Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i Corporate Knights

RANKINGS A WASH I no longer have any interest in an apologist viewpoint for polluting companies. I want no part of corporate greenwashing where companies like Teck [Resources] can point to their placement on your rankings to continue putting profits above worker rights and polluting the environment. I am reminded of Upton Sinclair’s observation: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” For the third time, cancel my subscription. —Jim Pine, Victoria, B.C. CK: Many have raised concerns about advertising from companies that may not share all the values of our readership or indeed our own magazine. We have a firm policy against not letting advertising influence our editorial or our rankings. We are proud to run an operation…

Love him or hate him, Conservative American economist Milton Friedman got one thing right. “There is enormous inertia” in government and society, he wrote in 1982. “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.” Prospective change agents need to constantly hone their ideas, Friedman believed, so that when a crisis hits – say, a global pandemic – they can turn those ideas into action. And he was right. The 18-month recession of 1981/82 empowered U.S. President Ronald Reagan to embrace Friedman’s laissez-faire doctrine of lower taxes and deregulation, which saved the American economy – until an economic downturn began five years later. But two can play that game, says Naomi Klein, Montreal-born author and activist. Her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, exposed…

With its reliance on heavy industry and its financing of coal-fired power, South Korea is an unlikely poster child for the low-carbon economy, but the East Asian nation is staking its claim to a leadership role in the transition. Fresh from a landslide election victory in April, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is promising to launch a “Green New Deal” that aims to provide economic stimulus while putting the country on track for net-zero emissions by 2050. The platform includes plans for a carbon tax, the end to public financing of coal-based electricity, major investments in green energy infrastructure, and transitional training for the workforce. In the wake of COVID-19, national and sub-national governments are grappling with the need to stabilize their economies with emergency financing. A growing group of…

Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) has a long history of sustainability as a retail cooperative focused on getting people outside. Since it was founded in 1971 by a group of west coast mountaineers looking for a place to buy reliable and affordable gear, MEC has vowed to do business differently by building a co-op with democratic principles, as an alternative to private ownership. The company says its grassroots foundation still exists, which is to “make things happen, deal fairly, find strength in community, and inspire adventure.” Nearly 50 years later, the Vancouver-based company has grown to 22 stores across Canada and strengthened its sustainability efforts through responsible product sourcing, a commitment to shrink its environmental footprint and the championing of social causes. MEC was the first Canadian retailer to publicly disclose…

Isabelle Turcotte is the federal policy director at the Pembina Institute and is based in Ottawa. In May, more than 150 corporations worth US$2.4 trillion joined a United Nations–backed, CEO-led climate advocacy effort asking governments to align their economic recovery plans with “reaching net-zero emissions well before 2050.” Far-sighted businesses know that when we emerge from the pandemic, they’ll be facing another global crisis: climate change. Some companies are starting to set out broad frameworks indicating how they’ll meet the ambitious climate target. But beyond a feel-good corporate buzzword, what does getting to net-zero really mean – and how do we make sure it’s more than just a lofty goal? The gunshot that started the race to reach net-zero by 2050 was really a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…

Soon after the COVID-19 lockdown turned normal routines upside down, a new insight seemed to arise almost spontaneously across the country. With Canadians being asked to accept unprecedented restrictions on their rights and mobility, and the economy and health systems cracking under the strain, many expressed their belief that there’d be no going back to “normal.” At more thoughtful levels, the response almost became cliché: the corona crisis would usher in a “new social contract” that would redefine how people and organizations help each other. In an editorial entitled “Virus Lays Bare the Frailty of the Social Contract,” the Financial Times noted that the pandemic exposed the gulf between the haves and have-nots – young versus old, workers with precarious service jobs versus salaried professionals, and frontline essential workers versus…

In March, the Humane Society of the United States released its first Food Industry Scorecard, ranking 93 of America’s largest food companies on their progress toward reducing animal suffering in their supply chains. “People want to know whether companies are keeping their promises,” says Humane Society spokesperson Josh Balk. “Many of the companies evaluated are indeed making substantial strides toward implementing the promised changes, while others are showing no progress, have weakened their commitments or have abandoned their animal welfare promises entirely.” The top 10 companies on the scorecard earned scores of A-plus, A or A-minus: Whole Foods Market, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Bon Appétit Management Co., Unilever, Southwest Foodservice, Guckenheimer, Noodles & Co., Epicurean Group, Papa John’s and TGI Fridays. Fifty-eight companies received Fs for their failure to act on…

Shawn McCarthy writes on sustainable finance and climate finance. He is also senior counsel for Sussex Strategy Group. Linda Coady is a rare bird who can work on both sides of the deep and bitter divide separating oil-industry partisans and environmental advocates. After spending six years as vice-president for sustainability at pipeline giant Enbridge Inc., Coady took up the reins at the Pembina Institute environmental think tank at the end of March. Environmental advocates have long regarded Enbridge as a public enemy because of its proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the current expansion of its mainline oil pipeline in the U.S., and its fight over refurbishing a pipeline in Michigan where it had a major spill into the Kalamazoo River a decade ago. For its part, Calgary-based Pembina has been in…

