Not just specific coastal communities or the threat of drought, but to our collective physical and mental health as well. Corporations stand exposed to risk no matter what sector they’re in and leading companies across Canada are working to understand where the greatest gaps lie.

It’s why Corporate Knights has decided once again, with sponsorship support from the Canadian Industry Partnership for Energy Conservation (CIPEC), to carry forward the annual Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada ranking into its 17^th year. CIPEC helps organizations increase profits by improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Corporate Knights places the highest degree of emphasis on transparency and continuity in our quest to reflect which companies are leading the way to a more sustainable world. While we [strive to] avoid making changes to our methodology, every decade we make a significant update to reflect the evolution of corporate sustainability practices and disclosure.

The first time we did this was in 2005 for the Best 50, when we moved from a “black box” third party-sourced research model to a transparent set of indicators from the public domain.

This year, we have taken an equally important step to update our weighting system from equal weight for each metric to a rules-based weighting guided by the relevance of each key performance indicators (KPI) for each industry, placing more emphasis on metrics that matter most for each industry. The energy KPI, for example, will carry more weight for a company in a sector that accounts for a substantial portion of total energy use (within the universe of ranked companies) than it will for a company in a sector that accounts for a relatively small portion of total energy use.

Second, a clean revenue KPI has been added. It is calculated using multiple research sources that identify potential clean revenues on a product/service segment basis. Findings of potential clean revenues of 10 per cent or more of total revenues are then confirmed via manual inspection of financial statements and sustainability reports on a company-specific basis.

While there will be some growing pains adjusting to these new goal posts, we are confident it furthers our quest and will help enhance feedback loops that reinforce a sustainable economy. Companies can take our assurance that these are the new goal posts and with the exception of minor refinements from year to year, the criteria will not be undergoing any major changes in the next five years.

Class of 2018

The top company this year is Hydro-Québec, the iconic public utility that has been working hard to rebuild trust among its consumers (see here for more). Following second is Toronto Hydro, which has enjoyed success in recent years reducing its carbon footprint, reducing waste and enacting a climate change adaptation plan.

In third place is Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions, a company that has been aggressively championing sustainable operating practices within the real estate industry. Rounding out the top five are two Saskatchewan-based firms: mining company Cameco and agricultural term lender Farm Credit Canada.

A mix of sectors appear on this year’s Best 50 list, demonstrating the diverse nature of Canada’s economy. International banks, telecom companies and energy utilities are particularly prominent, along with various other participants within the extractives industry.

Companies headquartered in seven provinces are featured on the ranking, with Ontario and Québec accounting for a combined 30 of the top 50. B.C. and Alberta tied with seven apiece, followed by Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia.

See the full Best 50 results here.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post Introducing the 17th annual Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The 2018 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada ranking was sponsored by CIPEC – the Canadian Industry Partnership for Energy Conservation – which helps organizations increase profits by improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post 2018 Best 50 results appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“A few years ago, they were shy of putting the logo on them,” says Éric Martel, president and CEO of the public utility, which manages the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity in Québec.

Hydro-Québec has been working to improve its corporate culture in recent years, the results of which have helped it earn the top spot on the Corporate Knights’ 2018 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada list. Hydro-Québec was fourth on the list in 2017.

Recharging corporate culture

Since he took over the top job in July 2015, Martel has been on a mission to improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement, with a goal to make Hydro-Québec a more attractive place to work, as well as to boost its reputation in the community.

Martel says the organization had some “serious challenges” around customer satisfaction when he came on board. At that time, 82 per cent of customers said they were satisfied with the public utility. “My concern there was that it meant about one person out of five wasn’t satisfied, which is a lot,” he says. “Maybe we’re a monopoly, but it’s a privilege… and we should be the best one in customer service.”

Employee morale was also low, with less than two-thirds of employees saying they felt engaged, according to internal surveys.

Martel went across the province with an aim to meet nearly every employee, while also improving customer service through extended hours and increasing communication and transparency around its decisions, including rate increases.

“When you do a cultural transformation like this, you need to set the tone from the start,” he says.

The strategy appears to be working. In 2017, 92 per cent of customers said they were satisfied, up from 82 per cent in 2015, according to Hydro-Québec surveys. Employee engagement increased to 76 per cent in 2017, up from 62 per cent in 2014.

Developing diversity

Martel also continued with Hydro-Québec’s goal to boost diversity across the organization. Today, about 7.3 per cent of its approximately 19,700 employees are Indigenous or members of visible or ethnic minorities. That’s up from about 2.9 per cent a decade ago.

“We still have a long way to go to be more representative,” he says. “I think it makes us stronger. It’s opening up the talent pool… and will make us a better company years from now.”

The board and senior management are also diverse: Half the combined team of 16 executives are women. Among the organization’s top 162 managers, 52 are women, or 32 per cent, which is up from 25 per cent of the 152 top managers in 2013.

“When we do our succession planning, this is always the discussion: How do we make sure that we give women the opportunity to grow within the organization, based on their potential?” Martel says.

Going greener

While the company is largely green – 99.5 per cent of its production is renewable from hydroelectricity – Martel says its goal is to hit 100 per cent, but there’s no specific timeline. The remaining 0.5 per cent is due to the fuel-power electricity generation that’s required in more remote locations that are off the grid.

In the meantime, the company is working on some energy-efficiency alternatives, including a microgrid project underway in Lac-Mégantic, the Québec town devastated by a rail disaster in July 2013. Hydro-Québec is building a microgrid in the municipality’s new downtown that will include about 30 residential and commercial buildings. It will feature up to 1,000 solar panels (300 kW installed capacity), batteries able to store 300 kWh of energy, smart homes and buildings equipped with consumption management systems and charging stations for electric vehicles.

