person's name, but one of

the people murdered by ICE. Preti, Alex Preti. Sorry. Yes, Alex Preti. It was just sort of

like very, very clearly tied to that particular... act. But other than that, she just does not

have the will to engage with this issue at all, despite, of course, being an NDP. I think a

lot of, not to let her off the hook, I would never do that. But when you get involved

with labor, then it gets a little tricky, right? Because these are, some of them are labor

shops that are making these weapons and there is uh great uh rank and file movements to declare

hot cargo, to get tools down in these shops, and we applaud those efforts. But we know

that the leadership isn't 100 % there. The CLC, Canadian Labour Congress, see I'm using

acronyms when I know I shouldn't do that. They are really weak sauce in terms of this issue

and adopting a hot cargo kind of mentality. Yes, this is where then the progressive politics

get really kind of dirty. So I imagine you're focusing on the grassroots and building momentum.

Let's shift into you had an action last week and where you let's talk a little bit how

that went, who came together for it and where you're going from there. This is the third

annual meeting that we've had teachers show. Well, we've been going to these for years,

but the third annual meeting that we've shown up at. and made a confrontation with the

moral crimes of our investments impossible to ignore. We've uh stood up, asked the questions

that needed to be asked, and disrupted the meeting to make sure that everyone in the room is

aware of what's happening. and can't be the three monkeys about it. So what does this

mean for the campaign? we have been, I think, energized by the direct action that we've

taken and are trying to use that as sort of one of the pieces of using it to try and get

the word out. This year, it was really exciting. had relationships with and done work with

Toronto Palestinian families, Toronto Jewish families, World Beyond War, uh Labour for Palestine,

a whole bunch of groups. We did a public vigil um in February 2025 um for all of the 20,000

murdered children in Gaza. We did it outside the Ontario teachers uh pension plan head

office. This year we had an outside demonstration. We had an inside action going on and that felt

very powerful to have both happening at the same time. And we got some very exciting

information from the stage, which suggests that the campaign has had some significant

impact. We are waiting to get some detailed confirmations, um but we are hoping that in

the coming weeks, we're gonna have an exciting. announcement to share. um We need to get our

ducks in the row on that and confirm a few things. um And for us, the campaign uh goes on um

and wanting to turn to using from the beginning, the campaign has been focused not just on

trying to get the plan to divest, but using the campaign as a chance to break the silence

in our schools and in our unions um about the genocide in Gaza. about apartheid and illegal

occupation, about the American empire, the illegal invasion of Iran and Lebanon. For

us, uh it's a way that we can break those silences and remind teachers that this isn't an abstraction.

These are issues that for some of us might feel far away. For many of our students and their

families, these are... These are as close as it gets um and that we have skin in the game.

We have some moral responsibilities here because we're directly profiting from these things.

This is not uh an abstract piece. So the hope is that part of the campaign continues, that

we use these outward facing actions to then be able to come back and have these conversations

within our workplaces and within our unions. We've done... phones, apps, we've put out educational

videos. Some of us have used those for doing lunch and learns within our workplaces. So

that work will will continue. And for us, the ultimate goal is divestment. And that that

will continue until everything is out. We've heard sometimes from the plan and from others

saying, well, three hundred billion dollars, you know, we've only got We've only got a

tiny percentage invested in this company that's operating in the illegal settlements uh Airbnb

or bookings.com. We've only got a tiny little bit of money invested in right this this

top three weapons manufacturers. So it you know, don't worry. We don't have that much

invested for us the the the Our unions have democratically said we don't want any investments

in weapons and this is an ethical bottom line. So for us, we keep pushing this forward and

the beauty of it is we have this, you asked about transparency earlier, there is this

annual meeting every year where the plan directors have to get up and uh face members and answer

some questions. And so that will continue to be an opportunity to bring public eyes and

attention. on trying to remove that social license of the plan and also a chance to engage

with our colleagues and other members. I imagine there's just so many teachers out there that

feel a bit stuck, a bit helpless. Maybe they're not tuned into like local Pali groups. So they

just feel like every day at work, they're really, what they can do about it is curtailed and

finding an avenue that is still. organizing in the workplace, but maybe not radicalizing

