The organization’s website says it “empowers youth to understand and act on the world’s greatest challenges.” Beyond that, and the fact it hosts an online discussion board for its more than 500,000 young members, it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around all that they do – from helping under-30 entrepreneurs develop their ideas to holding nationwide youth competitions.

In a nutshell, it says, “we open doors for young people to get involved.”

As with most ventures worth paying attention to, the idea for TakingITGlobal came from a conversation between two tech-savvy teenagers in 1999. Jennifer Corriero had just finished her first year at York University and Michael Furdyk was going into his final year of high school.

Furdyk sold his first company, MyDesktop.com, in 1999 at the age of 16, earning him a place in Don Tapscott’s book, Grown up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. Part of the proceeds from that sale went toward starting a second company, BuyBuddy.com. The rest allowed Furdyk to work on a voluntary basis while TakingITGlobal got off the ground.

Corriero was working on her own website, Coolgirls.org (no longer in operation), which documented the lives of women missing from Canadian history. Both Furdyk and Corriero came to represent the interests of youth at a time when companies were eager to know what young people were looking for in the fast-growing tech scene. The two even consulted for clients such as Microsoft.

They may no longer be teenagers, but Furdyk, 32, and Corriero, 34, are more connected than ever to today’s youth – and just as busy. For the past 16 years, they have done through TakingITGlobal what a lot of successful non-profits do: find voids where no one else is working and fill them with programming. The organization has launched a number of successful mobile apps, taught online Master-level courses and helped social entrepreneurs launch their own projects.

Filling the education void

Education systems are especially vulnerable to programming voids because they evolve at a glacial pace, meaning they are often behind the curve on adopting new concepts.

Corriero and Furdyk found that teachers around the world were eager to bring new ideas to their classrooms, but they didn’t know how to do it. In response, TakingITGlobal developed a set of online courses that helps educators incorporate three new concepts – global citizenship, environmental stewardship and student voice – into their existing curricula.

In 2013, the organization trained more than 160 educators in more than 520 virtual classrooms. That same year, TakingITGlobal partnered with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to deliver a professional training program to 100 TDSB employees from 18 schools. This year, the organization began awarding schools in Toronto a bronze, silver or gold rating depending on their level of commitment to these three concepts.

Most school systems are based on models that were developed after the industrial revolution, said Corriero. There may be a conceptual understanding of what the new models should look like, but it’s not easy to change a system that has been operating the same way for many years, she said.

Even updating the curricula for individual subjects can take decades, said Furdyk.

Take Ontario’s sexual education curriculum as an example, he said. The Ontario government revealed in February the first update to its sexual education curriculum since 1998. The new curriculum now officially recognizes the legalization of same-sex marriage, which passed more than a decade ago.

Teacher training in universities is also slow moving, said Furdyk, explaining that the fastest way to create change in the education system is to help in-service teachers incorporate new concepts into their lessons right away.

Teachers, he added, are a specific group of people that can be targeted as change makers because they have a huge impact – and quite a bit of power, particularly in kindergarten to grade eight levels when the curriculum is most flexible.

Michael Mendoza, a teacher and librarian at Wilmington Elementary School in Toronto, has participated in TakingITGlobal’s education program for the last three years and served as a co-facilitator last year for the environmental stewardship course.

After completing his first course in 2013, Mendoza helped organize a “take your kids outside day” at North Preparatory Junior Public School, which is where he was working at the time. The school-wide initiative asked teachers to spend time outdoors with their students and allow them to explore.

One of the biggest lessons of the program is to value student-led learning, said Mendoza. “As a teacher, you always want to get the next best resource. But one of the amazing resources we already have is our students. You can just ask them a question or show them a picture and ask what they think about it,” he said.

More school boards may eventually incorporate TakingITGlobal’s ideas into their official curricula. If that happens, Corriero and Furdyk will find new ways to inspire young people to create change.

The impact this social venture is having on the world is hard to see, partly because its services are so intangible, said Corriero. It’s not like a food bank where the community would notice immediately if the organization closed its doors.

“It’s more like we’re turning on light bulbs and showing [communities] what’s possible,” she said.

The post Teaching the teachers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“I will always remember her saying, ‘How am I going to do this? Why is it so expensive?” Brochu recalls.

That incident made it clear to Brochu, vice-president of business development at the time, that the company had to do something to help out struggling customers.

In 2001, Gaz Métro became the first natural gas distributor in Canada and the first energy distributor in Québec to implement an energy-efficiency program that encouraged its customers to use less of a product it profited from.

Brochu eventually became the company’s chief executive officer in 2007. Since joining Gaz Métro 10 years earlier – and after 25 years working in the energy industry – her passion for serving people and finding solutions to Canada’s energy problems has not waned.

No wonder Brochu, 51, is asked often to enter politics – a request she dismisses as out of her character. “I spend quite a lot of time with MPs, ministers and deputies. I see all the compromises they have to make and everything that’s involved,” she told the Montreal Gazette last fall. “It’s not for me.”

Instead, Brochu believes she can achieve more as head of Quebec’s largest gas utility. And she’s doing this by speaking out on touchy subjects. She’s openly adamant, for example, that Canada needs a national energy policy, even though the last round of talks failed miserably more than 30 years ago.

She was also the first industry leader to speak publicly against TransCanada’s proposed Energy East project, which aims to transport over one million barrels of crude oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to refineries in Eastern Canada.

It’s not that she doesn’t support western provinces in their bid to get Canada’s oil to foreign markets. What she’s critical of is TransCanada’s proposal to convert parts of its gas pipeline network to oil. Brochu argues the plan will lead to gas shortages and higher prices for Quebecers, which would threaten economic development.

It is unusual for the CEO of a natural gas utility to publicly challenge another energy company, let alone one of its key suppliers. But putting the customer first runs in the blood of the company, says Brochu.

Knowing the passion that she brings to her job, it is no surprise that Gaz Métro ranked in the top 10 of Corporate Knights’ Future 40 ranking for the second year in a row. We sat down with Brochu to talk about the company’s approach to sustainability, the future of energy in Canada, and the role women can play in transitioning to this future.