Martel describes it as a lab for the organization to test the integration of technology and power, which can then be used in other regions.

“They had the will to do it,” Martel says of Lac-Mégantic’s participation. Plus, it was a good opportunity, given the community is rebuilding after the train tragedy.

Boosting brand loyalty

While Martel says Hydro-Québec is on the right track to improving its overall corporate social responsibility, his goal is to make continuous improvements in areas ranging from customer satisfaction, employee morale, diversity and energy efficiency.

“I’d like the population of Québec to be proud of what we are doing externally and for our employees to be extremely proud of working here.”

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post 2018 top company profile: Hydro-Québec appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Top Foreign Corporate Citizens in Canada list consists of the top 15 performing foreign companies* operating in Canada, according to the Corporate Knights Sustainability Rating methodology.

*All companies which earn least $1 billion in annual revenues in Canada and are not listed or headquartered in Canada are assessed

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post 2018 Top Foreign Corporate Citizens appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The rankings, derived from the 2018 Fuel Consumption Guide published by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), rate environmental performance among all vehicles within each of the guide’s 12 categories.

Seven of the top scorers run solely on battery power while three others are conventional or plug-in hybrids that combine battery propulsion and internal combustion. Vehicles operating exclusively on internal combustion lead only in the two categories without electrified vehicles – small and standard pickup trucks.

The results represent a remarkable shift: In just two decades since the Toyota Prius hybrid was introduced in Japan and less than 10 years since the first all-electric Nissan LEAF went on sale, battery power has moved from a diehard environmentalist niche into every car class and even minivans and SUVs.

This does not mean, yet, that we are witnessing the triumph of electric vehicles; they still account for a tiny fraction of sales. Still, our rankings show electrification is a key strategy for automakers to meet increasingly stringent fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas-emission standards. Not only are EVs emissions-free but their manufacturers, in return for producing them, also get credits that lower the mandatory targets for the rest of their vehicles.

The standards, introduced in 2012 in the United States and copied by Canada and several other nations, require steady improvements in fuel economy until 2025, when each automaker’s passenger vehicle fleet is to average 55.2 miles per U.S. gallon, or 4.3 litres per 100 kilometres. Because of the credits for EVs as well as others for “green” technologies, such as the use of safer refrigerants, in internal-combustion vehicles, the estimated actual mileage will be about 36 mpg, or 6.5 litres/100. While some might question the credit system, created to ensure automakers’ consent to the standards, its result would be a significant cut in fuel consumption and, for consumers, unprecedented choice.

The fate of the American standards is unclear now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), urged on by automakers, has undertaken to ease those set for 2022 to 2025. California imposes its own rules, which were the template for the national program, and it vows to challenge any rollbacks. Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia follow California’s lead. Since together they account for one-third of the U.S. vehicle market, the stage seems set for a tough battle between competing regulations.

Canada will likely continue to follow whatever the Americans finally decide. But the European Union, China, South Korea and other leading vehicle production centres have imposed standards similar to the current EPA targets, and it’s not clear how they, and their automakers, would respond to changes in the U.S.

Despite the uncertain future, the NRCan guide and our Clean Cars rankings illustrate how progress has been, and will continue to be, achieved.

The guide’s 12 size classes include two-seat, sub-compact; compact, mid-size and full-size cars; minivans; small and standard pick-up trucks; small and mid-size station wagons; and small and standard SUVs. For each vehicle it lists engine size and number of cylinders, whether automatic or manual transmission, fuel type, fuel consumption and annual fuel cost, carbon emissions at the tailpipe and a rating for contribution to smog.

The all-important fuel consumption ratings are based on tests conducted by automakers under controlled laboratory conditions intended to simulate urban, suburban and highway driving. As NRCan explains: “It would be difficult to drive every model of new vehicle on the road to measure fuel consumption, and almost impossible to consistently duplicate on-road testing results because many variables can affect a vehicle’s performance.”

The test results are, typically, about 25 per cent better than what motorists will achieve under real-world conditions, where terrain, road surface, wind and other weather conditions, and driving style all impact the amount of fuel consumed. Even so, they allow useful comparisons among vehicles.

Neither the guide nor our rankings considers a vehicle’s initial cost, performance or total carbon footprint, including the environmental impacts of mining, production, transportation, extracting and refining fossil fuels, and generating and storing electricity.

We analysed a total of 1,047 vehicles, comparing each vehicle with all others in its NRCan classification. The 12 winners are those scoring highest in their respective class.

Results for the 2018 Canadian Clean Cars Guide:

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We allotted a possible 50 per cent of the final scores to annual fuel cost; a gauge we considered more meaningful than fuel consumption for consumers. Low CO2 emissions and contribution to smog, as well as longer range between fuelling stops, were each worth up to 15 per cent. The remaining five per cent was allocated to recharge times. We excluded vehicles that failed to achieve a safety rating of at least 4 out of 5 from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Electric vehicles got top marks for their zero emissions and smog impact, and far lower fuel costs. On the other hand, internal-combustion vehicles got perfect scores for recharge time, reflecting the fact you can fill a gas tank in minutes while it can take hours to recharge a battery.

Electrification might be the poster technology for reduced fuel consumption and emissions. But since the vast majority of motorists still opt for internal combustion, automakers must improve there, too.

Going through past NRCan guides reveals a key change: Engines are, on average, getting smaller. For example, in 2010, you could buy a 3.6-litre, six-cylinder Chevrolet Malibu sedan or a 3.5-litre, six cylinder Honda Accord. For 2018, the largest engine available for either is a 2.0-litre with four cylinders.

