Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
March 06, 2024 - 11:45 AM
Students at UBC Okanagan and Okanagan College will hold protests tomorrow on their respective campuses to oppose the Royal Bank of Canada's presence on campus and to call for the bank to divest from neocolonial projects.
Students at UBCO will stage a demonstration at the RBC OnCampus branch at the University Centre Building at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 7, and join 12 other student groups across the country who will be protesting, according to a news release from the coalition of protesters called Change Course.
“We are shutting down RBC's branch on the UBCO campus to show that this generation of students does not stand for the colonial and genocidal violence funded by RBC," UBCO student Sheela Mbogo said in the release. "RBC will not have the investment or employment of any young person who is concerned about the climate crisis, genocide of Palestinians, or Indigenous sovereignty from Turtle Island to Palestine.
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"We call on RBC to immediately end full financial support for Palantir, the Coastal GasLink and Trans Mountain pipelines, and all fossil fuel expansion projects."
Students at Okanagan College will commence their protest at 11 a.m. tomorrow by passing out flyers and stickers outside of the RBC branch at 1000 KLO Road to raise awareness of the bank's investments and their consequences.
“As students, many of us are motivated in our studies in the pursuit of a better world, and we would be right to expect our educational institutions to reflect this shared value," Okanagan College student Jake Yule said in the release.
Our community knows all too well the disastrous effects of climate change and deserves to recognize its perpetrators. No matter how a portfolio performs there is no good investment in resource extraction; because there is no return on investment if there is no future."
The protest group Change Course said the protests are a result of RBC investing in neocolonial projects in the midst of the climate crisis and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Since 2016, $270 billion have been invested in fossil fuels by RBC, including investments in the Coastal Gaslink pipeline and the Trans Mountain Expansion which violate the sovereignty of Indigenous nations, the group said.
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