On November 28th, SHARE organized our 8th Annual Responsible Investment Workshop for Religious Investors at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto.
This workshop brought together investors from across Canada to share experiences and discuss the latest trends in shareholder engagement, proxy voting, and impact investing. The workshop featured a discussion on a wide range of strategies to tackle key issues such as climate change, forced labour in supply chains, business and reconciliation, and income inequality.
The day began with a session on climate change and explored the successes to date from investor engagements with large fossil fuel companies Exxon, Shell and BP. SHARE highlighted key opportunities for investors to address climate risk in their portfolios, including through engagement with the banking sector.
The workshop continued with a panel on forced labour. The group acknowledged the enormity of the issue and explained that forced labour is deeply embedded in supply chains, and discussed specific examples of companies that have begun to take action. SHARE emphasized the need for Canadian transparency legislation similar to what has been done in the UK.
In the afternoon, a discussion on business and reconciliation took a closer look at the Call to Action 92 from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and what this means in practice for companies and investors. A key learning from this session was the need for more training of non-indigenous people on the history of Indigenous people in Canada.
In the final session of the day, investors shared examples of how they are tackling income inequality. SHARE described how our work through the Workforce Disclosure Initiative is beginning to shed light on the gaps in practice and disclosure that companies need to address when it comes to managing their workforce.