In 2010, the smallest engine available on the standard version of Ford’s popular F-150 pickup truck boasted 4.6 litres and eight cylinders. The largest was a 5.4-litre, eight, and by 2012 it had grown to 6.2. Now, the smallest is a 2.7-litre six; the biggest, a 5.0-litre eight.

With these size reductions came lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

To squeeze acceptable performance from smaller power plants, manufacturers have adopted aluminum, plastics and other lighter-weight materials; more aerodynamic designs; devices that de-activate some cylinders under light load or shut off and restart the engine at stops; and sophisticated engine and transmission technologies with features such as turbo-charging and computer-controlled fuel injection spray patterns.

Mazda, the smallest Japanese carmaker, claims a 20-per-cent fuel-consumption gain from its new SkyActiv-X engine, which burns gasoline in the type of compression ignition system until now reserved for diesel engines.

However, such improvements are being undermined by a shift to vehicles in larger size classes, particularly pickup trucks and SUVs, which now represent nearly two-thirds of the U.S. market.

The result, as reported by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, is that the average fuel economy of all new cars and light trucks sold in the United States has stalled after years of steady advances. In October 2007, when the institute began keeping records, the average was 20.1 mpg, or 11.7 litres per 100 kilometres. By summer 2014, the number had improved to 25.5 mpg, or 9.2 litres/100. Since then, it has dropped and as of last December was down to 25.0 mpg, or 9.4 litres/100.

The university’s Eco-Driving Index, which estimates the average monthly emissions of greenhouse gases generated by an individual U.S. driver, has followed a similar pattern.

In this complex environment of good news and challenges, our Clean Cars winners stand as clear evidence we can do much better if we embrace the change they represent.

The post The 2018 Canadian Clean Cars Guide appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Today, for example, he’s already been to the gym (a busted knee in December and a recent hip replacement mean he can no longer run) and has blasted through the daily newspapers in the steam room. As a senior partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto and head of its corporate governance group, he’s dealt with some governance issues in one client’s family business and some employment issues for another client, a public company. He’s got a meeting in an hour with the chair of the Ontario Securities Commission – which he chaired from 1993 to 1996 – to discuss some proposals around climate-risk disclosure. There’s a board meeting later in the afternoon, and class in the evening: Waitzer teaches corporate law, in a joint appointment between Osgoode Hall Law School and York University’s Schulich School of Business, where he directs the Hennick Centre for Business and Law. (He also lectures regularly at various Chilean university law and business schools; he’s on the advisory board of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s corporate governance centre.) And then there’s the board presentation he’s putting together for Monday, the slew of articles he’s writing, a panel for accountants on auditor liability for negligence in court, the fellowships at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation and the C.D. Howe Institute, the committees, the charitable boards.

If you’re having trouble keeping track, that’s at least two, maybe three full-time jobs, down from four when he stepped down as chair of the LCBO in 2016.

Not to mention the seven adult kids to visit and keep track of, a brood that includes his five sons and the two daughters of his partner, Susannah Robinson, a vice-president at Edmonton-based utility company EPCOR.

And yet, Waitzer is relaxed and gracious during our conversation, as though he has all the time in the world to delve into the minutiae of why he’s receiving the 2018 Corporate Knights Award of Distinction at an event on June 7th – even if he seems genuinely diffident about the reasons he’s being honoured. “It’s because I’m getting old,” he quips, although at 64 it’s obvious that he has no plans to slow down anytime soon.

“Ed has more bandwidth than anyone else I know,” says pension fund guru Keith Ambachtsheer, director emeritus of the International Centre for Pension Management at U of T’s Rotman School of Management. He and Waitzer frequently collaborate on scholarship and action around pension reform.

The common thread at the heart of Waitzer’s diverse body of work might be characterized as a sustained counteroffensive against what he has termed a “compliance mentality”: following the rules, or “doing things right,” at the expense of doing the right thing.

“What Ed is putting out there is the very powerful, very simple notion that says that boards can’t simply follow a bunch of rules or check off a bunch of boxes and say, ‘If we do this and this, we’ve fulfilled our fiduciary duty,’” says Ambachtsheer.

Rather, Waitzer has spent much of his legal career advocating the kind of in-depth analysis that forces boards to consider more broadly for what and to whom they are accountable, as well as whether they sufficiently take into account their multiple stakeholders’ needs over the long term.

In the case of pension funds, for example, stakeholders might include retirees, the employer or employers, current and (crucially) future employees, and the communities in which they live and work, not to mention the built and natural environments and the people and places affected by supply chains.

“Ed has spent much of his life advancing the legal foundations for corporations and pension funds to better serve the public good,” says Corporate Knights CEO and publisher Toby Heaps. “He’s brought a high level of credibility to interpreting a complex body of law in ways that expand the concept of fiduciary responsibility and allow business leaders to use their power to better serve the interests of a wide range of stakeholders. He makes it less possible for a corporate or pension board to shut down, say, discussions about blackballing child labour or coal because, ‘We have a fiduciary duty to our shareholders.’”

Former MP Belinda Stronach has witnessed those traits firsthand during Waitzer’s long-time tenure as an advisor to Magna International, where she was a board member and later executive vice-chairman. In 2003, she recalls, Waitzer helped to engineer a solution that saw Magna split its automotive and entertainment operations into two companies in response to shareholder concerns.

“We needed a solution that was fair and acceptable to the shareholders, and Ed was very instrumental in helping to construct and arrive at the solution. It was a complex situation, with multiple and sometimes competing views and objectives, and he was and is always very thoughtful and principled and practical. He’s very good at taking into account strong contrary or different viewpoints and presenting an alternative, at aligning interests to find a good solution.”

Waitzer says his focus on the long term has absolutely been shaped by his role as a parent. “I’ve always been focused on institutional and social change, primarily from within the system. But the focus on intergenerational accountability is very much influenced not just by having but learning from my kids,” who are, in various ways, coming into their own as change agents, often at more grassroots level than their father: one son, for example, is a teacher; another, a community organizer.

“It’s the same reason I teach,” says Waitzer: “I’m lucky to have a bunch of smart, highly engaged kids in my classes who force me to rethink my assumptions annually.”

In those corporate law classrooms, Waitzer often finds himself teaching cases he’s worked on, including Magna and the landmark Supreme Court of Canada BCE buyout case, which held that board directors must take into account a broad range of stakeholders beyond a company’s immediate shareholders.

“When I start my corporate law course every year,” says Waitzer, “I say, ‘This is a history course. I can tell you what the law is today and we can talk about the trajectory of the law, but I can promise you that the law you’re going to be working with is going to be very different than what we’re talking about today.’”

What he doesn’t say, but what Waitzer’s more astute students will likely grasp, is that their teacher is not just teaching but actively shaping that future trajectory of the law and its impacts on society.

“Ed isn’t simply a thought leader,” says Ambachtsheer. “He’s involved in the whole spectrum from thought to action. He’s a respected academic on the one hand, and on the other he’s actually arguing [these things] in court in real time. Whether he’s on a board or in a courtroom, he actually gets in situations where he’s the change agent himself.”

The post Serving the public good appeared first on Corporate Knights.

With trend spotters declaring “plant-based” everything the hottest food craze of 2018, all while North Americans eat more protein than ever, the market for “alt meat” is undeniably blowing up – and a growing handful of San Francisco Bay area startups with a taste for food have been leading the charge. They’re not serving up the dry soy burgers and chick’n strips of yore. No, buzzy companies like Beyond Meat (now at a growing number of Canadian restaurants), Impossible Foods and Memphis Meats are spending millions on high tech labs staffed with food scientists, biochemists and physicists to replicate “the architecture of meat,” as Beyond Meat’s CEO Ethan Brown put it. They’re running burgers under MRIs, replicating flavour molecules, splicing genes and, in the case of cellular agriculture companies like Memphis Meat, they’re brewing actual “clean” meatballs, milk, even leather in bioreactors.

Okay, so not all of that will sit well with the whole grain set, but it’s certainly caught the meat industry’s attention.

No doubt meat has needed a radical makeover. The industry’s been slammed for being a bigger climate change driver than all the cars, trucks and planes on the planet combined (not good when global meat consumption is expected to double by 2050, thanks to growing demand from developing economies). What’s more, it requires tremendous amounts of water, land and other resources, as well as controversial antibiotics and other drugs. Not to mention, industrial meat farming has spent the better part of a decade under heavy fire from animal welfare group exposes. It’s all left a bad taste in consumers’ mouths, and, as one of the globe’s largest meat processors, Cargill, put it, “[Millennials] are driving calls to do things differently.”

The thing is, until recently, fake meat, well, it’s kind of sucked. While an April study by Mintel found that an impressive 53 per cent mostly omnivorous Canadians say that they eat plant-based meat alternatives like veggie burgers and hot dogs (with one in five Canadians eating mock meat a few times a week), only 16 per cent say those alternatives “taste as good as meat.” To win over skeptics, Mintel’s associate director of food and drink, Joel Gregoire, says the makers of meat alternatives will have to bridge the taste and texture gap between their products and actual meat.

It’s a gap that’s rapidly closing thanks to this new wave of alt meat innovations emerging south of the border. Globally, the market for plant-based meat is expected to reach $4.6 billion (U.S.) in 2018 and climb to $6.3 billion by 2023. One agro-biz financier, Rabobank, has warned animal protein companies to seize the opportunity “or they will turn into threats.” So far, the world’s largest meat companies are wisely getting in on the action. Chicken processing giant Tyson Foods has snatched up a five per cent stake in one leading “bleeding” veggie burger maker, Beyond Meat. It, along with Cargill, also secured a minority investment in Memphis Meats, the San Francisco startup growing clean beef, chicken and duck meat from animal cells. Cargill, by the way, sold its last two remaining feed yards last year, to, in part, “explore plant-based protein, fish and insects.”

Not to be outdone, Canada’s largest packaged meat provider, Maple Leaf Farms, has purchased two popular plant-based protein companies, Field Roast and Lightlife Foods, boldly noting, “This acquisition advances Maple Leaf’s vision to be the most sustainable protein company on earth, including a core strategy to diversify into plant-based protein.”

Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain has acknowledged that the food industry is “pivoting towards a crisis,” ceding that the planet’s limited resources can’t sustain current dietary trends for a growing population. McCain told the Globe’s Report on Business magazine that while consumers want to ingest more protein, “they want more choice in the proteins they consume [and] the majority of that growth in North America will come from plant-based proteins, not animal proteins.” It seems Maple Leaf is effectively pulling a Patagonia, encouraging its customers to buy less of its products – its meat products anyway. Said McCain, “We’re the only meat company in the world that is overtly expressing the objective for consumers to eat meat in moderation.”

There’s no denying investing in slaughter-free products is a smart way to bank some good PR and to warm relations with most animal welfare orgs. Though some vegans have accused their favourite plant protein brands of selling out and sleeping with enemy, Mercy for Animal’s communications director, Kenny Torrella, doesn’t see it that way. “[These meat companies] see the writing on the wall. There’s more and more awareness about the unsustainability of our high meat consumption both in Canada and the U.S. Rather than being disrupted by it, they want to be part of the disruption.”

