B.C. finance minister defends public pension investments in Kinder Morgan

B.C.’s finance minister says there’s nothing hypocritical about the province’s public sector pensions investing in Kinder Morgan while the government fights the company’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

B.C. public sector pensions –including those of the public service, B.C. teachers and BC Hydro employees — are administered by a Crown corporation called the BC Investment (BCI) Corporation.

LISTEN: B.C. government pension fund investing in Kinder Morgan

It has 1.12 million Kinder Morgan shares, and has added some 21,000 in recent months. The investment is worth about $18 million of the $135.5 billion BCI manages.

In total, BCI is invested in some 30 oil and gas companies.

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But Finance Minister Carole James says those investment decisions are made independently, and are outside of political control.

“They make the decisions around the investments,” James said.

“It’s a huge portfolio, we have a very good record when it comes to our pensions in British Columbia, we’re known for having very good clear standards, so the B.C. management pension folks make those decisions themselves.”

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Pressed on whether the government could influence those decisions, considering it appoints three members of the body, James said her government maintains a hands-off approach.

“I don’t believe that people would want politicians making decisions about individual investments. We have professionals who do that, we have the BC Investment Corporation, they make the individual decisions, and they do the job on behalf of both employers and employees.”

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But Kris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation called the investment a matter of hypocrisy.

“This shows that maybe oil and gas are the lifeblood of our economy, maybe oil gas and natural resources are the foundation of how we run here in North America… so much so that government employee pensions are indexed on them,” she told Simi Sara Show guest host Michael Smyth.

Sims said no one expects the NDP to be making individual investment decisions.

READ MORE: B.C. continues to be ‘divided’ on Trans Mountain pipeline expansion

But she said if the government’s own pension managers think investments in oil and gas are a good idea, it suggests the government’s position on Kinder Morgan doesn’t square with some of the fundamentals supporting the province’s economy.

“The point here is to tell these politicians to just look around and accept reality,” she said.

“It’s the same as saying they’re going to protest the existence of electricity.”