After 30 years in the energy sector, including most recently as president and CEO at Énergir (formerly Gaz Métro), Brochu had planned to split her time between studying in Paris and teaching in Montreal. But it was the start of the global pandemic, and Brochu felt a civic duty to help her community in the best way she knew how.

“I don’t know much, but I know energy, and Hydro-Québec is a formidable organization,” she says. “For me, the call to go was very strong.”

It helped that Hydro-Québec was a sustainability leader and, Brochu believes, “a place where you can move the needle.”

She’s quick to point out that she wasn’t hired to “save” the organization. “Hydro-Québec doesn’t need a saviour, but this is where I can contribute. And I’m glad I did,” says Brochu, who started her position as president and CEO in April 2020.

She sees the utility playing a crucial role in advancing sustainability by providing renewable energy and working closely with communities, including Indigenous Peoples, and increasing gender and racial diversity across the workforce. “Every decision we make is constantly balanced through several filters, and we need to make sure those filters are the right ones from the ESG [environmental, social and governance] perspective,” she says.

The ongoing focus on sustainability earned Hydro-Québec top spot on the Corporate Knights 2021 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada list, up from fifth place last year. Hydro-Québec also placed first in 2018, and came second in 2019.

For the latest award, the utility received top-quartile scores (75% or higher) in areas such as water productivity, cash taxes paid, executive and board gender diversity, clean investment and clean revenue (based on hydro, solar, wind and biomass generation and transmission revenue). Clean revenue may be a given since nearly 100% of its power is renewable, “but we need to keep it giving,” she says.

What’s critical, Brochu says, is how the organization invests its money, including in other renewables such as wind and solar, and in future means of decarbonization like green hydrogen. To take stock of its clean investment and revenue, Brochu created a vice-president position to map innovation across the supply and delivery chains and provide a benchmark for the organization to improve upon.

“When people tell you ‘you’re a leader,’ it forces you to keep doing the best you can.”
— Sophie Brochu, CEO, Hydro-Québec

The investment includes helping Quebecers with what Brochu describes as the “real-life energy transition” – for example, support with important customer questions such as: How do I plan and manage the recharge of a large electric fleet? What investment will be required above the cost of the vehicles? And, how will it affect my electricity bill?

The utility recently launched the Collective Energy initiative to consult Quebecers and get them involved in identifying and carrying out key projects that will benefit communities across the province. It asks Quebecers to reflect on three key areas: the green economy, sustainable mobility and responsible energy use.

“We are listening to what’s missing in the energy transition ecosystem to make real life happen and then investing in that,” Brochu says.

In terms of diversity, Brochu has added more women to the management team and about two-thirds of the board are women, but she’s also pushing to increase the number of women in roles across the organization. Today, about 30% of Hydro-Québec’s nearly 20,000 employees are women. “You need gender diversity and, ideally, parity to thrive,” she says.

More diversity also includes hiring more Indigenous people at Hydro-Québec, both in corporate roles and in communities where they are represented. A big part of Brochu’s mandate is also to improve the public utility’s relationship with Indigenous communities across the province. “Today Hydro-Québec is better than we were 10 years ago or five years ago, but my goal is that 2021 will mark the new era of the way we interact with our Indigenous communities,” she says.

“The whole idea is to be sophisticated enough to be nationally ambitious but regionally tactical, and very, very smart,” Brochu says of the company’s sustainability journey. “There’s so much to do … but I believe we’ll get there.”

Hydro-Québec’s current goals are driven by its Sustainable Development Plan for 2020 through 2024, which includes three pillars: governance, community and the environment. The plan lays out 12 strategies linked to specific improvement targets and performance indicators. Hydro-Québec also has a target to be carbon-neutral across its operations by 2030.

To Brochu, it’s more than a target – it’s a mandate, as a renewable energy provider. “The challenge of an organization like ours is to say, ‘There are areas where we can’t fail, we have to be reliable.’”

So while most people see Hydro-Québec’s role as simply providing reliable power, Brochu believes the mandate is broader: to help Quebecers transition to the low-carbon economy and be a leading corporate citizen. Despite topping the 2021 list of the Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada, and regularly appearing in the top five in recent years, Brochu believes the utility needs to continuously improve.

“When people tell you ‘you’re a leader,’ it’s great. Then the work starts,” she says. “It forces you to keep doing the best you can, understanding that nothing can be taken for granted.”

Brenda Bouw is a freelance writer  and editor based in Vancouver.

