Not only is Adam Borgatti Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, at Aecon Group, but he also spends some work hours each month as a podcaster, cohosting a two-year-old show with over 2,000 listeners called “Road to Net-Zero.” Together with Prabh Banga, the Toronto-based construction giant’s Vice President of Sustainability, he looks at sustainability practices and follows Aecon’s journey to carbon neutrality in episodes each lasting roughly 20 minutes.
Carving time from a packed work schedule to podcast is one way to gauge IR’s growing role in the ESG movement.
Ironically, another sign of the increasing legitimacy of ESG is the backlash against it (a movement needs a measure of success to spark ire and action). In the U.S. in 2024, 82 anti-ESG proposals made it to a vote as of late July. Although these proposals collectively received meager levels of support at 1.9%, the antagonism is real and apparently growing.
For some Canadian IROs, controversy plaguing ESG is prompting communications changes.
“We’ve moved away from the term ‘ESG’ because of a shift in the industry,” says Lyne Beauregard, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications at Real Matters. Having read widely, she found that “the trend is moving towards talking about environmental, social and governance issues as ‘sustainability.’”
Milla Craig, President and CEO of Millani, a Montreal-based sustainability consultant, agrees that one important debate in ESG centres on terminology.
In her most recent survey of investor sentiment around ESG, she asked the question: Is ESG dead? “We then consistently heard from the Canadian investor community no, it’s not dead, but we’ve changed some of our communications,” she says. “There’s a growing sense that if anything, ESG is becoming more mainstream, and maybe the term is not sufficient anymore.”
Wordsmithing aside, the numbers show that Canadian investors are hungrier than ever for information on environmental, social and governance activities.
In Millani’s early 2024 survey, 43% of Canadian asset managers had plans to launch impact-oriented products this year. For these goals to be realized, IROs at public companies will need to provide the raw ESG data investors increasingly want in formats that are becoming less arbitrary with every passing day.
A Regulatory Swipe at Greenwashing
On June 20, Canada’s federal government amended Section 74.01 of the Competition Act to explicitly prohibit Canadian companies from making deceptive environmental claims.
In response, Millani’s Craig says that a number of Canadian issuers took down some ESG information from their websites, awaiting more clarity on the implications of this amendment. She explains that removing ESG information did not sit well with some investors, who expressed dismay that companies now felt uncomfortable standing behind statements they’d earlier made.
That said, the new greenwashing amendment seems poised to have positive effects, too. One of them is a drive to make ESG communications more concise. Craig notes that investors eager for shorter, more relevant ESG communications “are celebrating.” The amendment may serve as a clarion call to avoid rhetorical flourishes and stick to what matters most.
Long before the Competition Act amendment, many Canadian companies were distancing themselves from anything that could be construed as greenwashing.
Skeena Resources, for instance, took as a cautionary tale the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) decision to fine Activision Blizzard US$35 million in early 2023 for failing to disclose problems of workplace misconduct that fall under the ‘social’ umbrella, says Corporate Innovation Manager Chris Tucker, who’s responsible for the mining company’s ESG strategy.
Addressing the recent regulatory prohibition against greenwashing, Tucker underscores his company’s longstanding practice of never “putting out anything we can’t substantiate.” He continues: “We haven’t leaned too hard into being a ‘green company.’ We’ll absolutely do the best we possibly can, but we’re going to under-promise and over-deliver. We don’t want to get caught out not being able to support the statements we make.”
In the end, says Jessica Butts, Principal at ESG Advisors in Toronto, “with or without anti-greenwashing legislation, your performance, your claims and your strategy need to be rooted in measurable metrics and milestones and performance indicators.”
Converging Standards
Joking about the ‘alphabet soup’ of ESG standards was standard fare for IROs relieved to have mastered the intricacies of GRI, TCFD, and SASB, to name just a few of the competing disclosure frameworks out there.
In 2024, a long-awaited convergence of standards finally occurred. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) created unified standards from what had been the TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures), SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board), and the CDSB (Climate Disclosure Standards Board). The two emerging standards are closely aligned with the financial reporting standards under IFRS and are known as IFRS S1 and IFRS S2.
The Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) modified the ISSB standards and developed CSDS, or the Canadian Sustainability Disclosure Standards. CSDS is explicitly designed to serve the Canadian public interest – by, for instance, making sure that the rights of First Nation, Metis, and Inuit Peoples are addressed.
Sounds complicated? Well, it is, but for many Canadian IROs, the latest convergence brings enormous relief.
“We’re looking forward to seeing more of a standardization on how information is reported,” says Real Matters’ Beauregard. She notes that when her company published its first sustainability report three years ago, it looked principally at TCFD and SASB, but making a decision about which protocol to follow was “challenging.” She continues: “We’re seeing more clarity and simplification, and information may soon be comparable across companies.”
Even after the convergence of standards, each company may face its own unique set of disclosure pressures because of its industry or the particulars of a given business.
Skeena’s Tucker, for instance, adheres to the Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining standard.
In the case of Real Matters, practices are dictated, at least in part, by the disclosure needs of large banking clients in Canada and the U.S. using the company’s technology, says Beauregard. She explains that major banks need accurate information on GHG emission reduction targets for their Scope 3 disclosures.
“Our clients have made commitments, and we’re part of their supply chain,” says Beauregard, noting that this is the impetus behind providing certain environmental data, as well as statistics about diversity not currently required in Canada.
A Growing Emphasis on Purpose
Coro Strandberg, President of Vancouver-based Strandberg Consulting, recently began detecting a shift in how investors are discussing ESG issues.
She notes that BlackRock “is engaging its portfolio companies on whether they have a purpose and whether they’re executing on it.” In other words, the deeper question of “Why does a company exist?” is now being clearly addressed.
This fall, the Canadian Purpose Economy Project will release the world’s first set of purpose-disclosure guidelines, a development Strandberg believes that IROs should follow with interest. “The IRO has a role in bringing the purpose to life,” she says.
In looking at TSX 60 companies, Strandberg found that only one-third have precisely articulated a social purpose to create a better world.
Aecon’s Banga acknowledges this trend, describing her company’s 2023 sustainability report “as more purpose-driven” than previous reports. In it, the company articulates its own purpose: “Building what matters for future generations to thrive.”
Auditing ESG Disclosures
“Auditability is the north star of all ESG disclosure, whether voluntary or required,” maintains ESG Advisors’ Butts. She points out that while we’re in the “messy middle right now,” most companies will “want to reinforce the rigour behind ESG reporting,” a goal achieved by assurances and (ultimately) official audits.
One early adopter of auditing is Aecon. After setting GHG emission-reduction targets, the company got down to the hard work of making promises a reality by asking its financial auditor, PwC, to audit Scope 1 and 2 emissions, says Banga.
“To date it’s been a bit of the Wild West out there,” observes Borgatti, “but we’ve always been early, including with this audit this year.”
He believes that taking steps ahead of the mandatory reporting curve is important. “If you’re getting the audits and being measured by third parties, investors will look at you as a company that’s putting the time in,” he says.
When it comes to auditing and other advances in sustainability disclosure, Millani’s Craig is convinced that IROs have an increasingly critical role to play.
Thanks to the new IFRS and ISSB standards, sustainability and finance professionals are now working together, but it’s really important that IR professionals are in on these conversations, too,” concludes Craig. “The explanations are going to be critical, and the communications around the impacts [of the disclosures] fall very clearly in the camp of investor relations.”