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.

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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 Best 50 ranking was first developed back in 2002 to track the sustainability journeys of Canada’s most environmentally and socially conscious companies. This year’s list shows that corporate Canada’s ethical vanguard is not only actively reducing its carbon footprint, but finding new and creative ways to connect with their customers, create fairer workplaces and develop more prosperous and resilient communities. 

Look at Stantec (#2), for example. The Edmonton-based engineering consulting firm generated 60% of its revenues from sustainable projects such as remediating contaminated worksites in Nunavut, designing a climate-first watershed management plan for Manchester, U.K., and helping the government of Abu Dhabi build a recycled water system that supplies local, desert-bound farms with recycled water from two wastewater treatment plants.

Or consider the Quebec financial giant Desjardins (#37). As it works toward net-zero emissions by 2040, the cooperative bank offers a plethora of pro-social programs for climate adaptation, such as cash incentives for hail-resistant residential siding and affordable flood insurance to Canadians living in high-risk locations not covered by private insurance. Desjardins also supports affordable housing, health programs for its employees and home ownership for First Nations communities.

The Royal Canadian Mint (#5), too, is doing some heavy lifting on the environmental front. In addition to punching out loonies and toonies, Canada’s national mint has installed money-saving geothermal heating and cooling at its main Winnipeg plant, calculated its full-scope carbon emissions and embarked on a program to source materials from recycled electronic devices. 

The purpose of the Best 50 is to shine a light on the large companies leading the way to a more sustainable economy.

 — Toby Heaps, Corporate Knights publisher and CEO

These programs offer proof that businesses can genuinely move the needle on real issues that matter to Canadians and to the environment. Yes, greenwashing and window-dressing still dominate the business landscape, but rankings like the Best 50 prove that progress is possible. Even the best companies have flaws. But on the whole, this list demonstrates that many Canadian firms are preparing themselves for increasing change and creating value by prioritizing transparency, innovation and action. 

2025 Best 50 ranking table

*N/A: Not applicable. Banks, asset management and insurance peer groups are not assessed on the sustainable investment KPI. The weight of this KPI has been reweighted to the sustainable revenue KPI.

Ahead of the curve

The Best 50 is derived from a data set of companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The potential contenders include Crown corporations, large co-ops and credit unions, and members of the S&P/TSX Renewable Energy and Clean Technology Index. Corporate Knights researchers rate these companies on 25 key performance indicators covering resource management, sustainable revenue and investment, employee and financial management, and supplier performance.

The companies on the list present an unexpected cross-section of the economy, from consumer-product manufacturers to banks, big telecoms, insurance companies and government-owned entities such as Export Development Canada, Hydro-Québec and Farm Credit Canada. Not surprisingly, the industries most represented on the list are power-generation companies and power-transmission firms. 

The true stars of the ranking are the companies with the highest scores in the two most heavily weighted indicators: sustainable revenue and sustainable investing. 

For revenue, Boralex — this year’s top ranked company — Innergex, Polaris Renewable Energy and Greenlane Renewables are four power producers that already derive 100% of their earnings from renewable energy sources. The only other “pure play” company is EcoSynthetix of Burlington, Ontario, which produces 100% organic biopolymers that can replace petroleum-based chemicals in wood panels, pulp-based products and personal care items such as hair gel. 

The sustainable investing category measures how much of their capital budgets the Best 50 companies are investing in sustainable products and services – an early indicator of the green future to come. Five on the list get top marks: Boralex, Innergex, Polaris, Greenlane and EcoSynthetix.

Best 50 companies are pouring 56.4% of their capital spend into sustainable investments compared to just 8.7% for average Canadian companies.

Several more companies cluster around 90% and above, including two telecommunications providers, BCE and SaskTel. Another big spender on sustainability is the Société de transport de Montréal, established in 1861: proof that the future doesn’t belong to just the young, but also to the restless.

Same direction, different progress

The Best 50 class of 2025 demonstrates that Canadian firms continue to take advantage of opportunities in the green economy, even though the average sustainable revenue at the ranking companies dipped somewhat to 41.3%, down from 43.1% the previous year. Looking to the future, they are now putting an average of 56.4% of their capital spend into sustainable investments – on par with 56.7% last year. By comparison, the average sustainable revenue for the 343 companies assessed in this ranking was 9.5%, and the average sustainable investment was 8.7%.