your students. Where they found a medium where there absolutely is a lever of power to be

pulling on there. And yeah, not a penny, not a dime. There's a whole other chant that comes

after that, but ah they don't understand. the end goal is ending an occupation of war across

the planet is, you know, but when we're talking about Palestine and we still even with all

of that divested, we just then need to move on to another revenue source for the occupation,

right? So it's like, no, no, we're not done here. The Giller folks organizing around Scotiabank

and the Giller, they were great at that. They tried to be appeased with tens of millions

of dollars at a time. You know, we took X percent out. Aren't you happy yet? And they're like,

no, more, all of it. We are not relenting. And they were then successful in a lot of

that. Right. Giller cut ties, Scotiabank cut much of his Elbit investments. It works.

It works, Tyler. What do you got up your sleeve moving forward? How are we going to up the

pressure, especially around the World Bank that, know, Kearney's got a lot of sympathetic ears

right now with the narratives that he's using to sell this. And he's got Ford lined up. You

mentioned Chow. That doesn't surprise me. You know, it's bad because when I Googled it, like

to learn more about it. All the banks have statements on how excited they are. Every defense magazine

out there has a piece on it. They're salivating. So uphill battle, how are you going to stop

it? You know, the levers of power that we have, James sort of alluded to the fact that the

pension plan, how it's managed is not democratically governed in a certain way. And yet we've just

seen with our legislators in Canada that that's a dead end. Anyways, at least, you know, we're

just simply not going to move them at this point in time because there's so much buy-in to the

Carney vision of this. You know, one of the Toronto writings here just had a by-election

last weekend. Carney still crushed it. uh So there's simply not that out there. But the

mechanisms of pension plans in terms of disruption, in terms of playing on the reputational damage

that can be made in terms of the villains who are leading these plans, putting their faces

on the placards, putting their quotes that they've made about the war bank on these placards,

and both the Omers president and the OTP president have collaborated with the Ford government.

With the OTPP, this is like a particular betrayal, uh where he works for fucking teachers and

he's then um showing up arm in arm with Ford. to promote this war bank. So like double

betrayal there. For folks listening, just Ford has gutted education here in Ontario. He's

a conservative. No teacher should go anywhere near him. That's just like the backstory that

maybe some, sorry, continued. If you know, know. Yeah, right. Fair. So, yeah, eight years

of this Ford government of just like constant attacks, not only in education system, but

teachers, just so much deliberate attacks on the character of teachers. um so putting these,

think pension plans are actually a very, very good avenue because there are those sensitive

points that James just pointed out earlier about reputation, about presenting their executives

as doing harm to the good standing of the Maple Eight, right? know, maple is like this

nice, nice soothing image now. Sweet. Exactly. And that these, they're not actually answering

to the actual mandate of their people or even finance uh that they have gone rogue. Like,

why the heck are Hutchison, who's the Omer's guy and Taylor, the OTPP guy, why are they

off on this uh path with the Ford government and the Carney government about a war bank?

They're there to manage a fund. And so I think those are two sensitive points. With pension

funds specifically, if we pull those off the table as a source of funds, I think that's

huge. If we just promise that Hutchison and Taylor, we're going to go after you, this is

going to look bad. If we pull some of those funds off the table and that money out of Toronto,

all of a sudden, I think that can have serious effects on just making the war bank less of

a viable project. Because again, Carney seems to really be one of the last figures standing

and wanting to back this. I think we can have serious effect in Toronto with pension plans

specifically. with motivating the activists within those plans. There's sort of conversations

with some almost people right now, I can tell you, as well as with some, is it UPP, university

pension? So conversations with those pension plans, I think that can actually be an excellent

avenue to agitate, to promise a fight, and to really take Toronto off of the map and thereby

really start to unravel the very viability of the plan. Absolutely. And a couple of

challenges, complications for us. think one, precisely because we have uh a Ford government

that is explicitly interested in coming directly at teachers, right? Like he has something,

Paul Kalander, the Minister of Education, these are people who are trying to destroy the public

education system. And one of the ways they are doing that is, is coming at teachers unions

and trying to set up teachers unions as the bad guys. um And I think what that's often

meant with the teachers pension in particular, think for very real reasons, there's been

at times reticence of drawing any negative attention to our pension plan because the reality is

the vast majority of workers don't have this kind of defined benefit. pension plan, right?