Adds Torrella, “Ultimately, for major meat and food companies, their bottom line is making money.”

And analysts note there’s plenty more money to be made. The market for alternative meat could claim up to a third of the protein market by 2054, according to Lux Research, as more “flexitarians” and “reducetarians” moderate their meat intake. No wonder Walmart is asking its suppliers to make more meat-free fare and, Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, snatched up Sweet Earth to start selling its Benevolent Bacon and Harmless Ham.

Even so, not everyone’s embracing the tectonic shifts afoot. American cattle ranchers have made it clear they have a major beef with plant-based and lab-grown meats. Back in February, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture requesting that the feds establish labelling requirements that outlaw “products not derived directly from animals raised and slaughtered” from using terms like “beef” and “meat.”

Missouri lawmakers have already introduced a meat industry-friendly bill that “prohibits misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” They’re particularly threatened by lab-grown meat, which could be on shelves by the end of 2018, if vegan mayo maker Just delivers on its promise to be selling a cultured avian product, or maybe lab-grown foie gras, by then. (That would place it years ahead of cellular ag competitors like Memphis Meats, Israeli startup SuperMeat and even Finless Foods’ much-anticipated fish fillets.) Just is also vowing to be one of the first clean meat firms to culture that meat without pints upon pints of controversial fetal bovine serum, the “miracle juice” behind most lab-grown meat.

Whichever cultured meat hits Americans’ shelves first, since it would be classified as a “novel” food in Canada, it’ll need Health Canada’s approval before it’s permitted on menus here. Ditto for Impossible Food’s “bleeding” wheat and potato protein burger, which gets its deceptively meaty taste and aroma from a genetically modified yeast protein, yet to be cleared by Canadian authorities.

Which begs the question, are all these new options a tad too processed? Mintel’s survey found that 21 per cent of Canadians already think so. But it depends how you look at it, says Alison Rabschnuk, with D.C.-based Good Food Institute, Mercy for Animals’ burgeoning sister nonprofit that incubates and promotes plant-based and clean meat innovation around the globe. “If you’re chicken on a farm you’re typically pumped full of antibiotics because you’re in such crowded conditions and you’ve been genetically modified to grow to the point where…you can barely stand on your two legs. That to us is what processed food really looks like.”

Adds Rabschnuk, “It’s really up to the consumer to decide what they can bear.”

Either way, if new-wave alternatives to traditional meat are as tasty as the special sauce-laden Beyond Burger selling out at that downtown Toronto eatery, Bill Gates is likely right in calling it “the future of food.”

Homegrown: Canadian Prairies feeding pea protein craze

For years, fake meat mostly got its protein from one crop: soy. Now, a second-generation plant protein source is on the rise: yellow peas. Beyond Meat’s burgers, Sophie’s Kitchen’s vegan scallops and Good Catch’s upcoming fish-free tuna all fold pea concentrates and isolates into their recipes – as do a growing array of high protein snacks, powders and pet foods. And as the world’s largest producer of yellow peas, Canadian pea farmers are poised to cash in on the trend. Much of those peas currently get processed into protein concentrates in China, but the race is on to build capacity locally.

Last September, Avatar director and environmental advocate James Cameron showed up in rural Saskatchewan to announce that his company, Verdient Foods, is building North America’s largest pea protein plant southwest of Saskatoon. Manitoba and Alberta are getting new processing plants, too. The push for more Canadian peas couldn’t come any sooner for Prairie farmers left holding the bag ever since their top customer, India, slapped a 50 per cent tariff on yellow peas earlier this year. More silver linings: Since yellow peas aren’t genetically modified, they should stir up less controversy than alt meat’s old soy standby.

The post On the menu: plant and lab-grown meat appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It was an ambitious undertaking as Desjardins has hundreds of branches, head offices in both Montréal and Levis, outside Québec City, as well as satellites in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario. Some locations are way off the transit grid while others are easily accessible. In a firm with 45,000 employees, the task demanded multiple solutions.

After carefully surveying employees to look for potential opportunities, Desjardins rolled out a range of initiatives, according to Yves Normandin and Pascal Laliberté, who lead the sustainable development unit.

Among the initiatives that have been introduced are discounts on subscriptions for local Bixi and Communauto, a Québec car-sharing service, and a 20 per cent subsidy for employees who buy passes for the subway, bus and commuter rail networks. The company has also built shower and locker facilities at its office locations and installed secure bike parking areas. There’s a car-pooling program, with convenient parking spaces reserved for these vehicles. Employees who use the program to get to work can take out a shared car if they have off-site appointments during the workday.

Lastly, the company has arranged for shuttle buses to run between its Montréal and Québec City head offices, a service used by 800 employees each year. Those buses have WiFi and tables so travellers can work en route. “It’s always full,” says Laliberté. “It’s easier for employees who have to make the trip between the two head offices.”

Normandin and Laliberté freely acknowledge that the cost of their multi-pronged program is about $1 million – not a trivial sum, but one with impact, given that almost 8,400 Desjardins employees now use these commuting alternatives. That figure, which is more than a third higher than in 2015, represents about half the total number of employees who are in a position to take advantage of these benefits.

Interestingly, what may seem like a well-intentioned corporate social responsibility expense is actually a bottom-line win. The investment allows Desjardins to reduce the amount it pays for carbon offset credits. But even more importantly, the reduction in driving has meant that the company was able to defer the construction of a multi-million-dollar planned expansion of a parking facility outside its Levis head office. By comparison, the $1 million commuting plan is “a no brainer,” says Normandin.