The following conversation was edited for length and clarity.

CK: How does Gaz Métro make decisions about sustainability?

BROCHU: We look at environmental goals as if society were immortal. We ask, “If we were immortal, would we still consume energy?” Yes we would. Would we consume it at the rate that we are? We don’t believe so. Would we invest in new technologies now instead of waiting until we lack petroleum? Of course.

I’ll give you another example. Ten years ago we said, “One day people will produce energy out of domestic waste.” We had seen the start of the science. So we started to look at what others were doing. There were not that many examples, but we stuck to our guns. And last Friday, the Quebec energy board authorized Gaz Métro to buy bio-methane produced in municipalities close to Montréal. The municipalities will take waste, put it in a digester, produce biogas, treat it and inject it into our network to heat homes. If we hadn’t started to think about that 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be here today.

CK: You must get a lot of pushback from other companies and the public. How do you deal with that? How do you “stick to your guns”?

BROCHU: Yeah, we stick to our guns. When new things are launched, they cost a little bit more. So, first we work within the size that we are. And then we choose what is most important to our customers. We start from the customers’ needs because if you do it from the top down, it gets very difficult.

For example, in Vermont we produce electricity with cow manure. And we give our customers the choice. Obviously if you take cow power, it’s a bit more expensive than the grid. But you know what? We don’t have enough. Many people are perfectly fine paying a higher price in order to be able to light their houses with the cow of their neighbour. But this wouldn’t work if we imposed it.

CK: When it comes to energy efficiency, it seems counter intuitive to encourage customers to use less gas.

BROCHU: To be completely transparent, we didn’t do it for environmental reasons. You know, 15 years ago, politicians were not talking about climate change. Nobody was talking about that. But for us it was very obvious that our goal in life was to have as many customers as we could, and once they’re hooked to have them consume as less energy as possible.
So it’s a weird business when you think about it. We’re putting solar panels on the walls of our customers so they can preheat the air before it enters the building and it helps them reduce their consumption of natural gas. And we still do it today even though gas prices are very low; we have not slacked at all in our efficiency programs. We actually have deployed efficiency programs to half of our customer base.

CK: You are a strong advocate for a national energy policy. Why?

BROCHU: I would say a national energy approach. There was a proposed national energy policy that was ill conceived in 1984. The idea was for oil to be cheaper, and Alberta went berserk – rightfully so. Since then, every time we have started to talk about a national energy policy, it’s like asking people that have been burned to dance around fireworks. They don’t want to do that.

The result was that we started to develop independently. Every province started to do things north-south; started selling their energy to the United States. We had very little talk and need for one another. But now, the United States doesn’t need us as much. All of a sudden we’re looking at one another and saying “Oh, you need to move your oil across the country to reach the coast?” We need to start talking amongst ourselves. But we cannot do in three months what we have not done in 30 years.

CK: Would you say it’s a good idea to work from the consumer up on a national energy policy as well?

BROCHU: You’re touching a fundamental point. When we have big discussions on energy in Canada, we rightfully think and talk about energy production, which is very important. But there are customers using energy and we don’t talk about them. Ninety per cent of the energy efficiency achieved in our country last year was by the customer. And at the end of the day, the customer pays the energy bill. And they care. So we need to start from the reality of the people in this country and work our way up, not the other way around.

CK: Let’s talk about the initiative you’re working on with other female leaders. Why did you start this project?

BROCHU: Yes, we just launched L’Effet A. We’re five businesswomen and we give ourselves five challenges that we need to complete in 100 days. The goal is to stimulate other women to pursue their ambition. We believe women have as much ambition as men, but for one reason or another, women see ambition as almost pretentious. Ambition can be a positive fuel or a negative fuel, which is true for men as well as for women. I have this deep conviction that as women start leading, we are allowing many men to be closer to who they are. We’re giving everybody permission to be who they are. But business has been so mainstream, so black and white.

CK: What role do you see women playing in the energy industry?

BROCHU: I started my speech about Energy East by saying “I am for this project,” and I finished my speech saying, “This project is very important to Canada.” But in between I say, “There is something that doesn’t work.”

I’m sad to see that there are some stakeholders, especially out west, who feel that I am viciously opposed to this project. They say, “You’re either for us or against us.” And I say, that’s bad, bad, bad, bad. If we cannot have a nuanced approach to these big projects, we’re going to have a problem. And I think that the discussion nationally is about nuance. And I think nuance is something that women tend to be more comfortable with.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post Running it right appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That means tackling two intertwined problems: ending extreme poverty and stopping climate change.

The first is daunting enough. As the Economist has pointed out, “a lot will have to go right” in order for the bank to achieve its goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

But stopping climate change and ending poverty at the same time is especially difficult, given that economic growth is directly linked to more carbon emissions.

This tension is not lost on World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, who spent part of yesterday morning speaking to students at Georgetown University as part of its Global Futures Initiative.

People living in poverty want the same benefits of economic growth as we do, said Kim. “We can’t ask poor people to forego electricity because the developed world has put too much carbon in the air,” he said.

The only way to stop climate change and end poverty at the same time is to end the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions, he said. That means making it more expensive to burn carbon and less expensive to use renewable energy.

The World Bank has a five-point plan to make that happen:

1. Put a price on carbon.
2. Remove fossil fuel subsidies.
3. Improve energy efficiency and renewable energy use.
4. Focus on building low-carbon, resilient cities.
5. Encourage climate-smart agriculture.

The first two points are directly related to de-coupling economic growth from greenhouse gases.

Putting a price on carbon is the most straightforward path to getting political leaders and companies to weigh the true cost of emissions before they pollute the air. It is also the most politically acceptable option on the table, as nearly 40 countries already have plans to put a price on carbon, said Kim.

Ending fossil fuel subsidies, on the other hand, is more contentious. Many people argue that subsidies protect poor people, but Kim said the reality is that the bottom 40 per cent receives only 18 per cent of the value from these programs.

