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HomeEducationRBC's CEO to speak at Grant Hall on Nov. 5, draws criticism

RBC’s CEO to speak at Grant Hall on Nov. 5, draws criticism

The Queen’s Financial Association (QFA) is hosting its ‘Road to Ceo’ event at Grant Hall tomorrow evening, with David McKay, president and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), to speak.

AKA Autonomous Social Center and Katarokwi Solidarity—two local activist organizations—have spoken out against McKay’s presence at the event, citing RBC’s financing of fossil fuels and the Coastal GasLink pipeline’s worksites on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.

“[RBC] is Canada’s largest fossil fuel project funder, including the [Coastal Gaslink] pipeline project on … the traditional territory of the [Wet’suwet’en] people, who’ve never consented to this dangerous project,” AKA Autonomous Social Center wrote in an Instagram post.

“Queen’s and RBC share investments in this pipeline, but they also share many alumni and leadership; Queen’s also takes millions in funding from RBC.”

Katarokwi Solidarity is calling for Indigenous activists and allies to “[c]ome out and show [their] support for Indigenous sovereignty by saying no to the fossil fuel industry.”

“This is an excellent opportunity for [McKay] to see that the public are seeing through his greenwashing and for him to see/hear our demands – to stop funding expansion projects and to respect Indigenous rights as he promised,” Katarokwi Solidarity wrote in a Facebook post

This comes after last Friday’s Canada-wide protest against RBC’s financing of fossil fuels, with Kingston, Toronto, Mississauga, and Ottawa among the partaking cities.

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