The Wolastoq, also known as the Saint John River, is a nearly 700-kilometre waterway that winds from Quebec and Maine to the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. It’s home to several species at risk: wood turtles nest by its shores, pygmy snaketail dragonflies buzz on the water’s surface, and wild Atlantic salmon swim upstream. It’s easy to see why its name means “beautiful and bountiful river” in the language of the Wolastoqiyik, or the “people of the beautiful river.” The river is central to their identity and culture.

But in the Wolastoq watershed and the cities and towns it sustains, the impacts of increased industrialization and the changing climate are felt deeply. Today, the river is crisscrossed by roads and rail lines, disrupted by large hydroelectric dams, and bordered by farms and shoreline real estate that often run right up to the water’s edge. As a result, the Wolastoq has lost much of its ability to absorb surges in water levels during winter snow melts and heavy spring rains. Surrounding communities are forced to battle intense flooding when the river jumps its banks, causing costly damages. In 2019, record-level flooding carried $93.2 million in damages, and thousands of residents were forced to evacuate. Severe flooding occurred again in 2023, and the province is bracing itself for more to come in 2026.

Restoring ecosystems along the Wolastoq – such as by planting trees, working with farmers to restore degraded agricultural sites by riverbanks, and increasing waterside vegetation to rehabilitate floodplains – could be key to a multi-layered solution. To make those opportunities a reality, WWFCanada and Wawanesa Insurance, a national mutual insurance company headquartered in Winnipeg, have teamed up in supporting local partners to help the river better absorb and slow water currents during extreme events, enhancing flood protection and other forms of natural resilience.

Investing for impact

For Wawanesa, which has a strong membership base in New Brunswick, the Wolastoq is a logical place to focus part of its annual $2 million investments in climate resilience throughout Canada. Wawanesa partnered with WWF-Canada because of its proven track record, strong technical expertise and deep relationships with local experts and community members, says Mitch McEwen, the insurer’s director of sustainability, climate resilience and community impact. “Our contribution is bringing the focus on reducing climate related losses,” he adds.

In New Brunswick, through their partnership with Wawanesa and others, including government and private foundations, WWF-Canada supports on-the-ground experts to identify local restoration projects with the highest impact both for people and nature.

In the town of Edmundston, which experiences flooding year after year, this funding enabled project design and site assessments for floodplain restoration work with broad community support.

“We’re using nature-based solutions like planting native trees and shrubs to mitigate flood risk and deliver several environmental and social benefits,” says Stéphanie Paradis-Léger, a researcher in applied ecology with INNOV, a local organization supported by WWF-Canada and Wawanesa. Paradis-Léger says the positive outcomes from their work became quickly apparent. “During a freeze thaw in December, ice jams formed, but the restored floodplain held the overflow, likely preventing flooding,” she reports.

Long-term advantages

Nature-based solutions are not only highly effective in the short term, but they also help companies identify where their philanthropic investments can have the greatest impact on climate resilience. Investments in restoring nature don’t require as much maintenance compared to other types of infrastructure, and they tend to improve progressively as ecosystems develop and recover. “Naturebased solutions get better over time, generally speaking, as they become more mature,” McEwen says.

Another core benefit of nature-based solutions is reflected in WWF-Canada’s overarching priority for comprehensive ecosystem regeneration. In the Wolastoq watershed, investments in things like restoring wetlands and planting native species along riverbanks can offer significant benefits to the more than 500,000 people who live in the region, as well as the wildlife – which includes nearly 50 species at risk of extinction – and the land and river ecosystems.

“We really strive to create ecosystems where both wildlife thrives and also the humans that live in those communities,” says Alex Portman, head of corporate partnerships at WWF-Canada. For example, by doing restoration in the upper reaches of the river near Edmundston, WWF-Canada is creating cascading benefits for the entire watershed, notes Lauren Stead, senior manager of ecosystem restoration at WWF-Canada.

Restoration takes root

Restoration projects in the Wolastoq are part of a broader 10-year strategic plan WWF-Canada is deploying through to 2030 called Regenerate Canada, which has three pillars: 1) catalyze the restoration of one million hectares of degraded ecosystems across the country, 2) steward and protect 100 million hectares of ecosystems, and 3) reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere by 30 million tons using nature-based solutions. “All of the work we do ladders up into these three main goals,” Portman says. “For corporate partners, that means their investment is directed toward science-based, high-impact projects that deliver measurable results on the ground.”

As restoration projects take root in the Wolastoq watershed, WWFCanada is working to activate more impactful partnerships in the region and beyond. For its part, Wawanesa is on board for more of this type of collaboration, where “partners with the local technical expertise drive a coordinated approach to identifying the appropriate solutions that actually get them off the ground,” McEwen says. “We hope to be able to scale that over time.”

Learn more about partnering with WWF-Canada: wwf.ca/partnerships

Illustrations by Chanelle Nibbelink

The post Rebuilding resilience along the Wolastoq appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“To see all these young folks from all around the world working together in a shared way, with shared objectives and passion,” he says today, “it really shaped the course of my life.”

Another turning point for Guilbeault unfolded this spring in Ottawa, as the well-known and controversial former environment minister took a bow from federal politics, marking a clear split from the Mark Carney government on environmental and energy policies.

On May 27, Guilbeault, 56, announced his retirement as a member of Parliament, a few months after resigning from Carney’s cabinet. It capped off a heady and influential four years at the helm of one of the most sensitive government portfolios in the country. He served as minister of environment and climate change from 2021 to 2025, with stints as minister of heritage, minister of Canadian identity and culture and minister responsible for official languages before and after.

Upon his announcement, environmental groups heralded his integrity and work, with the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating his “vital contribution to the fight against climate change” and Environmental Defence calling on more MPs to “publicly reject the government’s assault on climate, nature and Canada’s economic and social future.”

“If I had to do it all again, I would,” Guilbeault says of his political career, on a recent morning bike commute from his home in Montreal. “I would fight for the same policies.”

For the first time in recent memory, he has “no plans” – aside from going on a voyage to the Arctic with the non-profit Students on Ice, alongside 40 Canadian youth. He is staying on as MP for a few more weeks to complete projects in his urban Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie, such as a youth theatre and a new hub for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

“I have greatly enjoyed politics. It’s very demanding,” he says, acknowledging the stark challenges from growing populism, online hate and the harmful effects of social media. “The political arena . . . has become more difficult, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.”