And that is something that education workers fought tooth and nail for, went on illegal

strikes for, right? Years ago, really fought hard for. And yet, Ford will on one side

of his mouth try and point at something like that uh and trying to paint uh teachers and

teachers unions as somehow, know, elitist when the reality is these are things we have fought

for and are trying to. fight for our students and their families to have in some way, or

form, right? That's what our unions are trying to build a society where everyone has those.

And yet there is a sensitivity to, hey, if we're drawing negative attention to this,

is that going to be weaponized against us? And I think that's real. The thing that I think

has been remarkable and it's been exciting for, I think, all of us involved in the campaign

to see is that Now that we have passed these motions at local levels and at provincial levels,

there's a clear sense that we can, we don't control our pension and we can fight for it

to do the right thing because we don't want those funds to be weaponized against us or

our students. It was a very clear call from the General Union of Palestinian Teachers.

in October 18th, 2023 of we need everybody to do everything they can to end the supply

of arms. between that and the Albanese report, it's so clear that this is not just right.

The hot cargo motion is essential, but also we have a role in getting our pension plans

to divest from these as well. That becomes another way to end the flow of weapons to the actors

that are going to be using these to commit crimes, right? The Canadian rifles that are being

supplied by the UAE and the armored vehicles that are going through the UAE into Sudan,

one of the ways that we can try and end that is by uh trying to hold uh the weapons manufacturers,

the war profiteers to account. And one of the ways we might be able to do that uh is

through these uh through these divestment campaigns. I'll just lastly, Jess, when when we started

this, I think we didn't think it was winnable in some real ways. Right. People have been

doing members of our group have been trying to do, you know, we've been fliering at Ontario

Teacher Pension Plan meetings. since the 90s around uh Caterpillar and all sorts of

investments in apartheid and BDS for climate and we know how slow this uh is. So when we

started that the tactic was very much. Hey, look, let's use this as a place to break the

silence within our unions within our schools. Let's use this as an organizing space. And

yet, you know, inspired by the student encampments, inspired by the No Arms in the Arts campaign,

the work around Scotiabank. And we now think we can win this, right? We've had real wins

in all of these campaigns. oh And I think that's something that we are excited about and energized

by almost unexpectedly. um there are, while the challenges are big, there's real wins at

hand. That makes me feel good when I know like people see these victories and then try

to replicate them or at least believe that what they're doing is possible. I mean, it's why

we do the show, right? If we don't get to hear about some of these victories or these battles,

um we know why we need to do them, but a lot of us just don't know how or where to start.

yeah, It looks like there are battles that have been won, battles that we're in the midst

of, and then upcoming ones. So universities are about to start PACB. PACB is in, what's

that, Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. So it's the academic and cultural- Part of

BDS. First of BDS, yes. uh think UBC has already started theirs. I think U of T and some other

Toronto schools are about to get them going. All of these moving in unison, think are

pretty key. And there's momentum behind us from Giller, from Scotiabank. OTPP are like

right in the middle of the fight. And then there are more ahead of us. Some of these will have

incredible material effect. Like PACB would be massive. um If all of a sudden those ties

with Israel started to get broken at universities, it would have a serious material effect.

Just thinking about the... South African apartheid. And what really caused disruption there,

uh discomfort there, was being cut off from being able to move freely throughout the

world. So anyways, this is part of a really, really large BDS campaign, BD campaigns specifically,

Boycott and Divest aspects of this, that I think is massive and will have really, really important

material effects at whatever pace it moves. I think you're already seeing the federal government

and global governments having to adjust, right? You could argue that in part the war bank

is being sold as a necessity because of the work that's being done on the ground, right?

