Heidi Monk
Sometimes shareholder engagement is incredibly rewarding, as when our engagement is welcomed and/or met by action. Sometimes shareholder engagement can be frustrating, as when untold hours of research and drafting and editing letters are met with little or no response. Our recent engagement with Costco was both.
Judith Bird
One of the unique things about EIG has been its commitment from the very start to have 40% of its portfolio devoted to supporting small businesses and individuals who do not have access to credit from mainstream financial institutions, aka “community investments”. The concept has been somewhat expanded over the years to include small-scale projects beneficial to society and/or to the environment, often funded by community bonds.
While finding appropriate investments in this category is not without its challenges, EIG continues to maintain this approach as a goal more than twenty years after it was included in our 4-point mission statement.
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That is the question members of the EIG Equities Trading Committee asked themselves when a proposal to invest in Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) obtained marginal approval from EIG members following a lively discussion on fossil fuels (see previous post, Fossil fuels: divestment vs transition). While the vote on BAM led to a positive average score of +0.34 (scoring options from +2 to -2) meaning approval in principle, it also garnered one veto, with many members weighing in, expressing concerns in their comments about the appropriateness of such an investment for EIG. Happy to see so many members engaged with investment decisions in this way, the committee gave serious thought to their opinions and ultimately decided not to invest in BAM at this time.
The great thing about investing locally is being able to see first-hand how our investment dollars help a community improve its quality of life. EIG members had this experience recently on the occasion of a return visit to Bâtiment 7, a project owned by the non-profit Collectif 7 à Nous, in Pointe-St-Charles. Bâtiment 7 is a 90,000 square-foot former CNR maintenance building progressively being converted into a shared community space.
A question in the minds of many responsible investors these days involves the extent to which they should divest from companies with links to the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to supporting those that are making concrete efforts to transition to a carbon-neutral society by 2050, the goal set out in the Paris Agreement. Clearly, divestment is appropriate when considering companies directly involved in fossil fuel exploration, extraction or production. But what about those that support the fossil fuel industry indirectly with, for example, financing, and transportation? Attempts to find answers to this complex question formed the theme of a recent EIG event.
EIG has long supported communities in Quebec by investing in local microcredit organizations, which provide financing and business support to aspiring entrepreneurs who do not have access to conventional financing.
Heidi Monk
EIG has been very pleased with the responsiveness and willingness to engage by Scotiabank (see a summary of our engagement on climate change and diversity in 2021). This August Scotiabank took their engagement with EIG to a new level, by reaching out to us to offer to have a phone call where they could update us on recent progress. Two Senior Vice Presidents spent about 45 mins speaking with me on behalf of EIG: Julie Walsh, SVP, Corporate Secretary and Chief Corporate Governance Officer, Meigan Terry, SVP, Chief Communications and Social Impact Officer.