At its annual gala on June 24, 2026, Corporate Knights recognized Guilbeault with its Award of Distinction, an honour that has previously gone to Ken Dryden, Tom Mulcair, Kathy Bardswick and Vicky Sharpe, among others.

Politics with conviction

Guilbeault’s list of achievements is long. Born in rural Quebec, he co-founded Équiterre, an acclaimed Quebec-based non-profit environmental and sustainable agricultural organization in 1993 (originally known as Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development). He worked as an environmental activist for many years, notably with Greenpeace, and engaged in direct actions designed to strike a nerve and raise awareness. In 2001, he scaled the CN Tower with fellow Greenpeace activist Chris Holden to unfurl a banner that read “Canada and Bush – climate killers” as a way to criticize a lack of government action on the Kyoto Protocol. He was subsequently arrested and convicted of mischief.

It was that brand of conviction that drew the attention of Justin Trudeau, who recruited him to his Liberal ranks. In a recent podcast with political strategist David Herle, Guilbeault described how the then-prime minister introduced his environment minister to former U.S. president Joe Biden – as a “real activist” who had been arrested four times. Trudeau, he said, was looking for someone who would bring a “jolt” to the environment file. And in many ways, that’s what Guilbeault did.

As a Liberal, he has been steadfast in his convictions, defending and expanding the Trudeau policy of carbon pricing, publishing Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations, draft regulations capping oil and gas pollution, single-use plastic prohibitions, and 2035 emissions targets. He was a leading voice brokering the landmark Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity agreement in which 196 countries agreed to restore at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, inland-water, and coastal and marine ecosystems.

“We’ve shown that using public policy you can have an impact. For the first time in our history, emissions were going down while the economy was going up,” he says.

Navigating criticism

But Guilbeault was a target for the Conservative Party – which linked some of his policies to his “radical” past – and particularly for Canadians furious over carbon pricing. “There are things I would do differently,” he says. “I think we were very slow to respond to the anti-carbon-tax campaign from the Conservatives.”

He also navigated fierce criticism from environmentalists when he approved the Bay du Nord deep-sea offshore oil project off the coast of Newfoundland in 2022, which the government said met strict environmental standards but which environmentalists said exposed “Canada’s climate hypocrisy.” Modelling showed that Canada was making progress but falling short of hitting its 2030 emissions targets while Guilbeault was environment minister, and it has slipped further behind under the current government.

Guilbeault has made no secret of his view that the Carney government is headed in the wrong direction on climate policies. He first resigned from cabinet last year in protest of a memorandum of understanding Carney signed with Alberta that paves the way for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast. Environmental groups have criticized the MOU for key concessions to the oil-producing province that lower federal targets for the price on carbon. “We need an effective carbon-pricing system,” Guilbeault says. “With the agreement we’ve signed with Alberta, we’ve just delayed by 10 years the implementation of carbon pricing.”

He understands the pressure of tariffs from the United States and the wider shifting geopolitical landscape, but some fundamentals will not change, he says: “We can try to ignore climate change, [but] climate change won’t ignore us. We’ll likely have the mother of all El Niños coming up in the coming months, wreaking havoc in North America [and] around the world. We’re seeing Pakistan with more than 59°C daytime temperatures.”

Climate change has already displaced tens of thousands of Canadians, he points out – a far greater toll than other geopolitical challenges. “Unfortunately, you don’t hear anyone in the government talk about this.”

He says the tools are in place for better action, such as the national adaptation strategy that maps out what needs to be done for Canadians to be better prepared for climate change. “Where are we with the implementation of that?” he asks.

A ‘radical pragmatist’

Mark Calzavara, a prominent environmental campaigner in Canada, says he understands why Guilbeault decided to quit. The pair have known each other for decades, hatching numerous Greenpeace campaigns, including one that saw Guilbeault climb onto a massive piece of bitumen-refining equipment during a freezing Alberta winter, to stall it from being driven from Edmonton to the oil sands. “Nobody was calling in on our side,” Calzavara recalls of the talk-show interviews Guilbeault did at the time. “They were all ‘I hope you guys get shot, or somebody should take you out.’ Steven was remarkable, under difficult conditions, to talk to people and meet them where they’re at.”

While Guilbeault “did as good or better a job as anyone” as environment minister, Calzavara says that his tenure shows the limits of what is possible within the political system. “The power is so centralized in the prime minister’s office, and if the prime minister is not a fan of the ideas you’re promoting, you go backwards.”

For his part, Guilbeault still holds on to a descriptor offered by a friend many years ago that he is “a radical pragmatist.”

Still, the Conservatives continued their criticism as he exited the political arena. During Guilbeault’s departure announcement in the House of Commons in May, Conservative Calgary MP Shuvaloy Majumdar offered a restrained nod to his “deep convictions” while stressing that “his policies caused so much hardship for so many families across this country.”

Bloc Québécois Patrick Bonin, MP for the riding of Repentigny, called him “by far the best environment minister that this country has ever known” during that same farewell session. And Guilbeault’s friend Elizabeth May, former leader of the Green Party, said it was an honour to work with him. “Courage should be respected, regardless of views,” she said in Parliament, her voice cracking. “What we are dealing with is a crisis.”

Of that, there should be little doubt. But like any effective politician, Guilbeault chooses to focus on the positives and the progress that has been made, and on a record of activism and improbabilities that can inspire hope.

“If [you] told 25-year-old Steven Guilbeault who was at COP1 in Berlin,” he says, having reached his destination and parked his bike, that “one day he would be environment minister of a G7 country, working with others to achieve all those things, I’m not sure he would have believed you.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Steven Guilbeault is still fighting appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This is the second time Innergex, a renewables developer, operator and owner, has been ranked number one by the Corporate Knights Best 50 index. Previously holding the position in 2023, this is the first time it leads the list under the newly revamped scoring methodology, which focus more squarely on sustainable revenue and sustainable investment, as well as – crucially – the compound annual growth rate of sustainable revenue.