“Fossil fuel subsidies are not at all about protecting the poor. We have to find ways to get rid of them,” he said.

To that end, the World Bank is working with several countries to design programs that will help governments phase out subsidies, while protecting the poorest members of society from the inevitable rise in fuel prices. It will also help governments reinvest the money into programs that will benefit society.

The Egyptian government has already saved $7 billion by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and will reinvest $3 billion of it in health and education, said Kim.

The rest of the World Bank’s plan – building resilient cities, investing in renewable energy and encouraging climate-smart agriculture – depends on financing that doesn’t exist yet on the scale that’s required.

It is crucial that governments secure this funding, not only because battling climate change is expensive, but also because it could determine the success of the climate talks in Paris later this year, said Kim.

Governments at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2011 committed to raising $100 billion for the Green Climate Fund. This money is meant to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

“We have to find creative ways to find that money because we don’t want that to be the reason we don’t get an agreement in Paris,” said Kim, adding that the bank is “laser-focused” on coming up with a robust financing plan.

Kim pointed to the massive growth in green bonds over the last year as evidence that creative funding solutions are possible.

The post A plan for the planet appeared first on Corporate Knights.

When I saw the roster of contributors I became even more suspicious: Mary Schapiro, former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Barbara Novick, vice chairman of BlackRock, Roger Martin, academic director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, just to name a few.

The book’s editor, John Taft, is the CEO of RBC Wealth Management, the eighth largest brokerage firm in the United States with over $281 billion in assets under management.

Should we really let these people – who were in the middle of the 2008-09 financial crisis – restore our faith in capitalism?

I imagined a lot of stale arguments being made by people who were desperate to maintain a broken system. But the book, released today, does quite the opposite.

It brings to light this uniquely awkward moment we find ourselves in. One in which the current form of capitalism clearly isn’t working, but we haven’t found a new way forward yet.

And depending on how you feel about capitalism, it is either unnerving or thrilling to read that this group financial experts  sees a new economic paradigm on the horizon.

No one can say what this new paradigm will look like, or even what it will be called. The book is simply “an effort to pick [the brains of experts] at a time when many of the quasi-axiomatic assumptions underlying modern capitalism are being called into question,” says Taft in the book’s introduction.

Rather than focus on what went wrong, Taft’s goal was to curate a collection of essays that describe what needs to be done to “adapt to the tectonic shifts going on beneath the surface of capitalism.

This means doing a much better job of listening to and understanding what society wants, and then actually following through on those commitments, says Taft.

A large part of following through is completing the regulatory reform that began after the financial crisis.

Taft dedicates an entire section of the book to making sure that the new regulatory regime strikes “the right balance between social stability, [profitability] and economic growth.” Too much or too little regulation could have enormous long-term consequences for society, he says.

At an event in Toronto earlier this month, Taft compared this balancing act to flying an airplane without a control panel.

But even if the perfect balance is achieved, Taft and his fellow contributors are adamant that real change will not come from further regulation of the financial sector.

“One cannot legislate integrity,” say the authors from the Center for Ethical Business Cultures. “It must come from inside the corporation. It requires leadership with the highest ethical standards,” they say.

The other contributors are equally committed to re-imagining the fundamental role that finance plays in society. At times, their beliefs are so impassioned that the term “enlightened finance” takes on a slightly new-age tone.

“The goals served by finance originate within us. They reflect our interests in careers, hopes for our families, ambitions for our businesses, aspirations for our cultures and ideals for our society,” says Robert Shiller, economist at Yale University.

He goes on to remind us that finance is not just about making money. It’s about achieving worthy goals like saving enough money to grow old with dignity, being able to attend college, buying your first home.

From there, David Blood, co-founder of Generation Investment Management, makes a case for “sustainable capitalism,” while John Fullerton, founder of the Capital Institute, describes his vision of “regenerative capitalism.” Both aim to prioritize human survival on the planet above GDP growth.

In what Taft considers to be one of the most original pieces in the book, John Rogers, former president and CEO of the CFA Institute, introduces the concept of “universal owners.”

Certain funds, such as the Government Pension Fund of Norway, have grown so large that they “own virtually every economic and social outcome of what the world’s corporations and governments are doing,” says Rogers. In other words, “they have no place to hide.”

These mega-funds have a greater responsibility than anyone else to make sure their investments produce positive, long-term outcomes for society. If they combine their influence on behalf of their constituents, then a new age of “fiduciary capitalism” may be upon us, says Rogers.

Shiller expects that any attempt to improve and democratize capitalism will be to the dismay of radicals. But all of this sounds pretty close to what Occupy Wall Street activists were asking for back in 2011: a financial system that takes responsibility for its mistakes and responds to the needs of society.

Restoring and maintaining faith in capitalism has always been that simple. It’s up to leaders to take it seriously.

The post A Force for Good appeared first on Corporate Knights.

John Taft is the head of US Wealth Management for RBC and an active member of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the leading securities trade group in the United States.

In his own words, he “was there” when the financial crisis hit Wall Street and rippled through global markets in 2008.

His new book, A Force for Good: How Enlightened Finance Can Restore Faith in Capitalism, out March 17, is a thought experiment on how the next iteration of capitalism might help people live better lives.

Two other economic heavyweights – Roger Martin, academic director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, and Brian Walsh, chairman and chief investment officer at Saguenay Strathmore Capital – joined Taft at One King West hotel in Toronto yesterday to talk about capitalism 2.0.

“What we want from capitalism is changing,” Taft told Corporate Knights. So, what we call capitalism also needs to change, he said.

We need to add a new word – inclusive, generative, sustainable, fiduciary, social – to reflect what we want our economic system to look like, he said. We’re in the middle of a conversation about what that word will be, said Taft.

All three men were adamant that the financial services industry needed to take this conversation seriously if it wanted to continue to exist, let alone operate.

Martin said he only expects the financial sector to  change radically after the third major economic crisis. “We’re one gigantic blowout away from having the population say ‘alright already,’” he said.