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With Canadians and their governments looking for new ways to meet long-term emissions reduction targets, it’s hardly surprising that transportation, which remains one of the largest emitters, continues to bedevil policymakers. Demand-side measures that are widely in use in Europe, such as road tolls, congestion charges and high gas taxes, have little purchase here. Transit is a solution for a small portion of the urban population, but it remains an alternative that many people, including those who live in sprawling urban regions, can’t really use.

But, as Lorenzo Mele, a healthy design advisor for Peel Region Public Health and a director of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, points out, the vast majority of vehicle trips involve journeys between home and work. When employers and governments can figure out how to provide convenient and sustainable alternatives, the possibility of significant improvements begins to come into focus, says Mele. “From a transportation planning perspective, the commuter trip is vital.”

Beginning in the early 2000s, some municipalities and transit agencies started offering employees discounted passes as an incentive to shift away from car use. The Toronto Transit Commission, for example, launched a corporate discount program in 2003, and it grew rapidly for several years, peaking in 2010, with about a quarter of all Metropass sales. That proportion, however, has dropped somewhat since then, levelling out at about 20 per cent (or almost 490,000 passes per year). The user base remains narrow – fewer than a hundred companies in a city of 2.8 million.

In regions not well served by transit, a growing number of organizations – many but not all of them public sector agencies – have promoted the development of car and van pool services that increasingly benefit from savvy internal marketing, local champions and mapping software. Metrolinx, Ontario’s regional transit planning agency, oversees a network of local transportation management associations which link employers to a range of tools that enable car and van pools.

According to Doug Spooner, manager for mobility management at Metrolinx, about 700,000 commuters, representing approximately one fifth of the labour force of Greater Toronto and Hamilton, now use some form of pooling. A recent survey showed a 14 per cent year-over-year reduction in the number of employees travelling to work alone in a privately owned vehicle.

The benefits and trade-offs are self-evident: lower vehicle costs and less commuting-related stress. But as transportation demand planners have come to understand, there are some key triggers that will prompt behavioural changes.

Parking charges, says Mele, are crucial. When the City of Mississauga hiked parking fees for municipal employees, more people began to think about pooling. But another key piece of the equation was assuring employees that they’d have access to on-site car-sharing if they needed to travel during a workday.

For some commuters, the availability of emergency wheels is the game-changer. At Desjardins, Normandin says his team’s surveys revealed couples who were both driving to the same work place. Asked why, these individuals would say they had small children and needed the ability to leave in a hurry if one of them had to pick up a child. Desjardins offered up a solution: the company will pay cab fare for one parent if the other has to race off to attend to a sudden family-related incident that demands attention. The chits “don’t cost a lot,” Laliberté says, but gave those couples the peace of mind to leave one vehicle at home.

Successful pooling programs, however, turn on energetic champions, Spooner points out – often a sustainability manager or someone involved with a company’s fleets.

Caroline Karvonen fills that role at Alectra, a large electrical utility formed from the consolidation of Enersource, Horizon Utilities, PowerStream and Hydro One Brampton Networks in south-central Ontario. The merged company has locations in several cities, with many employees shifting between offices since the merger. Armed with digital tools created by Smart Commute that allow employees to determine if they’re living close to one another, Karvonen has recruited 55 car poolers in 24 cars.

She’s also set up a pair of shuttle vans that make the hour-long highway trip between Alectra’s offices in Vaughan and Barrie. Participants, who typically work the same shift, gather in the morning at the company’s Barrie location, with one driving the van south to the Vaughan office. Other utilities with fleets are trialing similar programs. As with Desjardins, the cost of emergency rides home are covered. Despite such fall-backs, the sales pitch can still be a challenge, Karvonen concedes. “We’re telling people to try it once a week and see how it goes.”

Spooner points out that the combination of chronically heavy traffic and high-occupancy vehicle lanes have generated interest, and in fact provide his team with targeted regions to focus their marketing of such programs.

Yet Mele believes that regional and provincial governments in Canada can push the alternative transportation file to a new level if they are willing to consider measures such as variable time-of-day pricing on transit fares or regulations that allow mini-bus shuttle services to operate alongside transit agencies. In San Francisco, a start-up called Chariot emerged in 2016, offering just such a service. As with Uber, employers can retain Chariot, with passengers using an app that aggregates rides in real time. The company, now owned by Ford, has expanded to several cities in the U.S., as well as London.

“That should be part of the mix,” says Mele. Such services, however, are not presently permitted, and municipal authorities blocked a short-lived attempt by a pair of entrepreneurs to offer shuttle-bus service in Toronto’s dense but isolated Liberty Village.

In the meantime, forward-thinking firms like Desjardins will continue to expand the reach of their own programs through a combination of clever internal marketing and the development of programs tailored to the kind of health- and sustainability-minded employees who are best positioned to make the switch away from single-passenger vehicles.

As Laliberté says, “If you have good studies, good measures and a good communication plan, you can make it work.”

The post Off to work appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But despite playing such a big role in our everyday lives, there remains remarkably little interest in funding public research to demystify this topic. The general public itself remains confused, a knowledge gap author Nicola Temple is attempting to rectify with her new book, Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food.

A Canadian scientist now based in the U.K., Temple worked for years as a biologist studying fish in a number of remote places around the world before turning her attention to explaining science to a broader audience. Her previous book, Sorting the Beef from the Bull, explored the forensics of food fraud.

Corporate Knights recently sat down with Temple to discuss the myriad factors that popularized the use of processed foods, where the latest cutting-edge technology is heading and how to become a more informed consumer.

CK: You demonstrate in the book that food preservation itself is far from a new concept for humans.