Innergex’s financial footing is now stronger than ever, thanks to its July 2025 acquisition by Quebec pension fund manager La Caisse (formerly the CDPQ) in a deal valued at nearly $10 billion, of which La Caisse paid $2 billion. The Quebec investment fund bought Hydro-Québec’s shares and allocated up to 20% of its investment to other long-term investors, to help Innergex defend against market shocks and focus on its long-term objectives. These investors include Investissement Québec (which invested $500 million), Quebec-based Desjardins Global Asset Management, and union-based fund manager Fondaction Asset Management, along with 14 Swiss institutional investors. Innergex has now been privatized as a result of the investment.

Gaining access to so much “patient capital” is critical for a company like Innergex, whose core business is building long-term infrastructure, CEO Jean Trudel says. “Building energy projects, whether it’s hydro, wind or solar, is a long-time investment,” he says. The slow-return capital deployed by La Caisse is essential for making these kinds of projects work, and the bank is “ready to deploy more capital to help us go further,” Trudel says.

Diversification and consolidation

Innergex currently produces 4,424 megawatts of clean energy, with another 12,000 megawatts in the ready-to-bid stage. “Innergex is planning to grow,” Trudel says, pointing to the company’s mission to decarbonize grids as a way to fight climate change.

The company now operates in four markets: Canada, the United States, France and Chile. It has also diversified beyond its roots in hydropower to focus now on hydro, wind, solar and battery storage, while bringing its expertise and technologies to foreign markets.

In 2025, Innergex switched on its Hale Kuawehi solar and battery storage plant in Hawaii. The project integrates 30 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity with four hours of battery storage. Innergex has since sold this project but remains active in battery projects elsewhere, like in France, where it is working with the Réseau de transport d’électricité to balance the country’s electricity system, using its Tonnerre nine megawatt-hour battery energy storage system.

Innergex is developing relationships with industries that also benefit from decarbonization, such as in Chile. Businesses are now open to having conversations about renewable sources powering their operations, Trudel says, including mining companies BHP and Codelco. “It’s very valuable for an industry to be able to say it’s 100% renewable,” he says.

Innergex is also prepared to meet Hydro-Québec’s new focus on expanding solar energy generation through Quebec. In April, it announced in its first solar farm tender call for 60 projects.

Trudel dismisses claims that La Caisse plans to merge Innergex with another Quebec renewable powerhouse, Boralex. “We have no anticipation of being merged,” he says, acknowledging that it is a common question given that both companies are based in Quebec. La Caisse’s main mission is to stimulate the Quebec economy and protect Quebec-based businesses. “It’s not necessarily contradictory that the Caisse would support both.”

While Innergex has developed its offerings among multiple forms of renewable generation, there’s one arena it has decided to exit: geothermal. “As much as geothermal is a great energy source, it’s very different from the [energy] sources we have at the moment,” Trudel says. “It’s a lot more akin to mining, where you have to drill holes to get to the resource underground.”

Overall, the future for sustainable energy and for Innergex is bright, Trudel says. “The demand is strong, our positioning is good, and we have a strong owner with patient capital and deep pockets.”

Jax Jacobsen is a Montreal-based journalist who specializes in mining, business and climate.

The post Quebec renewables powerhouse Innergex is taking the long view appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Shortly after entering the ocean, they were moving along the sand when Peterson looked up and saw a white shark passing a few metres away. “One half of me was like, ‘Yes, jackpot,’” Peterson says. “And the other half was like, ‘Oh crap.’”

The animal disappeared into the murk, and then reappeared – first, her dark eyes and toothy smile, and then the rest of her muscular body – moving straight toward them. Peterson grabbed the harness of the other diver, a tourist from the United States, and pulled him to the bottom, where they waited, maintaining eye contact. The shark approached repeatedly, coming so close they could almost have reached out and touched her, before veering off each time (cutting off their exit, Peterson later realized). “This shark was investigating us,” Peterson says. “It was trying to figure out if we were food.”

After three passes, the shark decided they weren’t and disappeared into the gloom. Peterson and the other diver quickly surfaced and swam to shore, where they told the people swimming to get out of the water. With the danger passed, Peterson was exhilarated to have encountered an apex predator in her natural environment. “I was thrilled,” he says. “[It was] such a rare and special occurrence.”

Speaking with a biologist afterward, Peterson discovered it wasn’t as rare as he thought; in fact, he was about the 10th diver in the area to have reported an encounter with a white shark in the past three years.

Across the region, it’s not just divers noticing a change. There’s been a notable uptick in the number of people reporting white sharks along Canada’s Atlantic coast over the past decade. For a long time, white sharks were so rarely documented that scientists thought occasional sightings were just fringe members of a more southerly population. Now, they appear in Atlantic Canadian waters in the summer with a regularity that suggests a recurring seasonal population in the thousands.

“Atlantic Canada is the new white-shark population on the planet, at the moment,” says Nigel Hussey, professor of movement and trophic ecology at the University of Windsor. While there is some uncertainty as to the extent to which white sharks are moving in, scientists say that all signs point to a local population that’s growing, as white sharks recover from overexploitation and move northward because of warming waters.

That increasing presence elicits complex feelings in the region. White sharks have an almost unparalleled ability to inspire fear – yet sharks also have the potential to bring new benefits to the region: in research opportunities, in economic activity and in healthy ecosystems. But experts note that some white-shark prep work is also required, especially in a region billed as “Canada’s ocean playground” by one province’s licence plate.

“It’s very exciting, but also there is some degree of challenge for [Canada] to start generating the data to manage it, because it’s an endangered species . . . and to manage the risk of negative human–shark interactions,” Hussey says.

A shark sector is born

Ocean shorelines exert a magnetic pull for vacationers around the world; coastal and maritime tourism represents a significant portion of the global tourist economy, generating approximately US$3 trillion in 2025. Shark- and ray-based tourism is an increasing share of this, producing about US$314 million annually from activities such as diving, fishing and boat tours, according to one 2013 study. Shark tourism takes place in dozens of countries, and in some cases, researchers suggest that it has the potential to contribute more to gross domestic product than fishing.

In Atlantic Canada, this activity is still in its infancy.

The first company to offer cage diving tours began operating on Nova Scotia’s south shore roughly three years ago. In starting the business, marine biologist Neil Hammerschlag was inspired by his master’s degree in South Africa decades before, where he ran cage diving tours to fund his research. After an academic career in the United States, he began looking for a way to return to Canada and, seeing the increasing number of shark sightings in Nova Scotia, recognized a chance to return to his roots: “I thought, why not kind of use this idea of combining cage diving and the public’s interest in sharks with science, and essentially came up with this concept for Atlantic Shark Expeditions, which is cage diving to support science.”

