Earlier this spring, shareholders at the Bank of Nova Scotia voted 37 per cent in favour of a shareholder proposal filed by SHARE on behalf of the Hamilton Community Foundation asking the Bank to commission a third-party racial equity audit.
That level of support was more than twice the average vote for a shareholder resolution at any Canadian company in 2024.
A racial equity audit is an independent examination of a company’s employment and business practices intended to identify and remediate potential and actual disparate outcomes for Indigenous Peoples and other racialized communities.
Since 2023, all of the other “Big Six” Canadian banks have committed to conducting a third-party racial equity audit, including Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, and the Toronto-Dominion Bank. Scotiabank is an outlier among its peers.
Following the vote, SHARE’s Director of Shareholder Advocacy Sarah Couturier-Tanoh wrote a letter to Calin Rovinescu, the Chair of the Corporate Governance Committee of the Board of Directors at Scotiabank, urging the bank to take action that reflects the strong shareholder support for this proposal.
To read the full letter, click the button below:
