More than 70 women leaders in finance, the corporate world and civil society are calling on securities regulators to restart work to require Canadian public companies to disclose information on their climate emissions and risks.
Former Liberal climate and environment minister Catherine McKenna, one of the organizers of the action, said a recent decision by market regulators to stop work on mandatory climate reporting stands against the need to transition Canada to a lower-carbon economy. “This is about how we are going to move forward with the world to create the conditions to attract investments that we need to build together,” she told participants yesterday at the annual conference of the Responsible Investment Association (RIA), Canada’s umbrella group for sustainable finance.
Mandatory climate reporting “is not a massively disruptive thing,” McKenna said. “We need disclosure because that’s how the market really focuses.”
The call to action was issued by Women Leading on Climate, a network of women financial, business and civil society executives, in a public letter to the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), the umbrella network of provincial securities commissions. The letter was signed by more than 70 women executives along with some male supporters. It noted that jurisdictions representing more than half of the world’s gross domestic product have either adopted or are in the process of adopting globally aligned standards, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and Brazil.
“Let’s be clear: the global shift to climate disclosure is happening with or without Canada. Further delay risks capital flight from Canadian firms and degraded global competitiveness for Canadian companies,” said Barbara Zvan, president and CEO of the University Pension Plan, in a statement.
Building on years of work, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), a global voluntary initiative based in Montreal, and its Canadian branch have developed a set of disclosures on carbon dioxide emissions and climate risks and management policies, which companies can choose to voluntarily implement. Climate-oriented investors expected the CSA to enshrine the ISSB and Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) rules into mandatory climate disclosure requirements.
Instead, in April the CSA announced it would “pause” work on its climate reporting plan, citing “recent developments in the U.S. and globally.” Many people in the sustainable finance community saw the pause as a retreat in the face of a widespread pullback in climate targets and goals by companies and financial institutions.
A pause ‘really is a pause’
But Grant Vingoe, CEO of the Ontario Securities Commission, told the RIA conference that the CSA decision is not a rejection of climate reporting, but rather a temporary break in the work to impose mandatory compliance. “It’s really important to emphasize that a pause really is a pause,” he told conference participants.
In his remarks, Vingoe argued that it would have been perilous to announce new mandatory corporate disclosures back in April, when Trump had just imposed global tariffs, creating havoc in financial markets and triggering public anxiety. “If we had gone out with a consultation at that point in time, it might have set back the ISSB and CSSB agenda for a generation, not just for a pause,” he said. “The notion that we’ve abandoned climate disclosure, that disclosure is in the rear window, is inaccurate.”
Vingoe said the CSA will continue to do research work on climate, documenting how Canadian companies are responding to the voluntary ISSB and CSSB standards as well as how Canadian companies operating in California and Europe are responding to mandatory climate-reporting rules in those regions. Vingoe also said the CSA would work on “safe harbour” provisions to protect companies from legal liability as they develop higher disclosure standards.
Vingoe said that, in his own view, CSA will be in a position to revisit mandatory disclosure in “the next couple of years.”
Protest disrupts proceedings
The topic of climate disclosure dominated much of the start of the opening day of the two-day RIA conference, held this year in Toronto. But for the first time in its 30-year history, the conference was punctuated by a protest, as roughly 10 members of a tenants’ association entered the large plenary hall and started chanting slogans against the PSP Investments pension plan during a closing panel. PSP is an investor in a company that owns apartment buildings in the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood in Toronto, site of disputes over evictions and rent increases. Miranda Hubbs, a PSP board member, was participating on the panel when the disruption occurred.
RIA CEO Patricia Fletcher, moderating the session at the time, permitted the protesters a few minutes to continue and then asked everyone in the room to leave. Security staff escorted the protesters out of the room and the panel proceeded, although Hubbs was removed by a security detail.
Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).