Hammerschlag says it took a few seasons, but Atlantic Shark Expeditions has managed to dial in its formula. In 2025, they saw white sharks on every expedition and identified 109 different individuals, tagging six sharks with satellite tags. The company has taken hundreds of people on white-shark expeditions, many of whom describe being motivated by the desire to participate in research or to see sharks up close. “Interestingly, it’s not thrill-seekers at all,” he says.

Hammerschlag’s operation came up against some local opposition initially. Local surfers and other ocean recreationalists raised concerns that its approach would make human–shark conflict more likely. Some of that concern was fuelled by rumour. People had heard that the company was throwing fresh chunks of fish in the water, a practice known as chumming, meant to draw the species in. Hammerschlag denies this, though the company does use tuna and seal blubber as bait. It also lowers waterproof speakers into the water to produce a low-frequency sound attractive to sharks. Hammerschlag acknowledges that some people have concerns about changing shark behaviour, but he says their own research doesn’t support the idea that bait causes sharks to hang around. Of the 109 sharks they saw, most they saw only once. “If they’re being habituated, you would expect to see the same ones day in and day out, right? But you don’t. You see completely different ones. They’re moving through.”

Researchers in other jurisdictions where shark tourism is more established have drawn similar conclusions. Studies of wildlife tourism in Mexico and Australia found no long-term habituation from baiting, though that didn’t stop Mexico from banning white-shark tourism on Guadalupe Island in 2023, citing bad practices in the industry that had sometimes proved deadly – for the sharks.

This reflects the broader reality: there were 12 confirmed fatalities from shark encounters worldwide in 2025, and there were 65 “unprovoked” attacks, including one in Nova Scotia, where a white shark bit through a paddleboard at a beach near Halifax (the paddler was unharmed). That pales in comparison to the number of sharks killed by humans, which exceeds 100 million a year.

Despite these stark figures, sharks are nonetheless often perceived as remorseless killers and humans their defenceless victims – a narrative whose strength demonstrates just how deep-seated (and culturally reinforced) our fear of them is. In Atlantic Canada, scientists warn, a lack of familiarity and preparation has the potential to drive conflict.

Nigel Hussey, who runs a field research station tracking sharks on Nova Scotia’s southshore, says that everywhere else in the world where there are significant white shark populations, there are programs to mitigate the interactions with people that will inevitably occur. Yet in Atlantic Canada, these are so far lacking.

Sharks are not interested in people, Hussey says, but because they spend most of their time in the same part of the ocean that we do, conflict can arise. “We’re certainly at a point, and have been for a while now, where [Nova Scotia] needs to acknowledge white sharks are here and they’re here in numbers,” he says. Without the right data and preparation, there’s a risk of a negative encounter, he says, which could in turn be negative for shark conservation.

Steve Crawford, professor of integrative biology at the University of Guelph, points out that visitors may not understand that white sharks are now part of 

the environment in Atlantic Canada. For several years, Crawford says, he’s been advocating for white-shark signage and accompanying trauma kits at popular coastal destinations in the region, as beaches in Maine and Massachusetts have done. “To date, not a single government agency anywhere in Atlantic Canada has made the responsible decision to provide this kind of risk-management signage.”

Getting the opportunity right

Increasing numbers of sharks are not only a source of risk – they’re also a draw.

In other shark hot spots, such as Australia and South Africa, sizable industries have arisen out of people’s desire to interact with sharks; a 2017 study found that shark-diving tourism contributed $25.5 million (AUD) annually to Australia’s regional economy. While research suggests that activities like cage diving have minimal behavioural impact, the context of that research is that it happened in jurisdictions that have navigated a learning curve to establish effective regulations, Hussey says.

Cage diving isn’t the only appeal. White sharks have the potential to fuel a range of economic activity, from scientific research and tourism to wildlife documentary production. “There is a whole economic ecosystem around white sharks that could be very positive in Nova Scotia, but we all acknowledge . . . we need regulations in place,” Hussey says.

It’s worth doing the work to get this right, scientists say, because as white sharks become more established in the region, opportunities to get close could help dispel fear of the unfamiliar.

In mid-summer of last year, Geraldine Fernandez was on an outing on the Atlantic Shark Expeditions vessel, as part of a research project she was doing with Dalhousie University’s Future of Marine Ecosystems lab. It was a day like any other: some guests were enjoying the ocean in the cage, and Fernandez was standing atop the cage, dipping a tool she uses for estimating shark length in the water.

A blue shark glided past, only to suddenly disappear; seconds later, a large white shark swam into view. Fernandez says he was more than four metres long and beautifully coloured, but what was most striking was his gracefulness. The shark was not interested in the bait but spent “what felt like forever” calmly observing the people in the cage and poking his head out of the water (a behaviour called spy-hopping) to look at the people on the boat. “He was soaking it all in with all the guests,” she says. “He was not afraid. We were not afraid. It was an absolutely incredible experience.”

Seeing the people there respond with delight and curiosity to an animal that’s so often maligned was a deeply fulfilling experience, Fernandez says. It’s an example of how, if managed correctly, the increasing presence of sharks in Atlantic Canadian waters can serve as a reminder about what is, after all, the shark’s environment: when we go in the ocean, we’re not alone. And we wouldn’t want to be.

Moira Donovan is an award-winning journalist based in Nova Scotia, specializing in the environment and climate change.

The post There’s a new apex predator in Atlantic Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In economic circumstances like these, sustainability initiatives are often put on the back burner. But this year, the companies on Corporate Knights’ Best 50 Corporate Citizens list are reorienting their business models around energy resilience and green opportunities. As the Canadian economy navigates a major transition, these companies are proof that sustainability is one of the keys to boosting your bottom line for the long term.

Following a shift in methodology, the Best 50 ranking – click to jump to the table now – saw the arrival of 10 newcomers to the list from diverse industries, including real estate, transit, waste management and mining. In fact, the mining sector took six spots on this year’s list – only one fewer than the pure-play power generation companies that tend to dominate sustainability rankings.

