Rights Action forwards this info from COAT (Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade) concerning CPP (Canada Pension Plan) investments in companies involved in production of cluster bombs.
American and Canadian workers, who pay deductions into public and private pension funds, are invested not only in mining operations found to be causing health and environmental harms and human rights violations in countries around the world, but also in the infamous military industrial complex.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Richard Sanders, COAT, overcoat@rogers.com, http://coat.ncf.ca
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OPEN LETTER
TO: the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB)
FROM:  the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)
Dear Board Members of the 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 "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 $1 million.
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 the specialized anti-personnel warheads that it is designed to deliver.
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.
I presume that your board knows that it is investing in this particular weapons maker. I presume that you have no problem with this.  However, many Canadians 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 irrelevant.  It is morally reprehensible and that's bad enough.  So please don't waste my time (or yours) telling me this is 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 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. (The irony here is 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 sub-munition 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 war fighter, 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 also 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?
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 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)
overcoat@rogers.com
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:
CC.: All MPs, Ottawa City Councillors, media
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