Sustainable Finance

About the project: In winter 2018, the Public Policy Forum in partnership with the Ivey Foundation organized a series of five roundtables in five Canadian cities – Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver – to explore in detail the subject of sustainable finance through a Canadian lens. The aim was threefold:

to increase the level of awareness and understanding of sustainable finance in Canada;
to underscore the importance of finance and innovation in delivering Canada’s transition to a low carbon economy and;
to provide a structured engagement process to complement the ongoing work of the Canadian Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance.

The Canadian Expert Panel was established in spring 2018 and is mandated to recommend a Canadian approach to sustainable finance, including climate-related risk disclosures, to the federal government in 2019. This followed the undertaking of similar sustainable finance focused initiatives in other G7 countries, including China, France, the U.K. and the European Union in recent years. The PPF-Ivey roundtable series was specifically structured to align with the Expert Panel’s Interim Report, published in October 2018. The topics for each of the five roundtables were:

innovation and energy transition (Calgary);
financial disclosure and asset management (Montreal);
infrastructure and policy (Ottawa);
financial disclosure and investments (Toronto) and;
building retrofits and clean technology (Vancouver).

Besides the Expert Panel and international participants, each roundtable brought together a range of high-level stakeholders to discuss and debate the content, including representatives from business, finance, government, foundations, NGOs and academia. The roundtables were conducted under the Chatham House Rule.

Report: A PPF report summarizing the five roundtable discussions is now available.

Timeline: October 2018 to January 2019.

Partners: Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, City of Vancouver, Environment & Climate Change Canada, Ivey Foundation, Royal Bank of Canada, and Suncor

Contact: Gareth Chappell

Watch: Sustainable Finance Roundtable Series |Bruce Lourie, Barbara Zvan, Ben Caldecott, and Sean Kidney