Like they're trying to find ways to go around democracy, our form of democracy, people's

democracy. And so, you know it's working. It just seems you might have to pivot a few times

as they do, um but that's okay. We will also do that. Gentlemen, is there anything that

you didn't get to say before we sign off? I'll try and keep it succinct. Three things that

I want to make sure to get to that I didn't get to before. One, um we've just launched

our own website at otppdivest.ca. So we're encouraging anyone and everyone who is upset.

and horrified at the idea of Ontario teachers financing uh war and war crimes. That's another

way to think about it. When we're invested in these companies, when we're invested in warmongering

and we're profiteering, we're financing it. We are giving them money to fuel this. So if

you're horrified by that, you can go to otppdivest.ca. ah If you're uh an OTPP member, a pension plan

member, you can sign a letter that will go to the pension plan and your... uh union leadership.

If you're a member of the public, you are also a co-sponsor of the plan through the Ontario

government. So you can make sure to send your own letter as well. So that's one thing we're

wanting to plug. Two other things just for I think in this moment, I think for many people

with the supposed um ceasefire in Gaza that is just being one way to perpetuate the ongoing

genocide. think there's for many teachers sort of questioning or despair about like, well,

what do we do now? And I think one thing that's been another way for us to think about the

rule of divestment and Albanese is clear about this in her report. We're not going to get

accountability at any moment from our government. Our governments are not going to, I don't think

anytime soon, going to be throwing Trump or Netanyahu in jail. And yet, divestment is

one way that we can um provide some form of accountability for these crimes and these crimes

that have been done by our governments and done by our pension plans in our names. I think

this is the very least we can do to try and seek some form of accountability. And I think

that's a way to think about the ongoing relevance of these campaigns that the ask from Palestinian

teachers in our case that is still there. The demand is still there. And I think this is

one way to think about the ongoing relevance. It's a form of accountability. eh And then

lastly, I think one of the big learnings from us teachers are often rule followers. We

like to follow rules. We like to know what the rules are and Not necessarily. It's not necessarily

in our nature to be disruptive uh and to break rules. And that can sometimes be really scary.

um I think for not just teachers, but for a lot of people. And I think what's been really

instructive for us, we have spent years playing by all of the polite rules of procedure in

terms of asking nicely for divestment and sending the letters and going through the processes

that are there. I think what's been really energizing for us and effective is the disruptive

actions. That is what has increased the level of pressure and cognitive dissonance on pension

leaders, on the pension plans themselves. And that's just been such a clarifying thing

for many of us who... are coming to our labor activism, are coming to our uh social justice

pedagogy through a bunch of different ways. It really has been the disruptive action and

trying to make it accessible for people who haven't necessarily taken that kind of disruptive

action before to take that step into a new place that's a little bit scary and a little bit

uncomfortable, but it's been, I think, profoundly energizing for us in terms of keeping moving

this ball forward. And it has been the thing that has been the most effective. Well, blueprints

of disruption. I'm nodding along with you. I can understand that completely. m Every

tactic kind of has its value, but I think people are starting to realize that. the rules that

were made and the avenues that were set for us through a lot of these institutions were

so that we were as ineffective as possible. And I think you just kind of need to go through

it to know for yourself that that is the truth. And then you can break free or you can take

James's word for it and just join him at the next action. Right. Just step right in. But

sometimes you got to get him to sign a petition first. Right. That's the first step. the take

in action and then we can give them the megaphone and whatever kind of tricks we have up our

sleeves to get into some of these meetings where we should be heard but are not being heard.

um Yes. Thank you, James. So that was a valuable add on there. So I'm glad you put your hand

up. Such a teacher, right? James has put his hand up to speak. think throughout the interview,

you can't see this, but he's very well behaved despite what he's telling you. Um, so, uh,

thank you both for coming in and sharing what's working, what might not have worked, who your

villains are, uh, Joe Taylor. And I very much appreciate the efforts that you're going

through to mobilize wherever you can. Um, again, yeah, we will share everything that you shared

in the show notes so people can learn even more about. the pension plan and the war bank and

the work that you're doing to uh change it all. Thank you very much. So grateful, Jess, it

truly for this chance to talk to you and for the podcast. It really is, I think, an important

anchor for a lot of us and really vital political and movement education. Grateful. Thanks, Jess.

That is a wrap on another episode of Blueprints of Disruption. Thank you for joining us. Also,

a very big thank you to the producer of our show, Santiago Helu Quintero. Blueprints of

Disruption is an independent production operated cooperatively. You can follow us on Twitter

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