On June 13th, Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance released its final report, Mobilizing Finance for Sustainable Growth, at an event held at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

After 14 months of deliberations and consultations, the panel, chaired by Tiff Macklem, the Dean of Rotman and a former Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, provided 15 recommendations with the goal of “mobilizing financial services to deliver the investment, ingenuity and influence needed to realize Canada’s leadership opportunity and secure a sustainable economic future.”

The panel’s interim report, published in 2018, noted that a universal definition of sustainable finance has yet to be established, but the panel views it as:

“…capital flows (as reflected in lending and investment), risk management activities (such as insurance and risk assessment), and financial processes (including disclosures, valuation, and oversight) that assimilate environmental and social factors as a means of promoting sustainable economic growth and the long-term stability of the financial system.”

UTAM, as a member of the Responsible Investing Association, along with other institutional investors, endorsed the final report. “We fully support the final report of the Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance, and we strongly believe in the benefits of integrating ESG considerations into our investment decisions,” said Daren Smith, President and Chief Investment Officer of University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation. “In order to do this, we need high-quality, reliable data, and the panel’s recommendation to establish a Canadian Centre for Climate Information and Analytics would be an innovative step in this regard. Like the panel, we believe ‘climate change opportunity and risk management need to become business-as-usual in financial services, and embedded in everyday business decisions, products and services.’ In our view, this is just smart investing.”