That was the message from several hundred protesters, who gathered in front of Vancouver’s TD Tower Saturday in a bid to get the bank to divest from Kinder Morgan.
TD was one of six major Canadian financial institutions targeted by demonstrators, but was first in their crosshairs.
A primary lesson in political communications is that there is room in the public mind for only one big political news story at a time, and whoever drives that one big story wins twice: their story sets the headlines, and stories they don’t like are pushed to the margins.
Trans Mountain’s expansion was never commercially viable. It has needed unprecedented support from the get-go when in 2011 the National Energy Board (NEB) approved a $286-million special fee fought by Canadian oil producers. Chevron described it at the time as an “extraordinary precedent … If they (Kinder Morgan) need financing, then they should go to the market” and get it.
A Kinder Morgan shareholder vote for an annual environmental sustainability report indicates investor concern about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal, says an Indigenous leader who addressed the company's annual shareholder meeting in Houston on Wednesday.
Chief Judy Wilson was among a group of Canadian Indigenous leaders who reaffirmed their opposition to the Trans Mountain proposal at the meeting where shareholders passed two of three non-binding proposals calling for improved environmental reporting.
Firm faces steep costs and “unlimited liability” for a Trans Mountain spill.
On April 8, Kinder Morgan Canada held an unusual Sunday conference call to announce an immediate halt to all non-essential spending on the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline, threatening to pull the plug on the project completely unless the escalating political conflicts over the pipeline could be resolved by May 31.
