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A seemingly benign decision this month by Vancouver City Council to “encourage” its pension plan to “continue using the UN Principles of Responsible Investment” may be opening a new front in the fight against Alberta’s oil sands pipelines through British Columbia.

Canadian environmental activists, backed by major players in the United States movement to fight climate change, are pushing the city’s pension fund to divest from companies involved in the coal, oil and gas industries.

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Vancouver is the first stop in a national effort to get cities, universities and other public institutions to divest from Canadian energy stocks over the next year, activists say.

To be sure, big Canadian investors are unlikely to dump energy stocks wholesale — the sector is just too large a part of the Canadian capital markets.

But the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) takes the movement seriously as another front in “an ongoing public relations war” where the energy sector’s “social licence” is at stake, says Geraldine Anderson, spokesperson for CAPP.