Innergex Renewable Energy took the top spot, moving up from third in 2025, and last year’s top-ranked company, Boralex, another Quebec-based renewable-energy provider, dropped to seventh. Other notable movements in the ranking include Telus, which jumped from 15th to third position, and Cascades Inc., a packaging company that moved from 20th to eighth spot. Canadian Apartment Properties, the highest ranking of any new company on the list, came in at 16th, just ahead of Stantec, the second-ranked company last year.

Here are six more standout firms on this year’s list.

The pure-play pacesetter: Polaris (2)

The Toronto-based renewable-energy company Polaris has been steadily expanding its presence across Latin America and the Caribbean. Like other renewable-energy companies on the list, 100% of its revenues are deemed sustainable in the Corporate Knights methodology, yet its movement in the rankings – from 12th to second – is unique, owing to a 21% jump in revenues between 2022 and 2024. The company’s portfolio has now grown to include hydroelectric projects in Peru and Ecuador, a geothermal plant in Nicaragua, solar fields in Panama and the Dominican Republic, and most recently, a wind farm in Puerto Rico. In 2025 alone, the company estimated that these projects saved more than 346,148 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. With Polaris’s presence in emerging markets and its unique niche in the renewable-energy space, it has financially outperformed many of its industry competitors.

The fossil-fuel displacer: Kruger (5)

Kruger Products rose to fifth in the ranking from 34th last year, the second-largest year-over-year jump of any company. The company whose majority shareholder is Kruger Inc., a  fourth-generation family-run pulp and paper company, has expanded over its 122-year history to include clean-energy ventures and a much wider portfolio of everyday essential items like food packaging and labels. Kruger Products has brought to market innovative biomaterials and recycled paper products, displacing cheap fossil-fuel-based plastics. Business as usual at Kruger Products preserves millions of trees annually, and it was the first company in its category to obtain a certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a stalwart of forest preservation amid scandals with other, larger certifying bodies. Today, not only does the company produce more than 158 FSC-certified products, but it has invested in new facilities that produce exclusively these products.

The standard-setter: Eldorado Gold (20)

One of the top mining companies in the ranking, Eldorado Gold has been widely recognized as a pioneer of sustainable industry practices. It has mining operations in Canada as well as Turkey and Greece, and it has won several industry awards for environmental excellence. Most recently, its Kışladağ gold mine in Turkey won the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) Environmental Excellence Award for a solar-powered water infrastructure project. Designed in partnership with six villages near the mine, this new infrastructure services more than 350 households by eliminating the energy costs associated with pumping clean water. Back on home soil, Eldorado Gold’s Lamaque Complex in Quebec recently became one of just five mines in the world to receive a AAA environmental and social rating from the Mining Association of Canada for its exemplary management of mining waste, water stewardship, biodiversity conservation, and its Indigenous community relations.

The green grower: Vancity (9)

Canada’s largest community credit union, Vancity, registered the biggest increase in sustainable revenues over the ranking period, growing 266% from $4.69 million in 2022 to $65.23 million in 2024. It’s an impressive leap, but as director of rankings Michael Yow explains, Vancity went up because the company now discloses more investments that qualify as sustainable in the Corporate Knights methodology. Those investments haven’t significantly changed, and the company has a long-standing legacy of offering progressive financial products. It created Canada’s first socially responsible mutual fund, as well as its first registered education savings plan. Today, it offers innovative mortgages specifically for affordable housing, supports equity initiatives for marginalized communities, and offers environmental financial products from which some of the profits are donated to sustainability causes.

The circular-economy champion: Waste Connections (43)

Waste Connections is one of the largest waste-management companies in North America. In some markets, the company is now diverting as much as 70% of the waste it collects from landfills, and it has introduced new composting technology and better reporting tools to track diversion. With 23 landfill-gas generating facilities across its portfolio, it is also capturing and putting to good use a significant share of the methane produced by the rest of the waste – enough to power about 312,000 homes for a year. The company has invested in improving operational greenhouse gas emissions, deploying a fleet of 1,000 electric or compressed natural gas vehicles, and has introduced software to optimize routes for better fuel consumption. And its ambitions are larger still: last year, Waste Connections announced it would boost its recycling goal by 30% and committed $500 million to achieving its sustainability targets.

The transition torchbearer: Énergir (24)

It may seem strange to find Quebec’s largest natural gas company on a sustainability ranking, but the 24th-ranked Énergir has actually slipped several spots from last year’s 14th position. In this year’s rankings, Corporate Knights awarded the company a perfect sustainable revenue score despite only a modest increase in sustainable revenues between 2022 and 2024. Yow, the director of rankings, attributes the perfect score to increased revenues from renewable natural gas and wind projects. Énergir secured an ownership stake in one of Canada’s largest wind development projects in Seigneurie de Beaupré, invested in new biomethane infrastructure in Saint-Sophie and Saint-Flavien, and is also piloting a new green hydrogen project.

Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens for 2026

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The top three international performers this year are Schneider Electric SE (France), Tesla Inc. (USA) and Novo Nordisk A/S (Denmark), with overall sustainability scores of 72.69%, 69.79% and 68.46%, respectively. Schneider Electric was the top company on the 2025 Global 100 list. Apart from Tesla, two other U.S. firms made the cut: Cisco Systems, a multinational specializing in networking hardware, and HP Inc., a manufacturer of personal computers and printers. Technology and industrial firms dominate the list, with most linked to electrification and digital infrastructure. Unilever PLC, in eighth place, is the only traditional fast‑moving consumer goods company on this year’s list.

“Corporate investment is a major preoccupation in Canada today, but quality matters at least as much as quantity,” Corporate Knights’ CEO and co-founder Toby Heaps said in a statement. “Our Best 50 analysis shows that economy-wide, investment in sustainable activities is growing materially faster than its non-sustainable counterparts – and that’s one of the most important and encouraging economic signals we’ve seen.”

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Press release | Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens for 2026

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Research shows that the global cloud-gaming user base reached more than 395 million in 2024, with forecasts projecting this number to creep toward 500 million by 2027.

Cloud gaming now represents around 38% of the global online video game market. According to the latest Cloud Gaming Report, 51% of 22,665 players surveyed used cloud gaming daily in 2025, and more than 75% at least weekly.

The dematerialization of video games is raising other questions around how to quantify carbon footprints, and what to do about it. From arcade cabinets to physical cartridge to digital downloads and now cloud gaming, video games are progressively shedding their physicality and relocating into data centres. And while this process of detaching from hardware does mean fewer plastic cartridges, it still doesn’t do away with the industry’s environmental impact.