Until then, the financial sector needs to work hard to re-gain the public’s trust, said Taft.

“The financial crisis was really a breach of contract. We in the financial services industry betrayed the trust of society,” he said.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll, which interviewed over 1,000 Americans over the phone last year, found that the financial sector had one of the lowest confidence rates out of all of the industries surveyed.

As in most relationships, the only way to re-gain trust is to show that you have learned from your mistakes and take positive actions to improve, said Taft. To do that, the financial sector needs to align itself with the things that society feels are important, he added.

One of the building blocks toward trust is to make sure that high fiduciary standards – the ethical relationship that exists between two parties who are in a relationship of trust – apply to everyone who is giving financial advice, said Taft.

It is important to write rules and put processes in place that will make it less likely for highly complex organizations to bring down the whole system, he said.

Yet, Taft is the first to question the U.S. government’s approach to fixing the financial system.

No one has any way of knowing whether financial reforms have gone far enough, or if they’ve gone too far, said Taft. “We’re like pilots in an airplane with no control panel.”

Using another metaphor, the U.S. government has been moving the chips from the “enable growth” side of the table over to the “safety and stability” side of the table, said Taft. “But hundreds of chips have been moved and no body is measuring with any degree of accuracy and rigor what effect that has had on the ability of the economy to grow,” he said.

Martin isn’t confident in the government’s reforms either, partly because he doesn’t see enough room for innovation and growth. You can’t nail down one big action, like the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and say it’s going to fix everything, he said.

“Nobody from any field would say that makes any sense whatsoever. The probability of that working is zero,” he said.

The financial sector needs to look to other fields, such as design, to develop solutions that actually work, said Martin. “You have to prototype things. You have to assume they won’t work in the way you expect them to,” he said.

Pushing a massive bill through “the most arcane body on the planet” – the U.S. Congress – is not going to solve today’s problems, he said. “It’s designed not to work, and it won’t work,” he added.

The second problem is that the average American citizen doesn’t know how the financial crisis started in the first place, and certainly doesn’t know how to fix it, said Martin.

In other words, complex regulations won’t go far enough to re-build trust if the public doesn’t understand them.

“I’m surprised that people believe us. The trust people have in economists to do the sorts of things they’re doing with the economy is utterly inconsistent with the historical data,” said Martin.

Looking forward, we’ll have to wait until Taft’s book comes out later this month to see what economists have in mind for the future of capitalism.

The post Why financial reform isn’t enough to restore the public’s faith in capitalism appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But one company, owned entirely by the Dene First Nations in the Northwest Territories (NWT), sees a silver lining. By picking up properties at fire sale prices, Denendeh Exploration and Mining Company (DEMCo) is hoping to “create momentum for a fundamental change in First Nation participation in resource development in the NWT and Canada.”

This aligns with John Ralston Saul’s assertion that the Canadian aboriginal population is in the midst of a comeback.

Corporate Knights’ Jeremy Runnalls spoke last month with Saul who noted that a new indigenous elite is emerging from a bigger-than-ever cohort of university and college graduates. This group is hungry for change and optimistic about the future, he said.

Another indicator of the comeback was the Idle No More movement, which sprang up just over two years ago after a group of women in Saskatchewan challenged federal legislation that would have leased First Nations property to make room for the Northern Gateway pipeline. “It was a moment were this underground aboriginal comeback broke surface for a brief time, and it is going to continue apace, whether we support it or not,” Saul told Corporate Knights.

Denendeh Investments Limited Partnership (DILP) is wholly owned and governed by residents of the five Dene regions in the NWT. Aside from managing its investment portfolio, DILP also owns an exploration and mining company called DEMCO, which is involved in everything from mining silver, to acquiring diamond claims, to staking property that is well known for its gold values.

Mineral exploration and extraction in the NWT is not new. First Nations have always used the natural resources on their lands, and large-scale development has been taking place in the NWT since the gold rush of 1898.  Since then, First Nations have worked in the mining industry on an as-needed basis, which has largely depended on the mining cycle.

DEMCo wants to change that cycle by creating long-term value for First Nations through equity-building in northern resource development, growing local businesses and creating employment and training opportunities.

Behind all of this work is Darrell Beaulieu, chief executive officer of DEMCo since 2005. We asked him to elaborate on his vision of “the comeback” and DEMCo’s role in making it happen. What follows is an edited version of Corporate Knights’ conversation with Beaulieu.

CK: In his interview with Corporate Knights, John Ralston Saul said First Nations have been presented with the option to either accept jobs under someone else’s conditions or be viewed as an irrelevant nuisance on the sidelines of the decision-making process. What role does DEMCo play in changing the status quo?

BEAULIEU: When you look at the resource sector and you ask the question to mainstream Canadians, “Can you imagine an aboriginal-owned mining company or exploration company?” most of the time, it has never even entered their minds. People assume we have to get approval, we have to consult with others. They don’t think that we could be the initiator of projects, such as owning and operating a mine. But aboriginal people right across the country have always utilized natural resources.

CK: Saul also talked about the Idle No More movement as a moment when the First Nations “comeback” broke the surface for a short time. Is there any connection between the Idle No More moment and what you’re doing in your company?

BEAULIEU: I was just as surprised when the Idle No More initiative popped up. From our perspective, the objectives are all the same. We just seem to be doing it in a different way.

CK: Do other First Nations people or groups question what you’re doing?

BEAULIEU: There’s always a little bit of ying and a little bit of yang. I don’t see them as tensions. It’s more so, “What are you doing? We don’t do this type of thing.” Or “where are you getting the money?” On the other hand, there is a lot of encouragement and support from First Nations, as well as the NWT government, the federal government and industry players.

CK: How do you manage your social licence as a First Nations-owned business?

BEAULIEU: We’re still seen as a business, so communities still want to sit down and talk about their participation. Before we do anything, we sit down with the community and go through everything that we’re doing. That’s what they want. They want that engagement, that conversation and being able to participate. Right now, they’re participating indirectly with us. But we give them the opportunity to participate directly through equity. And if the community has businesses that can provide services and supplies, then we will definitely use them.

