This article was published by The Energy Mix on Nov. 26, 2024.
By Gaye Taylor
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s decision to put former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper in charge of the province’s largest investment manager was framed as a confidence boost, but critics argue the move is overreaching, politically motivated, and reckless in the face of escalating climate risks.
Harper’s appointment for a three-year term as chair of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) board comes around two weeks after provincial Finance Minister Nate Horner abruptly dismissed the CEO and board of directors, reports CBC News. The shake-up sparked widespread debate about government overreach.
AIMCo, one of Canada’s largest public investment managers, oversees C$168 billion in assets, including Alberta’s main savings account, its Heritage Savings Trust Fund (HSTF), and pension plans holding the retirement savings of 500,000 Albertans. The province also reinstated three former board members—with a new CEO and additional directors to be named under Harper’s guidance. Smith said the changes will help grow the HSTF to more than $250 billion within 25 years, calling Harper’s role a step toward “strong governance oversight” in a media release.
Harper said he would take up the position on a pro-bono basis as an act of public service, adding that he felt “uniquely positioned to help the organization improve its governance.” But pension experts and advocates are raising red flags about his experience, conflicts of interest, and the manner in which he was appointed after the province swooped in to clean house at AIMCo.
It was a move that “shook the pension world,” veteran reporter Ian Austen writes in the New York Times. Keith Ambachtsheer, emeritus director of the International Centre for Pension Management, told Austen it looked like a “Soviet style” purge.
“I’ve talked to people from Australia to the United Kingdom about what’s going on,” Ambachtsheer said. “The Canadian pension model has become the global standard for how you should think about these things. Now here is a government that is kind of stepping outside those rules.”
Horner had cited “low investment returns and rising operating costs, management fees, and staffing [costs]” to justify the overhaul. But Ambachtsheer told Institutional Investor those claims were unsupported by AIMCo’s annual reports.
‘Icing on a Distasteful Cake’
Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) President Gil McGowan told CBC News Harper’s appointment was “the icing on a very distasteful cake,” and accused the government of politicizing AIMCo’s leadership.
“While Harper has a lot of government experience, he has zero pension experience,” McGowan said, adding that he fears the board will prioritize “their own agenda” over the priorities of the hundreds of thousands of Albertans. Horner rejected the accusation that the appointment was political, but Alberta NDP finance critic Court Ellingson said the very appearance of it will “raise questions” about AIMCo’s independence.
McGowan also criticized the Smith government’s passage of Bill 22 two years ago, which forced public pension plans in Alberta to use AIMCo as their fund manager in perpetuity. The AFL and eight other Alberta unions are demanding union representation on the AIMCo board, and a return to “optionality”—a provision that allows pension funds to fire their manager if they feel it is not acting in their best interests. Alberta’s move to appoint “what is clearly a political board” to AIMCo is such an occasion, said McGowan.
For instance, one of the individuals rehired to the AIMCo board, tax lawyer Jason Montemurro, donated over $11,000 to the United Conservative Party over the last three years, writes the Edmonton Journal, adding that Horner will make no further appointments till they are discussed with Harper.
McGowan also said he was worried about the fund’s future direction. Smith’s move to grow and transform Alberta’s $24.3-billion HSTF can only be possible with very risky investments, he suggested, citing oil and gas as a sector carrying risk.
Climate Risks and Fossil Fuel Ties
The prospect of AIMCo-managed funds being moved into “high-risk oil and gas” also raised concerns for Toronto-based pension watchdog Shift Action. Alberta’s political interference could make navigating escalating climate risks impossible, Shift wrote in a recent release.
One indicator came in June, when Smith expressed her intent to use the HSTF to “de-risk projects that we’re finding difficult to be able to get financing.” Yesterday, The Canadian Press reported that Smith wants to de-risk oil and gas pipeline projects in the wake of Donald Trump’s election win in the United States.
Labelling AIMCo as “Canada’s worst major pension fund” for managing climate risk, Shift said the fund is lagging as its Canadian and global peers race to adopt science-based investment goals, climate transition plans, and a variety of climate risk management tools. In recent years, AIMCo lost $4 billion in a bad bet on fluctuating global oil prices, not long before since-dismissed CEO Evan Siddall made a pitch against fossil fuel divestment—a position that contradicted AIMCo’s own policies, Shift said at the time.
Now, “AIMCo’s new chair and directors themselves have direct entanglements with the fossil fuel industry,” Shift wrote in its more recent release. Director Navjeet Singh (Bob) Dhillon—one of the three dismissed members brought back—was also a board member for Strathcona Resources, a rapidly growing oil and gas producer. Harper’s political ties and his role as a working equity partner with Azimuth Capital—a private equity firm with $5.8 billion invested primarily in oil and gas—deepens the entanglement.
“Alarmingly, Alberta’s finance minister has indicated that Harper’s appointment as AIMCo chair didn’t require clearance from the province’s ethics commissioner, despite reports that the commissioner’s office had already flagged potential conflicts of interest,” Shift wrote.
With Alberta’s economy already “deeply vulnerable” to overexposure to the oil and gas industry, Shift said, “it is critical for Alberta to have an independent public investment manager able to prudently manage climate-related risks and invest for the future with the hard-earned savings of Albertans.”
Be the first to comment