Climate technology company Greenly reported last October that the electricity usage for consoles in the United States totalled 3.9 terawatt-hours in 2025, resulting in 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This figure doesn’t include the electricity consumption of televisions, which are often used for gaming. The report further quantifies the emissions created as a result of one hour of cloud-based gaming, totalling 0.44 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent.

These numbers are in line with previous findings. A 2023 report by Playing for the Planet, an alliance supporting the video game industry to take action on the environment, found that the total carbon impact per hour of gameplay was roughly 50 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent across different forms of play. Among these options, cloud-gaming devices (such as Logitech G Cloud, Nvidia Shield TV, PS TV, etc.) produced the fewest emissions, while cloud gaming on a console or PC (such as desktop computer, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, etc.) connected to a TV produced the most.

Reducing emissions from video games

A big challenge when determining the carbon footprint of the video game industry is the lack of proper reporting by companies and the need to piece estimated data from many different places. Matt Anderson, decarbonization lead at Playing for the Planet, emphasizes that “the simplest way to reduce emissions is to have renewable electricity.” When considering the life cycle of video games, electricity consumption is key at every step, from development, production, to that act of playing the games.

Findings from an extensive 2019 research project by Joshua Aslan, now senior manager of environment and climate strategy at Sony Interactive Entertainment, corroborates these numbers. The results showed that cloud gaming produced more carbon emissions than downloading games in 2019. However, using a dedicated cloud-gaming device created fewer emissions per hour of gameplay than playing disc-based games on a console.

But these numbers tell only part of the story, says Michael Iantorno, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Waterloo. The whole life cycle of games is much more difficult to quantify, he says. Players might download the same game across different devices, while physical games might change hands multiple times, allowing many different people to play the same game across decades. “It’s very hard to quantify, because we can’t just do a one-to-one comparison.”

“The lion’s share of [the energy consumption] is happening somewhere else,” says artist Alex Custodio, a researcher at Concordia University. “It’s completely invisible to the user.” Whether it is the game makers using high-end computers to run energy-intensive programs like Unity, or the player who downloads a 100-gigabyte game over high-speed internet, the environmental cost is obfuscated.

A huge infrastructure problem

But the difficulty of clarifying gaming’s impact hasn’t stopped indie game makers in particular, as well as fans and enthusiasts of games, from engaging in a variety of practices and experiments that support green gaming: climate-sensitive mods (or user-created modifications to a game’s content) for existing games, solar-powered gaming devices, and perma-computing focused on long-lasting, repairable and sustainable digital systems, to name a few.

Initiatives like Playing for the Planet bring together small and large studios under an umbrella, providing working groups to develop a climate strategy, tools that help developers measure the carbon footprint of their games from the developmental stages to the use phase. “There’s just so much changing now with digital technology,” Anderson says, “so we really need to think about future scenarios and trajectories to make sure we don’t get caught off guard.”

Still, Custodio is skeptical of initiatives that make vague promises or put the responsibility on players. “Those are important, those need to exist, but they need to exist with a note saying, hey, this is a huge infrastructural problem.” The change cannot be implemented simply on the consumer’s end; it must transform how video game companies operate, from the manufacturing of the hardware to the design of the software they produce throughout the whole life cycle of video games.

Alexandre Paquet is a Toronto-based researcher writing about video games and culture industries.

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There really is something quite equanimous in the way Garcetti talks about the deep political rift in the United States over low-carbon energy. Garcetti currently serves as chief ambassador for global climate diplomacy at C40 Cities, an international network of nearly 100 mayors committed to advancing climate action. He served as the group’s chair from 2019 to 2021, during the last part of his nine-year tenure as L.A.’s top official.

Garcetti is on a mission to remind the world that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the last word on the state of climate action in the United States, nor is he the most reliable authority. If you pay attention only to the current administration, you’re missing the bigger story about where climate adaptation and mitigation are headed in the world’s largest economy, Garcetti says.

We spoke with Garcetti about the power of cities and states to implement the green transition, how climate communications are evolving, and why Washington can’t stop the low-carbon economy.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

MARK MANN: Are you building a parallel order of climate diplomacy?

ERIC GARCETTI: Look, we know that things like a pandemic and disease and certainly climate, these things don’t care where we draw borders between cities or countries. It demands a diplomacy that also doesn’t ignore borders but works across them, and that’s really what we’re doing.

MM: You’re here at the Montreal Climate Summit with Gina McCarthy, chair of the America Is All In coalition and former climate adviser to President Biden, who argues that Trump’s power to stymie climate action is exaggerated. I’ve noticed it in the media, that sometimes Trump’s attacks are much more amply covered than the rebuttals. What’s going on there?

EG: Well, go to your business model: what generates clicks is conflict. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what generates clicks; what matters is what generates electricity in a sustainable way. Wind might be controversial in one project off the coast, but meanwhile, take Texas. It’s a very conservative political state right now, run by Republicans, and they’re decarbonizing the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in America, primarily with wind and solar. Maybe they don’t brag about it because it doesn’t fit their politics, but they’re not stopping.

MM: Do you take a page and talk less about climate?

EG: Yeah, not because of Trump, but because I think “climate” is an abstract word for many people. Climate literally means weather. It doesn’t have a value to it. Climate isn’t environmentalism or green, and those things, while they were good early on, were too segregated. You felt very special if you were a green activist or if you worked on environmental issues, when it requires a billion people to be incorporating sustainable values.

I like talking about jobs, health and safety. And in the face of extreme weather and climate change, we have communities that don’t feel safe because of floods and fires and everything else. The economy is rapidly changing, and so responding to what’s happening requires us to retrain people and to generate jobs through the work that needs to be done.

MM: What’s the best evidence, in your view, that climate action is still winning in the United States? That the momentum is still there?

EG: Sometimes there are setbacks that reduce the acceleration, but there’s nothing that’s reversing the direction. You read headlines and you think, “Oh, people are going backwards.” No. Coal plants are still being shut down, even if the president is trying to save a handful of them over the wishes of the actual power companies that own them. We are seeing the more conservative states – like, 70% of the new [low-carbon power] installation was done in Texas, Ohio and Florida, all run by Republican governors.