CK: Do you think your company has an advantage when it comes to working with communities that other companies don’t have?

BEAULIEU: I think community engagement is our competitive edge. And that edge is available because we are a Northern Dene-owned company. And we’re operating in a territory where aboriginal people have a significant influence on our activity. The industry, from my experience, has always had some challenges due to regulatory uncertainty. I think Dene participation will help develop a responsible legislative and regulatory framework. First Nations don’t want to start big initiatives just to make money and then ruin the land and the environment and the water.  It’s a balanced approach that has got to ensure that the positive and negative impacts of mining and exploration are well understood.

CK: It seems to me that other mining companies would be knocking at your door because you have this advantage of being able to work with communities. It’s almost like a home-court advantage.

BEAULIEU: We do have some mining companies that are looking in, but they’re standing around the periphery because we’re so new.  Maybe some people just don’t know how to take us. And they’re saying “oh my goodness what do we have here?”

So there’s an assessment stage that is probably happening. Partnerships with existing mining companies are definitely something we’re looking at to increase our knowledge and expertise, as well as actual exploration, mining and financing. Like any other junior mining company, once you’ve got your property and you look at financing, you’ve got no other option but to dilute yourself.

CK: That was going to be my next question. Once you dilute yourself, how do you make sure that your mission doesn’t get lost as you grow?

BEAULIEU: That’s a really good question. I think that’s part of developing the principles and vision of the company. And I think that’s part of the assignment. As long as there are benefits for the investor, it’s a partnership. It’s no different than if a mining company developed a partnership with any another exploration company.

CK: Do you see any way forward for the mining industry without making some changes to their business model?

BEAULIEU: It just seems like it’s going to get more and more challenging for the resource industry. Over the last few decades, First Nations haven’t been so vociferous, but now you’re seeing a group that’s getting educated and understanding the jurisdictions and the laws. At the same time, they are understanding the demands and requirements of being full participants in the Canadian economy.

CK: What do you say to First Nations people within your own group who say “we don’t do this?”

BEAULIEU: If there’s a project and a property of merit that we could get and we could attract major investors and there’s a demand for it, and there’s an opportunity to generate your own source revenue rather than begging from somebody else; if it’s possible to be masters of your own land, what would you pick? For many decades we wanted to be full participants in the development of our territories. This is the one way you can do that. Otherwise, you sit back and wait for the Australian or the European or the U.S. investors to come in. And then the local people say “what are they doing, taking our resources and leaving us with environmental disasters?”

CK: In other words, you say to them, “somebody else is going to come in and take these resources if we don’t develop them ourselves?”

BEAULIEU: Yup.

The post First Nations-owned mining company finds silver lining to industry problems appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Descary is a nickel miner. She also happens to be a lesbian working in an industry that she describes as “closeted” and culturally homophobic; an industry where it wasn’t out of the ordinary for one of her male colleagues to suggest she come over to his house to “liven up” his sex life with his wife.

“You just hold your head high, do your job to the best of your ability and try not give them any more ammunition to use against you,” Descary told Corporate Knights.

Descary was difficult to find for this story. Not because lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people don’t exist in the mining industry, but because they are generally silent. As long as this silence prevails, workplace experts say, mining companies can pretend like nothing is wrong.

It’s bad business, they say, but particularly misguided for an industry increasingly desperate to gain a social licence to operate, which means proving it can be a forward-thinking, progressive member of society.

Luke Popovich, vice-president of external communications at the U.S.-based National Mining Association, said he hasn’t heard a peep from LGBT employees in over a decade. This doesn’t mean LGBT miners don’t exist, he emphasized.

“To me, the absence of the issue says there isn’t a problem. If people are complaining, let’s take a look. But I haven’t heard anything, and I’ve been here 12 years,” he said.

“He’s delusional,” said Descary, who worked for Vale, the nickel-mining company, for 25 years before becoming a staff representative with the United Steelworkers.

Cory McPhee, a vice-president of corporate affairs at Vale who has also worked in the industry for 25 years, said the mining industry has become less of “an old boys’ club” over time. Even so, he said he was “more disappointed than surprised” to hear about Descary’s experience as a Vale employee.

The company has an anti-discrimination policy in place that includes sexual orientation and gender, but it is not specifically directed at LGBT workers. There is also an ombudsman office where employees can raise concerns they don’t feel comfortable resolving through normal channels.

These normal channels include filing a formal complaint with the company or the union. Descary filed a harassment complaint on one occasion through the United Steelworkers Union, which she said was handled in a timely and sufficient manner.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to prove that you’re telling the truth because derogatory comments are rarely made in front of a group of people, she said.

Descary said her experience as a lesbian woman did not improve during her time working at Vale’s Sudbury, Ontario, operation, and as the only openly gay person she knows of in the industry, she had little support.

It can be an isolating experience, but she said she understands why men in the industry don’t come out.

“Knowing what I go through as a woman, I can’t imagine what it would be like for a man or a transgender person. My heart goes out to them,” she said. “Working in the mines is already tough enough. What kind of man is going to stand up and say, ‘I’m gay?’ It’s just not going to happen,” she added.

Joshua Collins is an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas who has studied the experiences of LGBT workers in industries that have been dominated traditionally by men. To him, the silence in the mining industry speaks volumes.

Just because people aren’t complaining or coming out doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem, said Collins, adding that the opposite should be assumed. “If there is silence, it likely means that some aspect of the industry’s culture has discouraged speaking out, and that is a serious issue worth addressing.”

The silence reaches beyond individual companies and appears to be the norm across the North American mining industry. The National Mining Association, Mining Association of Canada and Mining Industry Human Resources Council have yet to publish reports, adopt policies or release guidelines that deal explicitly with the rights of LGBT workers.

Popovich said he is not aware of a single company that has a LGBT-specific human resources policy and none of the National Mining Association’s members have ever raised it as an issue.