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

Since it was founded in 1971 by a group of west coast mountaineers looking for a place to buy reliable and affordable gear, MEC has vowed to do business differently by building a co-op with democratic principles, as an alternative to private ownership. The company says its grassroots foundation still exists, which is to “make things happen, deal fairly, find strength in community, and inspire adventure.”

Nearly 50 years later, the Vancouver-based company has grown to 22 stores across Canada and strengthened its sustainability efforts through responsible product sourcing, a commitment to shrink its environmental footprint and the championing of social causes.

MEC was the first Canadian retailer to publicly disclose its list of factories and their locations, is a longstanding Bluesign member (ensuring the use of sustainable ingredients and production in the textile industry), and traces its down and wool to ensure that animal welfare standards are being met. The company has also recognized and worked to correct some of its own flaws over the years, including low representation of people of colour in promotional materials.

MEC’s past environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance landed the co-op in the top spot on the Corporate Knights 2020 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada ranking, based on data from the company’s public disclosures for the period from Feb. 26, 2018, to Feb. 24, 2019, which is its 2018/19 fiscal year. (The data doesn’t reflect impacts from COVID-19.) MEC’s overall score of 85.2% was a significant increase from its 2019 ranking, when it placed 17th, with an overall score of 66%.

“MEC has a very compelling, powerful social purpose,” says Coro Strandberg, a sustainability strategist and president of Vancouver’s Strandberg Consulting. “It doesn’t surprise me that a social-purpose company would become a global sustainability leader.”

MEC’s top marks in the ranking come largely in three areas: clean revenue, CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio and gender diversity on its board and executive leadership team. The company’s clean revenue score – a measure of revenue from all goods and services that have clear environmental and, in some cases, social benefits – was 100%. MEC had the highest clean revenue percentage in this year’s ranking in comparison to its retail industry peers.
For the 2018/19 fiscal year, the MEC Label produced 80 fair-trade-certified products, and more than 1,100 products were made with environmentally preferred materials (including organically grown or recycled content, responsibly sourced down and Bluesign-approved textiles). In fact, 88% of MEC Label clothes and sleeping bags were Bluesign approved, and the company is striving to hit 100%.

MEC also scored well for its ratio of CEO-to-average-worker pay, which, according to its disclosures for the 2018/19 fiscal year, was 15:1. (The smaller the ratio, the smaller the gap between CEO and employee earnings; by comparison, Zara’s parent company, Inditex, has a ratio of 357:1.) MEC says the calculation is based on regular wages, overtime, vacation pay and bonuses for all MEC employees, both hourly and salaried staff, in the 2018 pay calendar year.
It also increased its ranking based on the number of women in executive roles. MEC maintains a 50% ratio of women on its executive management team, which is the highest score in its industry in Canada, according to data sourced by Corporate Knights, and the fifth highest in the world within its industry.

In 2018, former MEC CEO David Labistour acknowledged in an open letter that the company was underrepresenting people of colour in its marketing and advertising and vowed to do better.

CEO Phil Arrata, who took the top job in July 2019 after serving on MEC’s board from 2015 to 2018, wasn’t available for an interview for this article. In an email through a company spokesperson, Arrata said MEC “is dedicated to being inclusive” among its more than 2,700 employees and its customers. “We want to make sure that everyone feels welcome at our stores, distribution centres and home office,” Arrata stated. “I am very proud of the many MEC staffers who have been integral to the development of the initiatives we have in place right now.”

Arrata also renewed the Outdoor Industry CEO Diversity Pledge, to hire and support a diverse workforce and leadership team, among other promises. In January, MEC made changes to its workforce, saying it would convert about 950 casual, non-permanent roles into full- or part-time jobs with benefits to reduce staff turnover and improve customer service.

The changes are part of a restructuring to restore the co-op’s financial health. “While MEC is not profit-driven in the same way as the retailers we compete against, we still must be profitable to ensure we deliver great service to our members, elevate employee experiences and continue to contribute to the communities where we live, work and play,” Arrata wrote in an open letter in January.

The company’s challenge going forward will be to sustain its ESG performance amid an extremely difficult financial situation. MEC said it lost $11.5 million for the year ended Feb. 24, 2019, on sales of $462.4 million. The results included $8.5 million in restructuring and reorganization costs. The previous year, it saw a profit of $11.7 million on sales of $454.8 million. In April, the company said the economic impact of COVID-19, which forced the retailer to temporarily close its brick-and-mortar locations, “is severe” and sales “have experienced a drastic decline.”

How MEC emerges from the coronavirus shutdowns, including its ESG actions and commitments, will determine its future growth.

Brenda Bouw is a freelance writer and editor, as well as an author and ghostwriter based in Vancouver. 

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