California continues that. Los Angeles, the largest municipal utility, is still on path to be at 97% carbon-free power in four years – it’s so exciting to even say that – and 100% by 2035. Transportation investments are continuing. The number-one car sold in California is still an electric car.

It’s hard to find a measure where we are moving backwards. When you look at capital flows, too, there’s never been more deals at a better price than right now. When I talk to investors, they’re like, “Maybe we don’t talk about it as loudly, but in some ways all that shouting coming out of Washington has helped us find even better deals.” Everybody knows it’s the cheapest way to get power. It’s the best way to move forward with transportation. It’s the healthiest thing to do for communities. We struggle to find evidence against it, [despite] what the White House claims.

MM: Do you think energy is shifting to the local level? Is there any sense that the centre of gravity is moving away from federal politics?

EG: No, I don’t think many people ever cared what Washington was doing, even when they might be pro–climate action. I mean, there have been moments, like when Joe Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act. That was huge. It was the biggest piece of environmental legislation ever passed by any nation. But they also knew that if you could add up all the local and state money spent, it would dwarf [the IRA]. We’re the ones who maintain sewer systems, who do private investment, build houses. We invest and build our transportation networks. In America, most spending on climate-related sectors is done at the sub-national level. I think anybody who has been active has always known that’s where the fight is.

MM: In Canada, cities can be disempowered relative to the provinces. Often there’s a dynamic where politicians at the provincial level gain more power from rural voters than from urban voters. I’m wondering how powerful cities really are?

EG: It’s different from state to state, but in the United States, big cities have tremendous power, whether it’s formal or informal. Even if you’re a drop of blue in a red state, the state leaders know they need to have a Houston work, or Atlanta work or Nashville work. There’s often political conflict, but when it comes to spending money and getting things done, it’s the same voters and the same people who are demanding answers.

I also think that urban–rural divide is disappearing a little bit based on some issues. For instance, data centres are being built in the most rural areas and the most urban areas. And people are like, “Whoa, why are my energy bills going up 20% in a year? What is the impact of having this around me? How are we actually generating that electricity?” Folks who might not have in the past cared about whether it was coal or gas are suddenly questioning, “Do I really want that, just to help an AI system develop?” In urban areas, they’re finding new coalitions between people.

The majority of people really do live now in urban areas in America, overwhelmingly. Depending on how you measure it, up to 80% of Americans live in cities. So that is allowing cities to hit above their weight class, even if they don’t have the formal power. They really have the influence, even sometimes when they’re led by people from a different party.

MM: I don’t know if people are still talking about “abundance” as much, but I’m curious if you think that’s the type of shift that we need?

EG: I’m not a huge fan of the word “abundance,” because what does that mean? It’s another one of these academic-sounding words. But making shit easier to get done: yes.

There are some basics we should never, ever sacrifice. But we’ve put so many boulders in our backpack, it’s so slow to move. For instance, imagine a New York subway system getting built in this day and age. It would take 100 years to build that, and it would cost a trillion dollars.

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I’ve become simultaneously more progressive and libertarian as I age. Libertarian, like, get the hell out of the way. Get the basics covered, but let people do stuff because there’s a crisis. And more progressive: make sure it has a conscience. Don’t just let bad design and capital flow in however it wants. But if you let capital flow in in a predictable way, there are smart ways to be both progressive and caring, but also a little bit more libertarian and less regulatory.

MM: Do U.S. mayors who engage in the C40 or in other types of sub-national climate diplomacy face threat or pushback from the federal government?

EG: Yeah, when they’re not focused on something else, like wars in the Middle East or going after our immigrants. It’s somewhere in that agenda. It’s not frequent, and it’s not a friendly partnership, but [Washington doesn’t have] a lot of tools. They can’t tell Los Angeles “You can’t create renewable energy for your energy mix.” They can’t write our building code. They can’t tell us where to invest our transportation dollars.

There are moments when federal funds would be useful, and can help accelerate the greening of our ports, the building of more public transportation, the environmental-justice issues of restoring communities cut up by bad infrastructure decisions, and that’s frustrating at times.

But no, I think that there are bigger targets that they have their attention on. And we actually welcome collaboration with them. If you can get past some of the fixations they have, whether it’s offshore wind or this, that and the other, there are opportunities for America to be strong and have jobs the same way that Prime Minister Carney is talking about. This is the age of more national sovereignty, reshoring jobs. I’d love for us to be talking about in the United States, as Canada is doing, really being one of the green manufacturing hubs that can export to the world. Don’t cede that to China, as marvellous a job as they’ve done. They shouldn’t be creating every future car. We should have Canadians and Americans that build cars, but it’s probably not going to be an internal combustion engine 20 years from now. So we’re going to lose a decade by winding away all those subsidies. And we’re going to be behind the eight ball for a long time.

Mark Mann is the managing editor of Corporate Knights. He lives in Montreal. 

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Since then, funerals have been held for other glaciers in Switzerland and the United States, with eulogies and dirges performed by flute and string quartets. And the stream of tourists flocking to catch a glimpse of the disappearing frozen giants has also broadened. Known as “last-chance tourism,” this trend occupies the space between loss and celebration, as people navigate growing strains of ecological grief.

A 2026 study out of Rice University in Texas noted that some 14 million people visit the most popular glaciers on the planet every year. The university also keeps a “global glacier casualty list” to “remember their names and tell their stories.” Since 2000, thousands of glaciers of varying size have disappeared.

“Most people on Earth will never be able to visit a glacier, and that fact becomes truer every day as they disappear,” said Rice University anthropologist Cymene Howe, who co-authored the study. “But the desire is there. To be near these giant bodies of ice is a powerful experience because they are unique natural wonders that move, creak, whisper and invite reflection.”

The desire to be near to glaciers as they melt and fade away is a double-edged sword. As Howe notes, the tourism draw may end up harming the glaciers, not just directly from increased traffic, but also indirectly from the emissions caused by the travel required to get to them. Emmanuel Salim, a mountaineer and geography professor at the University of Toulouse in southern France, suggested in a paper that tourists risked “loving glaciers to death.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor of Corporate Knights.

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Read the original story here. 

Last month in Santa Marta, Colombia, the world’s first international conference dedicated to transitioning away from fossil fuels convened 57 countries representing more than half of global gross domestic product, 30% of the world’s population and 20% of global fossil-fuel production.