“While it seems reasonable to think that there are LGBT members of our union, I do not know of any. There is no LGBT group within the union,” said Phil Smith, director of governmental affairs with the United Mine Workers of America.

Even Google is silent on the matter. Search any variations of the terms “LGBT” and “mining” and nothing relevant comes up, aside from occasional chatter on a discussion board – for example, of a gay miner asking if he should come out. One of the only news stories to appear over the past few years is of a gay coal miner who sued Spartan Mining Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy Co., alleging the company’s management didn’t protect him from abusive co-workers.

This year’s Corporate Equality Index, conducted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), shows that the mining industry is lagging behind other male-dominated industries, such as oil and gas, aerospace and defence, and automotive. It even lags professional sports, if measured by the media coverage of well-known athletes announcing themselves as gay or lesbian.

The index ranks companies based on a number of indicators, such as access to benefits for same-sex partners, transgender-inclusive health insurance, existence of resource groups and diversity councils, positive external relationships with the LGBT community, and so on.

Companies may also be deducted 25 points for “a large-scale official or public anti-LGBT blemish on their recent records.”

Exxon received a score of -25 this year for refusing to adopt protections for its LGBT workers, even though shareholders had been urging the company to do so since 1999. The company adopted a policy last week that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in order to comply with new legislation around federal contracts.

The mining and metals industry is one of the worst in terms of engagement on LGBT issues, said Deena Fidas, director of the workplace equality program at HRC.

One of the reasons the industry is doing so poorly could be because mining companies don’t interact with the public, which means they don’t have the powerful incentive of a consumer market demanding that they be more inclusive, she said.

But McPhee said he thinks this is a cop-out. Vale shouldn’t fall back on its lack of interactions with the public as a reason for not being as progressive as it should be, he added.

As the public becomes increasingly focused on the industry’s every move, mining companies have a lot of catching up to do. “Businesses that are not engaged on LGBT issues are already behind the curve,” said Fidas.

The Corporate Equality Index shows that the majority of Fortune 500 companies offer extensive protections and equal benefits for LGBT employees. This awareness makes sense from a business perspective because laws are constantly changing, which puts companies at risk of costly legal liabilities, she said.

Mining companies are also likely to see their talent pools shrink the longer they ignore LGBT issues, said Fidas. LGBT people are unlikely to apply for jobs in a hostile industry, and so are their parents, friends and allies. There has been an overall shift in society’s attitudes, and the next round of young people entering the workforce is expecting equality to be the norm, she added.

As for people who are already working in the mining industry and thinking about coming out, Descary points out that for every homophobic person at a mining company one more will step forward to be supportive.

If LGBT people are experiencing discrimination in the mining industry, it’s going to require people to speak up – and not just those who are being harassed, said McPhee.

Descary’s own position on the matter is unyielding. “I have a right to a job. I have a right to a work environment that is free of harassment. I have a right to raise my child with a decent living,” she said. “I guess maybe I’m stubborn – I won’t let you win.”

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But a report released Thursday by the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) shows that investors, and the public more broadly, should be concerned about the political influence of Canadian companies.

Even small amounts of money can create reputational risks for companies, said Kevin Thomas, director of shareholder engagement for SHARE, an organization that specializes in responsible investment, research and education for institutional investors.

Not only do companies risk aligning with specific political agendas, but the public may also accuse the company of buying influence. Conversely, relationships with legislators could be damaged if the company supports the opposing party.

Even though these may be tiny donations that you wouldn’t notice on a balance sheet, they create significant liabilities for long-term investors, said Thomas.

If you consider the amount of pressure that companies have been under to act responsibly, it makes sense that investors are demanding more information about how companies are managing reputational risk. Put another way: activists and consumers have successfully scared some investors into taking their concerns seriously.

Investors in the U.S. are clearly worried about corporate political spending. There have been 530 shareholder proposals related to this issue in the last five years, making it the largest category of proposals. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions has its hands full with over one million comment letters on the topic.

But Canadian investors haven’t taken up the issue with the same gusto. And that’s where the SHARE’s “Dollars, Democracy and Disclosure” report comes in.

As the second instalment of a three-year project, the report describes with stark clarity the state of corporate political spending in Canada, and opens up a dialogue about the risks that these activities hold for investors.

While direct political contributions by corporations are either illegal or relatively small in Canada, the rubber really hits the road when you consider lobbying, said Thomas.

The TSX 60 is an index of 60 of the most valuable companies in Canada. Out of these companies, 80 per cent have active lobbyists in at least one jurisdiction, and more than half are lobbying in multiple jurisdictions, the report shows.

Not all jurisdictions in Canada require lobbyists to register, making it difficult to figure out how much influence these companies have across the country. Only half of the TSX 60 companies mention lobbying in their reports and only one – Telus – voluntarily offers the details of its lobbying activity.

But where public records are available, they show 956 lobbyists currently registered to the TSX 60 companies – an average of 16 lobbyists per company. Sixty per cent of those lobbyists are registered to oil and gas corporations, and two-thirds of these companies initiated almost 1,100 meetings with federal officials in 2014.

When trade associations are added to the mix, the image becomes even murkier.

When you look at the top five Canadian corporations lobbying the federal government in 2014, you get CN Rail, Telus, Shaw, Suncor and BlackBerry.

But when you include the trade associations of the top five Canadian corporations lobbying Ottawa, the list changes to Royal Bank, Suncor, Bombardier, SNC Lavalin and Teck Resources.

Almost half of the TSX 60 companies have membership in one of Canada’s four largest trade associations, but only nine companies disclose their trade association memberships.

This doesn’t even take into consideration funding for think tanks and advertisements, which influence public perception, especially during campaign years.

If you add up spending on lobbying, advertising and editorial content, contributions to trade associations and think thanks, it is clear that corporate political spending is a much bigger issue than just the amounts of money donated during election time, said the report.

More importantly, none of this spending is regulated, meaning companies are under no legal obligation to make this information public.

Investors are starting to see this as a problem and are considering whether or not Canadian companies should be forced to disclose their political spending.

