By Mark Birnbaum, World BEYOND War, April 21, 2026

On Thursday, April 16th, teachers, parents, students and allies protested inside and outside of the Annual General Meeting for the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. One of the largest pension funds in the world, the OTPP has extensive investments in the weapons industry that is complicit in facilitating genocide and violence across the globe – from Palestine to Sudan to Iran to Congo.

Despite some previous successes, teachers’ calls for full divestment have been largely ignored. With anger and resentment growing, inside the meeting teachers disrupted OTPP CEO Jo Taylor’s speech, confronting him on acting against the will of plan members not wishing to see their international contemporaries and students murdered in their name.

“I’ve dedicated my life as a teacher to the care and well-being of children,” says elementary teacher Laura McCoy. “…[I]t is outrageous for the Teachers Pension Plan to use our money, and our name, to finance and profit from companies complicit in a genocide, in the murder of over 20 thousand children in Gaza.”

Taylor is also championing the Defense, Security, and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a new war bank that will facilitate and accelerate further investments in weapons – a position which he was challenged on during the action. Historically, the plan has divested from “socially-irresponsible” industries like tobacco, and was in solidarity with international calls for divestment from apartheid South Africa; Taylor’s full embrace of the war industry is alarming and against the spirit of what the Plan has stood for.

Last night teachers confronted their pension (one of the world’s biggest) to demand it immediately divest from war crimes and the murder of children, and stop championing the launch of the new DSRB war bank.
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“How can any teacher in Ontario sleep at night knowing our pension fund is using our retirement fund to fuel war?” demands Nadia Shoufani, an elementary school teacher. “Every history teacher in Ontario has taught a unit on the causes of WW1, and knows that one of the major causes of that war, of all wars, is militarism. It’s outrageous that our pension plan is now using our reputation to help build a war bank.”

Last week, World BEYOND War joined with allies to launch a national campaign to Stop the Global War Bank, denouncing Canada’s pursuit of hosting the bank’s global headquarters. The NATO-pooled, weapons-spending accelerator is championed by federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government. The full-throated push to have Canada be at the centre of the next level in forever-war is seeing growing resistance, with over 33 signatories from national labour, faith, human rights, legal, and environmental organizations signing onto an open letter opposing the new bank. The new institution seeks to circumvent democratic oversight, financial regulations, and divert desperately-needed money from social programs, Indigenous reconciliation, and the environment; should the scheme fail, it will put Canadian citizens on the hook for the highly-leveraged, risky loans to weapons manufacturers.

Based on the most recent public filings, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan holds investments in the following companies that are complicit in genocide: Honeywell, Safran, GE Aerospace, Leidos, Textron, Caterpillar, Microsoft, AirBnB, Bookings.com, and Northrop Grumman. These companies’ products are complicit – in the Gaza genocide alone –  in the murder of over 20 thousand children (Save The Children), almost 500 Palestinian teacher colleagues, and what the UN has called a Scholasticide: the “systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.”

U.S. and Israeli partnerships and procurements from these companies continue to facilitate and exacerbate the genocide in Gaza, the unprovoked war on Iran, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Lebanon. Inside the meeting, when pressed on the Plan’s pivot to the war bank that will fund these crimes, Jo Taylor responded, “…our view was that as a [sic] institution, it would be helpful for Ontario. …it could be a job creator, and on that basis, we supported it.”

Outside on the street, over 70 people gathered to greet passersby with flyers and chants for divestment. Multiple speakers delivered impassioned speeches against continued investment in weapons and war, decrying complicity in genocide and war crimes.

Tyler Delmore, TDSB parent and anti-war organizer, explained that, “…the bank’s purpose is to facilitate private investment from national banks, from equity funds, and from pension funds, into weapons and military technology…[Ontario premier Doug] Ford’s sale pitch to the bank’s global directors, is that Toronto is ideal, because Toronto is where Canada’s public pension fund money is.” In the endless pursuit of economic growth, profits will be made in the name of Canada’s teachers, and at the expense of the lives of teachers, students, workers, children, women, and men across the world.

Numerous teachers disrupted OTPP President Jo Taylor’s speech, chanting, “Ontario teachers, we can’t hide. We are funding genocide!” After being ejected, teacher Nadia Shoufani erupted onto the street, to the delight and cheers from the crowd. “Those inside the OTPP, every year they hold their AGMs, to tell us how great they’re doing, how much profit they’re making…from investments in weapons,” she declared over loudspeaker.

Ameena Sultan, member of Toronto Palestinian Families and lawyer at Legal Aid Ontario, highlights the cynical amorality that drives investment: “Perhaps the fund managers and decision makers simply take the view that investment and corporate decisions are separate from international law. Separate from morality”.

These investments appear to be an explicit violation of the Plan’s commitments to Fiduciary Duty as outlined in The UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI)  – which the Plan signed onto in 2011. The UNPRI makes clear that continuing to invest in companies profiting from the violation of international law or war crimes means those investors are  “failing their fiduciary duties and are increasingly likely to be subject to legal challenges.”

Adham Diabas, member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, reiterated that nothing short of universal divestment will be tolerable: “…Jo Taylor, and the likes of him, will never get no peace, until our pension plans, our institutions have divested from their complicity.”

No justice, no peace.

Learn more about the teachers’ divestment campaign and take action in solidarity at worldbeyondwar.org/otpp

More information on the campaign to stop the war bank and opportunities to get involved are available at linktr.ee/stopthedsrb

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