Rainforest Action Network

By Sean B. Pasternak and Doug Alexander   

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Protesters hung a 15-foot-long
banner at the Toronto headquarters of Royal Bank of Canada,
asking the wife of Chief Executive Officer Gordon Nixon to help
end the bank’s involvement in funding tar sands projects.   

“Please Help Us, Mrs. Nixon.com,” read the banner, hung
this morning on poles near the entrance of the headquarters of
Canada’s largest bank. A group of firefighters, reporters and
about two dozen onlookers watched as police removed the banner.

Rainforest Action Network, a San Francisco-based
environmental-activist group that led the protest, said Royal
Bank lent C$2.2 billion ($2.03 billion) in 2007 alone to oil and
gas companies operating in Alberta’s tar sands, which hold
deposits of bitumen, a type of crude that can be processed by
oil refiners.

The group wants Janet Nixon to “lend her strong and
influential voice to the campaign,” said Joshua Kahn Russell, a
spokesman for the group. Kahn Russell said Janet Nixon was named
on the banner because she is a “committed environmentalist.”

Janet Nixon didn’t immediately respond to a message left at
her home.

“The idea is to send the message that RBC is the ATM of
the tar sands,” Kahn Russell said in an interview. “We’re
asking them to pull their financing from the tar sands and
protect indigenous rights.”

Royal Bank spokeswoman Katherine Gay said the bank has been
having an “ongoing dialogue” with the group for months.

“We’re really proud of our reputation in terms of
environmental responsibility,” Gay said.