Together, participants sent a powerful signal to markets, investors, industries and governments: the future belongs to clean energy, resilient economies and fossil-free development.

The conference took place against a background of increasing geopolitical, economic and security concerns, all of which are accelerating the energy transition.

Recent instability linked to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz once again exposed the fragility of fossil-fuel dependence. The temporary closure of the strait triggered what the International Energy Agency has described as the worst energy crisis in modern history.

Countries that have invested in renewables are proving to be far more resilient. China is leading the transition, Pakistan has seen rapid rooftop solar expansion, India is accelerating solar deployment, while Indonesia has developed a massive solar strategy, and enormous new investment in renewables is being made across the globe, including in Latin America and Europe. All of this demonstrates that energy security increasingly means renewable-energy sovereignty.

The global transition is underway, gaining momentum, and becoming irreversible. Indeed, global investments in the energy transition reached a record US$2.3 trillion in 2025, while renewable capacity expansion continues to accelerate worldwide.

Financial institutions are sounding the alarm

Salient discussions at Santa Marta revolved around the strong warnings coming from central banks, insurers, economists and financial regulators who are increasingly viewing fossil-fuel dependence as a major destabilizing risk. In fact, the European Central Bank now views fossil-fuel dependence as a macroeconomic stability risk, which makes the transition away from fossil fuels a matter of monetary policy.

The recent report from asset managers Impax stresses that financial markets are dangerously underpricing physical climate risks, as investors, insurers and lenders increasingly recognize that many assets exposed to floods, fires, hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves are likely significantly mispriced, overvalued and vulnerable to sudden repricing.

And the era of perpetual fossil fuel expansion is ending. While this doesn’t mean that oil and gas will disappear overnight, it does mean that betting national economic futures on long-term fossil-fuel growth is increasingly becoming a high-risk strategy.

Countries that continue to double down on oil and gas dependency will become exposed to a variety of risks: stranded assets, declining export markets, rising insurance costs, fiscal instability, trade disadvantages and growing geopolitical vulnerability.

Countries investing early in the transition – including electrification, clean manufacturing, renewable deployment, storage, critical minerals, energy efficiency and resilient infrastructure – are positioning themselves for industries of the future.

A momentous conclusion coming out of discussions in Santa Marta was the growing recognition that voluntary climate promises are no longer sufficient. Implementation requires binding legislation and aligning budgets with climate commitments.

Moreover, many studies show that the uptake for voluntary standards based on risks and opportunities has been limited in scope and depth and has not resulted in meaningful change.

Legislation can provide clear and consistent rules that can level the playing field and ensure an orderly transition. This in turn could foster the predictability needed by the private sector to attract domestic and foreign investment. In a time of high economic uncertainty and rapidly evolving geopolitical shifts, the ability to diversify economies and attract investment becomes more important than ever.

The Climate-Aligned Finance Act: a Canadian example

The Climate-Aligned Finance Act (CAFA), which is currently being considered by Canadian lawmakers, is a legislative tool designed to modernize the country’s financial governance. It intends to provide the structure and legal clarity needed for Canada’s financial system to operate consistently with our climate commitments. The act provides clear expectations and ensures that financial decisions support long-term prosperity, creating stability for investors.

At its core, the act is about accountability and transparency. The legislation would protect Canada’s economy and could support competitiveness in the global clean-energy economy. It offers a constructive, science-based framework that would help Canada to attract public and private finance for renewable energy and to build resilience and establish energy sovereignty.

The act would operationalize climate alignment through five concrete regulatory mechanisms: strengthening fiduciary and governance duties; tying capital adequacy requirements to climate risk; mandating auditable transition plans for federally regulated financial institutions; mandating a national action plan to phase out high-carbon financial instruments and promote genuinely sustainable ones; and mandating timely public review of progress on these actions, to ensure iterative learning and enhanced accountability.

Notably, CAFA establishes climate alignment as a duty for directors and executives of federally regulated financial institutions and state-owned Crown corporations and requires the appointment of at least one individual with climate expertise to certain boards of directors. To address the growing risk of stranded assets, the act encourages the financial regulator to ensure that financial institutions hold sufficient capital against high-carbon exposures. Furthermore, entities to which the act applies would be required to publish science-based, credible plans, targets, and reports on meeting climate commitments to ensure progress, not just promises.

We need credible and consistent policy to provide clarity and guidance to the financial sector for the biggest economic transformation we have seen since the industrial revolution. The act comprehensively provides investors with the certainty and security they need to invest in Canadian capital markets, helping to ensure investment-readiness well into the future while maintaining the competitiveness of our economy in a global market that increasingly values sustainable investment opportunities.

In January, the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development released its report on the impacts of Canada’s financial system on the environment and climate change, which reflected the committee’s in-depth study conducted in 2024 during the previous parliament. The first recommendation was “[t]hat Canada’s financial system be reformed to align with climate commitments . . . the Climate-Aligned Finance Act . . . which would itself provide a robust, science-based regulatory framework for conducting transition plans and annual progress reports and address greenwashing concerns around climate action.”

Legislation like CAFA is needed now more than ever because economic competitiveness, innovation and energy independence are dependent on capital flows being directed toward renewable- and clean-energy projects, as well as community-led initiatives to build resilience. Furthermore, the act’s integrated approach to addressing the greatest existential crisis of our time seeks to tackle the root cause of the multiple cascading crises we face: biodiversity loss, affordability, climate change and health.

Advancing global sustainable finance governance

The governance logic underpinning CAFA is transferable across jurisdictions, and governments might be inspired by the process used to develop CAFA. The act was created in collaboration with dozens of national and international experts and was refined based on feedback received during Senate committee study through further consultation with climate scientists, legal scholars and financial experts.

The act is grounded in climate science, financial expertise and the best international regulatory and voluntary practices. In short, the process adopted modelled the best practices of open parliaments, which favour a holistic understanding of the interdependence of complex problems such as climate change and finance and the development of evidence-based policies.

Climate‑related financial risks are increasing. The Climate-Aligned Finance Act demonstrates that effective alignment of finance with climate objectives requires enforceable governance. For central bankers and financial regulators worldwide, the imperative is no longer whether to act, but how quickly credible, accountable frameworks can be put in place to future-proof their economies.

Rosa Galvez is a civil-environmental engineer and an independent senator for the province of Quebec.

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