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Gold/Mining/Energy : TLM.TSE Talisman Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomas who wrote (573)	11/18/1999 10:26:00 AM
From: Tomas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1713

Teachers urged to dump Talisman - But pension fund says it doesn't invest along moral grounds Paul Waldie National Post, November 18 Teachers in Ontario are being asked to urge their pension fund to withdraw its investment in Talisman Energy Inc. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, one of the country's biggest pension plans, is the largest shareholder of Calgary-based Talisman, which owns part of a controversial oil project in Sudan. "I thought Canadian teachers were supposed to teach about slavery and genocide, not fund it," said Jesse Sage of the American Anti-Slavery Group, a Boston-based group which alleges that the Sudanese government sponsors slavery. "Teachers should ask themselves, are they willing to take a stand on this?" The Texas Teachers Retirement Fund recently sold its 100,000 shares in Talisman. Fund officials said the sale was strictly a business decision and had nothing to do with human rights. But Mr. Sage says the sale came after his group began pressuring the fund. New York City's civic employees' pension plan is also considering selling its 200,000 Talisman shares. Lee Fullerton, a spokeswoman for Ontario Teachers, said the pension fund has no plan to sell its 4.5 million Talisman shares, which amount to 4% of the company's publicly traded shares. Like most pension funds, Teachers buys positions in all stocks included in the Toronto Stock Exchange's index of 300 leading stocks. "Talisman is in the index and because we are a fund of over $60-billion, we tend to be the largest shareholder of funds in the index," she said. She added that Teachers has no legal mandate to make investment decisions based on human rights issues or other social considerations. And she said the Talisman situation "really, is more of a political issue." The focus should be on "investigating the situation and for governments to work together to help to bring peace to the Sudan," she said. Barbara Sargent, president of the Ontario Teachers' Federation, said the federation is looking into the situation and will press the pension plan to sell the shares if a Canadian government task force en route to Sudan uncovers human rights violations. "Human rights are far more than dollars," she said yesterday. "We can urge our members on the pension plan's board to do the right thing." Jim Smith, head of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, said he believes the pension fund should be more sensitive to ethical issues. However, he said he wasn't yet sure whether the fund should pull out of Talisman. Ontario Teachers has come under fire before for its investment decisions. In April, several teachers challenged the fund's managers during its annual meeting over a variety of investments including stakes in tobacco companies. Another major investor in Talisman is TIAA-CREF, the largest teachers' pension fund in the United States with about $200-billion (US) in assets. Seven years ago, it set up a social choice account that makes investments along ethical lines. Teachers can direct their pension contributions into that account, which currently stands at about $3.5-billion (US). Some other American pension funds have also developed ethical accounts to screen out investments such as tobacco companies. nationalpost.com