Temple: There’s evidence that we’ve been processing milk into cheese for about 9,000 years. It is, possibly, why many of us acquired a mutation that allows us to digest milk into adulthood. The fact that we started to cook and cut our food meant that our faces could shrink because we didn’t need to put so much energy into growing huge jaw muscles, so it has literally shaped us as humans and contributed to our success as a species.

Now there’s obviously a difference in eras – 4D printers seem much less natural than cooking a chunk of meat over a fire, so we’ve dramatically changed the ways in which we process food. What I try to get around in the book is that the more we explain some of the processes that are happening, it’s not for me to judge but at what point does it seem all unnatural and cross a line in terms of what you’re comfortable with? For every person that’s going to be different, but we’ve got to start having the discussion at least.

CK: Corporations are the bogeymen of processed foods, but what other factors have contributed to their proliferation?

Temple: Rapid urbanization due to the industrial revolution was momentous, because suddenly food started to travel larger distances and processing it to extend shelf life became much more important. It was one of the reasons why we suddenly had more tasteless block industrial cheese. Originally, all the different dairies would be making their own cheeses that were unique-tasting to all of those places. But with people living in urban centres, you’re starting to transport milk in. They would mix all of that milk together so that you’d have a more uniform product. The retailers themselves realized that they preferred the more consistent nature of the cheese.

War is another big catalyst, bringing about developments such as tinned meat. Soldiers had been dying from malnutrition in Napoleon’s army back in the early 1800s, so he offered a generous reward for a better way to preserve food. Wars also caused shortages of supplies, which is why you get Nutella and margarine. Cocoa access was restricted, so they thought to mix in hazelnuts. Same with margarine – looking for vegetable alternatives to butter because they didn’t have as much access to animal fat.

The role of governments can’t be dismissed either. The pasteurization laws in North America that said you had to pasteurize all cheeses made cheese less flavourful, so manufacturers had to find new ways of introducing those flavours back into cheese. The technology had advanced so much that they were able to isolate the flavour compounds that made a mature cheese taste mature, and then take those amino acids and reintroduce them into the cheese or find new ways to promote the natural bacteria of creating those amino acids.

Sometimes, unrelated legislation had a knock-on effect on food culture. In the late 1800s, most middle-class homes in the U.K. had a young girl who did all of the cooking and cleaning. This corresponded with the introduction of labour laws that required domestic servants to have a half-day off. To work around this temporary absence, the concept of a dinner in a bag was created. A maid could make the entire meal and place it into a greased paper bag. The woman of the house would just pop it into the oven so she didn’t have to do any prep work or cleaning. This was one of the first easy meals but was brought about because of other changes in labour laws.

Even when corporations decided to innovate around food, it was often by accident. The first TV dinner was essentially born out of the fact that Swanson had a massive oversupply of leftover turkey after one American thanksgiving, and they were brainstorming about what to do with it. A huge industry in food convenience eventually emerged, but it first stemmed from the simple desire to maximize surplus product.

CK: What are the different gradations of food processing?

Temple: If you can’t think of the raw ingredients that went into that product, then it’s probably ultra-processed. Some of the cereals where it’s been oozed out, where it’s some sort of paste, that might be classified as ultra-processed. Going down the range into things that are canned to increase their shelf life – if you feel like you could do that sort of processing in your kitchen, then it’s processed. Then there’s lightly processed, like cut vegetables.

Now as I mention in the book, these things are not always as they seem. Processed cheese, for example, is not something that I think that I could make in my kitchen, nor would I want to. But the reality is that it originated as cheddar cheese, stirred vigorously, and you could make that in your kitchen if you wanted to.

Then there’s the process that some of the apples go through – I don’t know if it’s the same in Canada, but here in the U.K. they’ll be photographed a hundred times to measure the red to green blush content, and then sorted accordingly. That’s definitely considered light processing, but it’s far more technical, I think, than most people would expect it to be.

CK: What are some of the newest, cutting-edge forms of food processing?

Temple: 3D and 4D printing – I don’t think a lot of people know about how common 3D printing is becoming. Lots of restaurants will have them to do chocolate garnish work, for example. Scientists are also researching all sorts of new ways of creating foods under pressure. So far, it’s not been economical and has changed the product more than desired, but that’s definitely something they’re working on.

Nanotechnology is being explored both in the actual food and the packaging. Using nanotechnology to create a sensor that turns your package red once the food is no longer good, or when it detects a certain threshold of bacteria or an indicator that says it’s not as fresh as it says that it should be. Nanotechnology could also be used to deliver nutrients more effectively or to apply nanosugar – increasing the surface area so you don’t have to use as much sugar to get the same level of sweetness. Of course, cultured meats are more and more in the headlines as well.

CK: While the slow-cooking movement has certainly taken off, processed foods appear here to stay. How can they form part of a more environmentally sustainable and healthy future?

Temple: That is a gigantic question. Processed foods have their role to play, but we should ensure that food is a huge part of education from the beginning so the next generation doesn’t lose the skill of being able to cook. My grandmother used to make her own clothes, but I can barely sew on a button. In two generations, with ready meals and convenience foods, do we run the risk of losing the skill of cooking too? I wouldn’t want that to happen, so there still needs to be this food education component. Let’s teach our children about healthy foods so that when they do read labels, they will understand what healthier choices are.

On the other end of things, I think that if we become more rational consumers we can avoid unnecessary public health scares. There was one recently about the fact that manufacturers put glycerol in our tortillas, which sounds dreadful. But in fact, it’s an absolutely natural compound that is found in all plant and animal fats. If we can have more cogent conversations as consumers, I hope that this would open up space for the industry to be more transparent on some of the processed foods and what they do.

Then there’s also this incentive for government to work harder towards making healthier choices among processed foods more obvious, which I don’t really have a silver bullet solution for.

