Women made up roughly 19 per cent of corporate board seats in 2019, an increase from 18 per cent the year before, even though the total number of board seats studied fell, according to new data from Statistics Canada. The data agency based its observations on information from 7,165 corporations, a decrease from the 8,697 […]
Women held 23.4 per cent of the total 4,914 board seats among Canadian companies providing disclosure for 2021 — a steady increase of 2.2 per cent from 2020’s year-end results, according to Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP’s latest diversity report. The report tracked companies subject to the Canada Business Corporations Act that disclosed the number of […]
Women remain underrepresented in boardrooms of Canadian companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange despite the introduction of disclosure requirements intended to boost their numbers, according to a report by the Conference Board of Canada. The report said while there’s some progress in the proportion of women on corporate boards, the pace of change remains slow. “More needs […]
Gender diversity is increasing on the boards of Canada’s 100 largest publicly-traded companies, according to a new report by KPMG Canada. It found women comprised 34 per cent of new board appointments since 2014. These women were slightly younger than their male counterparts, more educated, far more likely to come from outside the organization and […]
Demand for defined benefit pension plan sponsors to focus on environmental, social and governance factors through their investments is growing. Both plan sponsors and members have been increasingly vocal about keeping ESG issues top of mind. For example, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan has worked on balancing this increased appetite for ethical investing with an overall […]
In recent years, investing with a gender lens has become far more popular among institutional investors. “Part of it is awareness and part of it is some of the performance,” said Jackie VanderBrug, managing director and head of sustainable and impact investment strategy at Bank of America Corp., during a webinar hosted by the Forum for […]
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has dramatically increased its investments in renewable energy companies, from $30 million in 2016 to $3 billion as of June 2019, according to its annual sustainable investing report. The substantial increase is part of the fund’s expanded climate change program. “We have a number of groups involved in efforts […]
Over the last year, companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange have seen little movement in the proportion of female executive officers on their boards, according to an annual report by Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP. The study, which looked at diversity disclosure practices relating to women in leadership roles by TSX-listed companies, found that, among companies […]
Whose jobs are put most at risk by artificial intelligence and automation? Common wisdom says it’s men, particularly blue collar men whose jobs are primarily manual labour, such as factory workers put at risk by robotics or truck drivers put at risk by the advance of driverless cars. However, the truth is more complicated. Many […]
Four years after the Ontario Securities Commission introduced its comply-or-explain disclosure policy, Canada has seen measurable improvements in the number of women sitting on corporate boards. Among S&P/TSX composite index-listed companies, the percentage of women on boards has increased to nearly 25 per cent, up from just 11 per cent in 2013, according to a […]