CPP Supports Depleted Uranium Weapons Production

PEJ News - While many people are aware that damage is being done overseas, most do not know the extent of it, or the degree to which Canadians and the Canadian Pension Plan are complicit in this damage.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of nuclear reactions. When it is produced by nuclear power plants, it is considered radioactive waste. The half-life of depleted uranium is 4.46 billion years. It’s useful in war because it can be converted to one of the densest metals that exists, so it can be used as both armor-piercing bullets, and as a material in the production of body and tank armor.

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When used as a weapon, in ammunition that is spread indiscriminately over country-sides, this radioactive chemical will be a part of the atmosphere for literally billions of years. It has been estimated that 800 tons of Depleted Uranium has been used in Afghanistan, which is the radioactive equivalent of roughly 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. Rain captures the dust clouds, which then contaminates ground water and food sources, making great swaths of land toxic and uninhabitable.

Studies have shown that people living in these areas — inhaling the substance, drinking contaminated water, and eating food grown in contaminated soil — will quickly reach both acute and chronic exposure levels, which can trigger a vast array of health issues, including mutations, reproductive defects and extremely high cancer rates.

In Iraq, doctors at a hospital in Basra, where depleted uranium weapons were used frequently in the first Gulf War (and are being used again now), have noticed an alarming trend in the health and wellness of the children in the area. Charting incidents of children’s illness between 1990 and 2001 shows an incidence increase of 426 per cent for general malignancies, 366 per cent for leukemias and an over 600 per cent increase in birth defects.

This is not a scorched earth policy; it is a toxic earth policy. Military forces are not only destroying life, but creating an environment that is inhospitable to life for billions of years to come.

There is action that we as individuals can take. But before I can give you that good news, I have to hit you with one large piece of bad news first: Canada, and Canadian taxpayers, are supporting the production of these weapons.

Through the investment of both the Canada Pension Plan and the BC Pension Plan, as well as provincial plans for other provinces, funds are being invested in companies that produce depleted uranium weapons and delivery systems. BC’s investment company alone has almost 200 million sunk just into depleted uranium weapon producers (Lockheed Martin; Texas Instruments; Boeing; Northrup/Grumman; General Dynamics, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin; and General Electric) and that’s not counting the many other weapons and munitions producers that the public's money is invested in who are profiting off of and perpetuating this cycle of war and violence.

Now, I know I wasn’t consulted on this use of my money, and none of you were either. The CPP is not an optional program; everyone contributes to this, and these contributions are going to fund corporations that destroy the environment.

I encourage you to write federal finance minister, Jim Flaherty, the provincial finance minister Carol Taylor, and your local MPs and MLAs. Tell them you want the government to divest public funds from these war profiteers.

We do not have to be complicit in this destruction of the environment. Make it clear that even if government bodies do not have a social or environmental conscience, we do. That we will not allow this support to continue.