Is your money helping to fund nuclear weapons? Maybe you aren’t directly investing in nuclear weapons, but a new report shows that your bank could be. Your bank doesn’t ask where they can put your money, so they use it to invest wherever they please - including in nuclear weapons. But your money and your voice matter. Find out if your financial institution is banking on the bomb, and then act.

PAX and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), regularly publish a report that details nuclear weapons producers and their investors. Their newest report published in December 2022 finds that there are currently 24 nuclear weapons producers in the world - that is one less than in the last report! The company that is no longer producing nuclear weapons is a massive Indian company called Larsen & Toubro which has been very loud about their change, showing that awareness and public feeling against nuclear weapons is growing.  There are no Canadian producers, but there are producers from some of our allied countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and France. A full list of countries who produce nuclear weapons can be found in the report.

But what about Canada? Just because we don’t physically produce nuclear weapons, doesn’t mean Canadian financial institutions aren’t investing in nuclear weapons producing companies. Investments in nuclear weapons can do damage. Without the billions of dollars of investments that go towards creating these weapons, they wouldn't be created. And where do these investments come from? It could be your own bank!

In Canada, there are 12 financial institutions which invest in a nuclear weapon producing company. We are the fifth highest investing country with a total of $26,383,000,000 USD in investments - that’s  35,933,118,340 Canadian Dollars going towards the most indiscriminate weapon to ever exist! Shockingly, that is almost 1 million dollars PER Canadian invested in nuclear weapon producing companies. Here is the list of financial institutions that have invested in one or more of the 24 nuclear weapons producing companies:

1. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) invests in Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc., Airbus Group, BAE Systems Plc, Boeing, Fluor, General Dynamics, Honeywell International, Harris Technologies, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon Technologies
2. Manulife Financial invests in Airbus Group, and Huntington Ingalls Industries
3. Toronto-Dominion (TD) Bank invests in Airbus Group, BAE Systems Plc, General Dynamics, Honeywell International, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Jacobs Engineering, Harris Technologies, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, and Textron
4. Black Creek Investment Management invests in BAE Systems plc
5. CIBC invests in Bechtel and Honeywell International
6. BMO Financial Group invests in Boeing, Fluor, Jacobs Engineering, Leidos, and Raytheon Technologies
7. Scotiabank invests in General Dynamics, Honeywell International, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Jacobs Engineering, Harris Technologies, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon Technologies
8. Sunlife Financial invests in General Dynamics, Honeywell International, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, and Safran
9. CI Financial invests in Jacobs Engineering
10. Desjardins Group invests in Jacobs Engineering
11. Fiera Capital invests in Jacobs Engineering
12. Power Financial Corporation invests in Jacobs Engineering, Harris Technologies, Northrop Grumman, and Textron

If your bank is on the list, now is your chance to take direct action against nuclear weapons. Call, write or email your bank and let them know what you think. Speak with customer service, and just let them know you don’t want your money invested in nuclear weapons companies.  Their job is to listen to your concerns. For more tips on how to express your concerns to your bank, visit this page on the Don’t Bank on the Bomb website. Let us know how your call goes by emailing us at [email protected].

With enough calls pouring in, they will reconsider investing your money in places you don’t want it to go. This is already happening - just in the past year 55 new financial institutions divested from nuclear weapons. It is possible for banks and producers to turn away from nuclear weapons. Let’s keep this momentum going – as you have seen above it’s possible for companies to stop producing nuclear weapons! You can help by letting your friends who are from countries where nuclear weapons are produced know that this is happening. They can reach out to their local campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and make some noise!

Your money matters and so does your voice - so let’s use them to abolish nuclear weapons!