CK: What advice do you have for people looking to act as informed consumers?

Temple: Everyone has their own priorities when they’re going to the supermarket, whether it’s ethics, health, cost or time. When you’re looking at foods and have really decided that you need a convenience food, then take a few minutes to look at the ingredient list. If there’s a whole bunch of things on there that you don’t understand or recognize, see if there’s a better option in the same food category.

Now there are some counter-intuitive factors when making decisions. People tend to look down their noses at frozen foods, but from an environmental perspective and often from a nutritional perspective they might be a better choice than chilled meals that look fresher. Those chilled meals have often had to travel quite a distance and may have more additives to help increase their shelf life. They’re kept in these open chillers, which are not efficient in terms of refrigeration, so from an environmental perspective they’re not a better choice versus frozen. Frozen foods also don’t need many additives to keep them preserved – they’re frozen.

The final thing is I’d ask people to be realistic about whether you don’t actually have time, or whether you’re choosing to not spend time cooking. Because I think that’s a big issue – people often say “oh, I don’t have time to cook,” and that’s fine if it’s the case. But perhaps you actually don’t enjoy cooking, don’t feel like cooking or would rather spend time on Facebook, whatever your choices are. But be honest about it.

The post Preservation nation appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The working hum of the silos faded long ago and the bustle of “The Vic” gave way to silence after 122 years of service when it merged with the city’s superhospital at a new site in 2015. All that these structures house now is empty space, something a new local organization called Entremise is fighting hard to reverse.

Entremise was started after its founders struggled to answer why, when there are so many people and projects needing space, any building should sit idle. With funding from and in partnership with the city, the Maison de l’innovation sociale (MIS) and the McConnell Foundation, the non-profit has as its first pilot project transformed a formerly vacant public industrial building in the city’s Griffintown area into a 5,000 square foot co-working space and incubator for a diverse group of tenants (think startups, artists, creative industry companies and other non-profits). Demonstrating what can be achieved with some new paint and fresh thinking, the Young Project has clearly taken the late urbanist Jane Jacobs’ axiom that “new ideas need old buildings” and placed it at the core of its vision.

The Young Project is not designed to last, but the concept behind it is. Before Entremise’s involvement, the city already had cemented plans to demolish the building to make way for social housing. But now, instead of leaving it mothballed during the months and possibly years it will take for that to be realized, Entremise is filling a much-needed societal gap by matchmaking deserving and innovative tenants with affordable, flexible and temporary space. The term for this “in-between” use of buildings is called transitional urbanism, and the Young Project represents this promising idea in action by demonstrating that you can regenerate and requalify urban space in a totally different way. It is a model that Entremise hopes will serve as a paradigm shift in the way we think about urban planning in North America.

“When a building is empty, immediately it deteriorates exponentially,” says social entrepreneur and Entremise co-founder Mallory Wilson. “There are squatters, illegal occupancy, danger for young urban explorers, and drug dealing. If it sits idle for a while, the chances of it being demolished are significantly elevated. You also have sustainable development, heritage, symbolism and history lost. The list is pretty long.”

The costs to owners of an empty structure are also significant as their insurance fees go up, while property values can go down by as much as 18 per cent, according to Wilson. In 2016 alone, six heritage buildings in Montréal were lost forever to fire, another unfortunately common hazard of deadbolting an unoccupied edifice.

From empty Gothic churches and art-deco theatres to mid-century post offices and Victorian-era mansions, Montréal’s portfolio of empty heritage buildings is vast and varied. For Dinu Bumbaru, Héritage Montréal’s policy director, the transitional urbanism model represents a new way for the city to put its heritage to good working use.

“Heritage buildings often are complex situations – they can be very iconic, and they can provide a lot of embedded meaning – they’re more than square footage,” explains Bumbaru on these buildings’ character and personality. “They resonate with people’s minds and hearts.”

According to Bumbaru there is a growing sense in the heritage community that participants in the public, private and non-profit sector need to work together to bring new life to these buildings, make them part of the fabric of their neighbourhood and connect them to the larger urban environment.

“We can have a non-demolition strategy, but increasingly we are looking at a revitalization and repurposing approach to conservation,” says Bumbaru on why Héritage Montréal has a strong interest in taking the kind of approach to buildings that Entremise has been exploring. “Unlike a painting or a sculpture or an artefact that you can put in any safe environment,” he explains, “the way to preserve a building is to use it properly, to occupy it and make it useful. It’s a heritage which is made to earn a living in society.”

The City of Montréal also believes that filling the close to 900 vacant buildings that Entremise has recorded (approximately 120 of which are heritage designated) is ultimately the best conservation strategy for the metropolitan and has made it a part of its Heritage Action Plan. “Initiatives such as the Young Project help maintain safer neighbourhoods and promote Montréal’s economic vitality by providing a lever to businesses that are growing but still need a little help,” says Montréal Mayor Valérie Plante on how the Entremise approach addresses a number of important issues in the city.

What attracted the McConnell Foundation to support the launch of the Young Project was the social inclusion aspect of the venture and the broad potential for adopting the model Canada-wide. Jayne Engle, the program director and lead for the Cities for People initiative at the foundation, says that all cities have unmet social needs, but they also have resources available to address them. Too often though, cities are not adept at best matching the two. “Transitional urbanism fits with what I call seeing the city as a commons,” says Engle. “It’s about seeing the city as a set of shared resources and actually better using them in a way that adds up to collective good.”

The success of the Young Project has its founders envisioning a network of spaces like it throughout Montréal and in all Canadian cities. Maybe one day soon, having any building – no matter its size, type or heritage – vacant for an indeterminate amount of time will be a thing of the past.

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