While the majority of Canadian pension and retirement savings plan sponsors view governance as a top priority, 24 per cent said they haven’t conducted a review of their governance policy in the past three years, according to a new survey by Aon. It found 21 per cent of respondents identified “outdated or inefficient plan governance […]
In case you missed it, a recent legal opinion by pension lawyer Randy Bauslaugh suggested plan sponsors might be personally liable for failing to consider risks posed by climate change in the institutional investment decision-making process. Bauslaugh’s paper connected the dots between the current evidence on the materiality and urgency of the financial implications of climate change and the recent reflection of this […]
Representatives from eight of Canada’s largest pension funds — known as the Maple Eight — participated in the first meeting of the Sustainable Finance Action Council last week. On June 11, representatives of the Alberta Investment Management Corp., the British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Canada Pension […]
A number of Canadian institutional investors, including the British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the British Columbia Municipal Pension Plan, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Investment Management Corp. of Ontario, are among 457 signatories of a statement calling on governments around the globe to take accelerated action to combat the climate […]
Canada’s pension plan sponsors have a fiduciary responsibility to consider climate change in their financial decisions, according to Randy Bauslaugh, counsel for pensions and benefits and executive compensation at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, during a webinar hosted by the Canada Climate Law Initiative and the Canadian Pension & Benefits Institute. “The failure of plan administrators and […]
Manulife Financial Corp. is linking its executive team goals to the company’s climate action plan, including committing to a net-zero focus by reducing emissions operationally, adopting sustainable investing practices and developing solutions that contribute to climate change mitigation. Members of the organization’s executive leadership team already have performance goals linked to diversity, equity and inclusion, employee engagement […]
The majority (86 per cent) of Imperial Oil Ltd. investors voted to defeat a shareholder resolution that the organization adopt a target to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, the vote held during the Calgary-based company’s virtual annual meeting exposes a rift between its parent U.S. giant Exxon Mobil Corp. — which owns 69.6 […]
The British Columbia Investment Management Corp. is partnering with the University of Victoria-led Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions to co-develop decision-making tools and frameworks for integrating climate change risk evaluation and climate mitigation opportunities into investment portfolios. “Acting in the best financial interests of our clients requires us to think long-term about the opportunities and […]
We are now in Month 14 of the coronavirus pandemic. For institutional investors like pension plans, this pandemic and its consequences highlight the reality of systemic risk: events like the ongoing pandemic can and do happen and pension plans need to get ready. Because another systemic risk is at our doorstep: climate change. 2020 was one […]
It isn’t just asset managers who are increasingly embracing the integration of environmental, social and governance factors into investment decision-making. An important contributor to “record inflows” into sustainable investing strategies over the past 12 to 18 months is demand from plan members, as well as individual retail investors, says Eric Monteiro, senior vice-president, group retirement […]