Investors not walking the talk when voting on climate commitments, report

TORONTO –

A report from an investor-focused advocacy group raises questions on how nicely a few of Canada’s largest traders are assembly their local weather commitments.

The report from Investors for Paris Compliance (IPC) appears to be like on the voting information on shareholder proposals by 19 Canadian members of Climate Action 100+, a worldwide coalition with round 700 members representing over $68 trillion in belongings below administration.

The coalition is constructed on the precept that traders’ engagement with corporations on local weather disclosure and emission discount methods important to attaining the targets of the Paris settlement, and is according to their duties as traders.

But the IPC report discovered that Canadian coalition members took extensively differing approaches to the shareholder voting side of these efforts, with the likes of Batirente, Vancity and Genus Capital Management both supporting or abstaining from all of the shareholder proposals they voted on, whereas others like AIMCo, RBC Global Asset Management, and Guardian Capital LP voted in opposition to all the 14 Canadian proposals analyzed.

The Canadian shareholder proposals, none of which handed, had been dominated by efforts to present shareholders a say on the businesses’ local weather plans, known as “say on climate,” and in addition included efforts to push for a local weather change committee at Scotiabank and for Brookfield Asset Management to undertake greenhouse fuel emission discount targets.

Shareholder proposals for U.S. corporations, centered completely on adopting emission discount targets, bought extra help from Canadian traders, together with some from those that voted in opposition to all the Canadian proposals.