Even though a political expenditure may be legal, it may not be in investors’ best interests – therefore it becomes an issue of “materiality,” said Thomas.

At its core, “materiality” is based on whether a reasonable investor’s decision to buy, sell or hold securities in a certain company would be influenced or changed if a certain piece of information was omitted or misstated. The key here is a “reasonable” investor; not an investor with a political, religious or otherwise personal agenda.

More simply, materiality is determined based on the shareholder’s right to know whether or not the company is operating in their best interest, which essentially means maximizing profits.

Maximizing profits used to be fairly straightforward: make as much money as possible in as little time as possible without thinking about the long-term consequences.

But, investors have begun adding new items to the list of issues that they consider material because activists are making it more difficult for companies to operate without a social license.

In other words, investors are becoming aware of the fact that a company’s reputation can affect their bottom line, and they want to know what companies are doing to manage those risks.

Derek Smith, senior counsel of the legal department at TD Bank Group, summed up the new definition of materiality as such: “If Stephen Colbert is making fun of a Canadian company on the Colbert Report, that problem is material.”

No other industry knows the pain of a bad reputation better than the mining industry.

“Without the social license [to operate] we’re not welcome anywhere and we’re not mining, period.” said Louise Grondin, senior vice-president of environment and sustainable development at Agnico Eagle Mines.

To improve its reputation and show its economic value to communities, Agnico Eagle Mines worked with a non-profit organization called Publish What You Pay Canada and the Mining Association of Canada to come up with a set of recommendations that would require oil, gas and mining companies to disclose how much they pay governments, at home and abroad, for access to their resources.

The idea is that if communities can see how much money their governments receive from mining companies, they will be able to hold their political leaders accountable for this money rather than fighting with mining companies.

“It was clearly the right things to do from the corporate citizen point of view,” said Grondin. But without the push from society, it wouldn’t have happened, and the Canadian government would not have adopted the extractive transparency legislation last year.

The pressure cooker that companies are in is merging the interests of shareholders and citizens in a way that hasn’t been seen before.

Citizens obviously have a right to know who and what is influencing government. Investors also have a right to know if companies are taking political risks with their money, said Thomas.

“They’re two different kinds of accountability, but they both add up to a much cleaner political process in the end,” he said.

The post Why investors should start asking Canadian companies to disclose their political spending appeared first on Corporate Knights.

When companies say they are measuring their emissions, they are usually talking about the carbon produced by their own operations and energy use. These are called Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.

But there is a significant chunk of carbon that isn’t accounted for by these measurements. Scope 3 emissions include everything from transportation, emissions created in the supply chain, and the use of products in the consumer’s home.

The emissions are difficult to measure, but most global corporations have a responsibility to measure them because the vast majority of their emissions come from their supply chains, said Dexter Galvin, head of supply chain at CDP.

“The only companies that can avoid it are oil and gas, utilities and chemicals, because these are the only sectors where scope 1 and 2 emissions are vastly larger than scope 3. Everybody else has a responsibility to engage their supply chains. Otherwise, they’re not really reporting their emissions,” he said.

But simply measuring Scope 3 emissions isn’t enough. Companies also need to collaborate with their suppliers to make sure they can make the necessary changes on the ground. A new report shows neither companies nor suppliers have been doing enough to make this happen.

“The message is unambiguous: suppliers in major economies in both the developed and developing world are underperforming,” says Supply Chain Sustainability Revealed: A country comparison released today by CDP, a non-profit organization that works with investors, companies and governments on environmental disclosure.

The report asked 3,400 suppliers in 11 key markets to answer a questionnaire about how they are addressing climate and water risks, making it the largest existing data set on climate risk in the global supply chain.

The results show that suppliers are becoming slightly more serious about tackling climate change. Last year, 48 per cent of suppliers set emissions targets, up from 44 per cent in 2013.

France, the U.K., Spain and Germany have the most well-prepared and sustainable supply chains, even though they are exposed to relatively low climate risks. Japan is the only country where suppliers are well equipped to respond to high climate risks.

The bad news is that other key metrics are stalling. The proportion of companies that responded to this year’s CDP questionnaire is lower than last year. And even though more companies responded to the questionnaire than ever before, the number of suppliers that are taking action to tackle climate change stayed at 62 per cent from the previous year.

In other words, more companies are setting targets, but fewer are working to actually meet them.

This stagnation could have something to do with the fact that the amount of collaboration between companies and suppliers also fell back last year. Only 50 per cent of suppliers engaged with partners on the supply chain – a drop from 56 per cent in 2013.

Companies that engage directly with one or more of their suppliers are almost twice as likely to reduce their emissions and are even more likely to see a financial return from their low-carbon investments.

This is a fairly common sense lesson: companies can only tackle climate risks that are outside of their control if they are willing to delve into their supply chains and work with suppliers to solve their problems.

Unfortunately, many companies are intimidated by their supply chains. I wrote about health and safety in the garment industry last October and found that many companies were unwilling to take up the task of auditing their entire supply chains, claiming it was too daunting.

But CDP’s study shows that many suppliers – particularly in China and India – are eager to work with companies and other suppliers to reduce their carbon emissions.

In both countries, suppliers are calling out to their customers to support their investments in low-carbon technologies, said Galvin. And when companies answer this call, they get the highest returns on investment because there is still so much low-hanging fruit in these markets when it comes to carbon reductions, he said.

BT Group, one of the world’s largest multinational telecommunications companies, began tracking its carbon emissions in 1992, and has in the past few years also focused on supplier engagement to drive down supply chain carbon emissions.

To understand its Scope 3 emissions, BT Group paired economic modeling techniques with CDP data to get a bird’s eye view of the climate risk in its global supply chain, which includes thousands of suppliers around the world.

That analysis showed a surprising reality: 66 per cent of the company’s carbon emissions came from their suppliers, 29 per cent came from consumers’ use of their products and only 5 per cent was directly attributed to the company’s operations.

With this knowledge in hand, the company began engaging its top 20 suppliers on a one-on-one basis to get more information about their activities and to help them develop best practices to reduce their emissions, said Gabrielle Giner, Environmental Sustainability Programme Manager at BT Group.