Stephanie Wallcraft is a multiple-award-winning automotive journalist based in Toronto and is the president of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). The COVID-19 pandemic has had a swift and profound effect on the automotive industry, but early signs point to the electric vehicle category weathering the storm on firm footing. While work-from-home orders and extended assembly-plant closures have caused some product delays and cancellations, relatively few of those have been EV projects. Stringent emissions requirements are holding firm in China and Europe, and sales targets remain in place closer to home: Canada is just one of the nations aiming to have 10% of new-vehicle sales be zero-emission vehicles by 2025 and 100% by 2040. These pressures are thus far focusing automaker attention firmly on advancing EV technology and its…

As social distancing changed the ways that businesses, families and even doctors and patients communicate, the world seemed to go all Zoom, all the time. With much less fanfare, however, another big winner was Cisco Systems’ Webex video-conferencing platform, which registered 500 million users in April – up from 324 million in March and more than triple its traffic pre-COVID. The rise of Webex gives Cisco a new way to mix business with social responsibility. Growth of video conferencing and telehealth can not only reduce the carbon footprint of business and healthcare, but also enable more equitable distribution of services to disadvantaged communities. In other words, it may be hard to displace Cisco Systems Canada from the top of Corporate Knights’ list of Canada’s Top International Corporate Citizens – a…

John Lorinc is a Toronto-based journalist and author specializing in urban issues, business and culture. Focusing on energy efficiency has blinded us to other unintended consequences of building materials – but a revolution is afoot About a year ago, Canadian-born architect Kelly Alvarez Doran had an epiphany – or perhaps, more aptly, a wake-up call – about one of the core tenets of energy-efficient construction. To design new buildings that truly move the needle in terms of reducing heat loss (a chronic problem in Canada’s older buildings in particular), architects have developed exterior walls with as many as 13 layers of insulating material. While these measures drive down energy consumption, carbon emissions and utility bills, they also come with a problematic backstory. After all, most state-of-the-art insulating foams, wraps and…

After a rocky start, California billionaire Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, vowed to use his scientific superpowers to fight the coronavirus. But he’s ended up outraging and confusing more people than he’s helped. On March 16, Musk tweeted that the “danger of panic still far exceeds danger of corona.” As the Twitterverse roared its disappointment, a psychiatrist from Pennsylvania pleaded, “Please repurpose your factory to make ventilators which are needed ASAP. You have to stop being an idiot about this.” Musk responded same-day: “We will make ventilators if there is a shortage.” Torch singer Bette Midler summed up the mood when she tweeted back, “Start yesterday.” But Musk stumbled out of the gate. Within two weeks Tesla used its supply-chain expertise to obtain several hundred ventilators from China…

CLEAN REVENUE Percentage of total revenue derived from products and services that are categorized as “clean” under CK taxonomy BOARD DIVERSITY Percentage of women who sit on board of directors EXECUTIVE DIVERSITY Percentage of women who work in senior executive positions SUSTAINABILITY PAY LINK At least 1 senior executive’s compensation tied to sustainability-themed performance targets PERCENTAGE TAX PAID Taxes paid in cash, as a percentage of EBITDA (operating income for financial services) PENSION FUND STATUS A series of calculations assessing the generosity/viability of defined contribution/defined benefit plans ENERGY PRODUCTIVITY $ revenue per gigajoule of non-renewable energy consumption CARBON PRODUCTIVITY $ revenue/sales per metric tonne of direct/indirect CO2e WATER PRODUCTIVITY $ revenue per cubic metre of water used WASTE PRODUCTIVITY $ revenue per metric tonne of waste produced, net of waste…

Tim Nash blogs as The Sustainable Economist and is the founder of Good Investing. The stock market’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and harsh, crashing more than 33% in about a month. But the Bank of Canada struck an optimistic note in its April Monetary Policy Report, suggesting that “Canada’s economy will begin to recover as the health impacts of COVID-19 fade, businesses begin to reopen and gradually resume their operations, and people start returning to their normal lives.” Of course, uncertainty remains over if, how and when the economy will return to pre-crash levels. The bank’s report highlighted unprecedented levels of monetary and fiscal stimulus but also noted concerns about historically low oil prices, a surge in unemployment and sharply lower business and consumer confidence. Without the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an excellent opportunity to test which companies are living up to the U.S. Business Roundtable’s pledge last August to serve not only their owners, but also workers, customers, suppliers and communities. “Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the Roundtable’s 180 members proclaimed then – a sharp break from their previous stance that the interests of shareholders were their “paramount duty.” Some have passed the test with flying colours. The Business Roundtable itself formed a CEO COVID-19 Task Force dedicated to the crisis. One member, Salesforce, pledged not to lay off employees for 90 days, and Salesforce’s CEO spent $25 million on 50 million pieces of personal protective equipment for medical staff (with the help of Walmart, FedEx and others). Many other CEOs have displayed an…