Once a year, the company invites a small group of its suppliers to participate in the Better Future Supplier Forum where suppliers share best practices and collaborate to reduce their emissions.

Huawei is a Chinese supplier that works directly with BT Group and helps a third of the world communicate by supplying networking parts to companies around the globe.

Since participating in BT Group’s first forum in 2012, Huawei has established a sustainability taskforce, reduced its carbon footprint 23,000 tonnes and been awarded a Silver Status Sustainability Award by BT.

“We’re hoping that our suppliers will take what they’ve learned from us and push it down their own supply chains – that’s where you get a bigger effect,” said Giner.

But before other companies can take on such ambitious work, they need to get a clearer understanding of their supply chains.

CDP recommends companies begin by making use of digital technologies that allow them to track emissions in their supply chains.

Supply chains become more efficient and responsive when they are digitized, said Galvin. It gives customers and suppliers real-time visibility all the way down the global supply chain, which can help to eliminate waste and improve efficiency.

But Galvin is quick to warn that data can’t replace direct engagement between companies and their suppliers. Digital technologies are helpful for identifying a company’s hot spots, but it doesn’t actually drive change on the ground, he said.

The post Taking climate risks and opportunities that exist for supply chains seriously appeared first on Corporate Knights.

So critical is this relationship that mo­bile apps, developed by companies such as Good.co and Plasticity, are using sophisti­cated personality tests and surveys to help boost workplace happiness, whether that means finding the perfect match between jobseekers and employers or helping com­panies better engage and motivate work­ers. Employers are also increasingly recog­nizing the importance of strong corporate social responsibility programs as a way to attract and retain top talent.

There is no shortage of research linking mission-driven work to happy workers. But a company cannot simply advertise itself as socially and environmentally responsible and expect to reap the human resources benefits. The ethos of the company has to percolate through the entire organization to ensure employees are happy – and that they stay that way.

Measuring happiness impact

In a 2014 survey conducted by Deloitte, companies that responded said leader­ship, employee retention, human resourc­es skills, and talent acquisition were their most urgent issues. This is not surprising, as the cost to replace a skilled employee can average 21 per cent of an employee’s salary.

A study by SHRM Research found that happy employees are 87 per cent less likely to leave their organizations than disen­gaged employees.

This is common sense. But what makes employees happy? To help answer that question, San Francisco-based Net Impact conducted a survey, the results of which informed a report titled “What Workers Want in 2012.” It found that for 53 per cent of workers, having a job where they can make a positive impact was important to their happiness. That figure rose to 72 per cent for students about to enter the work­force, which according to Deloitte will make up 75 per cent of the global workforce by 2025.

It’s a message that hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. Companies have been tripping over themselves to implement worker engage­ment programs that help employees feel like they are having a social impact, said Michael Palanski, an associate professor at Saunders College of Business at the Roch­ester Institute of Technology.

But these programs, in isolation, do not necessarily lead to a happier workforce, he said. “There is a difference between being committed and being happy.”

An employee can be committed to a company’s mission and still be unhappy with how that mission is being carried out. “People are typically committed to an orga­nization, but their happiness is determined by their immediate boss,” said Palanski, add­ing that value congruency between an em­ployee and his or her supervisor is usually the crux of the employee retention problem.

If a manager is taking orders from the top without being committed to the cause itself, the employees reporting to that manager are less likely to be engaged. This supports an oft-repeated line by human resource experts: people don’t leave jobs, they leave people.

Aon, Canada’s top global human capi­tal and management consulting firm, con­ducted a survey of seven million employ­ees across more than 6,000 companies in 68 industries and 155 countries. While the survey didn’t have an indicator called “my boss is a jerk,” most of the indicators are directly related to leadership style, said Ken Oehler, global engagement practice leader at Aon.

Tackling turnover

The major factors that determine worker engagement, such as career opportunities, communication and recognition, fall under the responsibility of senior management, said Oehler. “The concept of an organiza­tion as a thing is an illusion,” he said. “Orga­nizations are made up of people.”

If companies can align their motivations with their actions and seek out employees who are equally committed, then they are likely to have a happy workforce, added Palanski.

It’s not easy to tell how many companies are actually achieving this goal. The causes of employee turnover are difficult to pin down because they differ from industry to industry and country to country. What is considered normal turnover for a fast-food restaurant in the United States could signal a crisis for a clothes retailer in Germany.

Nevertheless, the Global Reporting Ini­tiative (GRI), a leading organization in the field of sustainability performance disclo­sure, has included employee turnover in its reporting standard since its first version was released in 2000.

Along with other labour-related met­rics, employee turnover allows third par­ties to assess a company’s past and present labour practices, said Bastian Buck, GRI’s director of reporting standards.

But GRI acknowledges that employee turnover is a complex indicator. Under­standing the specifics of the industry, economy and history of the organization is critically important, Buck explained.

This year’s Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking showed, as one example, sig­nificant differences in turnover rates for two Canadian gold mining companies: Bar­rick Gold and Kinross. The former had one of the highest employee turnover rates in 2013 at 14.6 per cent, while the latter only had a 5.7 per cent turnover that year.

Without more contextual information, one could speculate that employees at Bar­rick Gold are leaving because they are less happy, less motivated and engaged, than those at Kinross.

A quick Google search, however, re­veals that the industry has been reeling from falling gold prices over the past two years. To cut costs, Barrick began to lay off employees in June 2013, while Kinross delayed cuts to its workforce until Janu­ary 2014 – the latter not being reflected in 2013 results.

The problem is that current workplace turnover metrics don’t distinguish between voluntary and involuntary turnover, which is critical to understanding how well a company is performing outside of external economic factors.

Perhaps if we could see how many em­ployees voluntarily left Barrick Gold com­pared to Kinross, we could more accurately conclude which company has the happier, more motivated and engaged workforce.

Until then, we can only speculate.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post Why happiness is an HR issue appeared first on Corporate Knights.