Some companies on the Best 50 are making real progress on cleaning up their supply chains. Canada Goose (#34), which has been criticized in the past for using coyote fur and sourcing down from geese raised in inhumane conditions, is among those who made the list for the first time this year. The Toronto-based producer of upscale outdoor wear achieved this feat by developing a secondary market for used clothes to reduce textile waste, eliminating “forever” chemicals from its products, embracing renewable power and abiding by the Responsible Down Standard, a third-party certification program that prohibits live-plucked feathers and incentivizes animal welfare. A company spokesperson says that Canada Goose “ceased all manufacturing with fur in 2022” and that “the decision was made to sell through existing inventory to minimize waste.” 

Similarly, Gildan Activewear (#47), the Montreal-based producer of low-cost shirts and fleece, has faced criticism for poor working conditions at its plants in low-wage countries such as Haiti and Honduras. Today Gildan’s motto is “Made with Respect,” and while the company is not off the hook with labour rights advocates, Corporate Knights considers 45% of its revenue sustainable, thanks to the manufacturer’s use of recycled materials, low-impact dyes and eco-friendly production.

“The purpose of the Best 50 is to shine a light on the large companies leading the way to a more sustainable economy,” Toby Heaps, Corporate Knights publisher and CEO, points out. “None of the companies on the list are perfect, and many have landed in hot water.” 

Regardless of rank, all companies that made the Best 50 share one trait in common, Heaps says: they’re betting on change.

Rick Spence is a business journalist and editor-at-large at Corporate Knights.

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The Kingsey Falls, Quebec–based company says its strategy is just as much about business as doing the right thing for people and the environment. Boralex president and CEO Patrick Decostre says the company’s approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR) helps it diversify its shareholder base, reduce risk and attract a larger pool of investors, including impact investors.

“For us, and a lot of companies, sustainability is essentially a question of risk management,” says Decostre, who took the top job in late 2020. Since then, he’s been on a mission to accelerate the company’s growth in the wind, solar and storage sectors while optimizing its hydroelectric facilities. The company exited fossil fuels in 2021 after selling its last natural gas power plant in France. 

These efforts have paid off, helping to propel Boralex to the top spot in the Best 50, Corporate Knights’ flagship ranking of corporate citizenship in Canada. Boralex was ranked 15th last year, 21st in 2023 and 23rd in 2022.

Boralex has made several adjustments in recent years to integrate sustainability into its business strategy. “It’s the way to manage correctly all the different risks around us, and not just financial risk,” Decostre says. “We have stakeholders like customers, communities, local municipalities and states who want us to be sustainable because we’re investing for the very long term.” 

To demonstrate its commitment to achieving net-zero across its Scope 1, 2 and 3 operations, Boralex hired external experts a few years ago to assist its team in modelling greenhouse-gas-reduction scenarios. The aim was to have its targets approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a leading science-backed framework for companies to align their emission-reduction efforts with the Paris Agreement.

Boralex received its SBTi nod in August 2024, making it one of the few companies in the renewable-energy sector to earn this approval. 

Boralex focuses on various renewable-energy sources – including wind, solar, hydroelectricity and energy storage – across North America, Europe and the United Kingdom. Boralex was founded by a group of businessmen in 1982. In 1990, the Quebec-based Cascades Inc. acquired the company as part of its foray into the energy sector and commissioned a natural gas co-generation plant in Kingsey Falls. Boralex went public in 1997. Cascades sold its stake in Boralex over the years and exited the business in 2017. Today, Boralex’s largest shareholder is Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The Kingsey Falls natural gas plant was sold in 2012, followed by the facility in France. 

Now, the company operates 103 wind farms, 13 solar energy facilities, 15 hydroelectric power stations, and two storage units with an installed capacity of 1,085 megawatts in Canada, 734 MW in the United States, 106 MW in the United Kingdom and 1,343 MW in France.

For us, and a lot of companies, sustainability is essentially a question of risk management.

— Patrick Decostre, Boralex president and CEO

The company’s entire electricity sales revenue comes from renewable-energy production. However, Boralex acknowledges that its activities are not entirely impact-free, and its projected growth may also increase its indirect emissions, primarily along its value chain, which accounts for 96% of its total greenhouse gas emissions. 

Decostre says the company is working on sustainable procurement practices and other measures to convince suppliers and partners to commit to reducing their own emissions. “We need to continue to work with the supply chain to incentivize our suppliers to have their own Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets and have innovation and develop technology and things which are better for the environment,” he says.

The company also began linking sustainability indicators, including emission reduction, female representation in management positions, and occupational health and safety, to short-term compensation schemes for senior executives in recent years. 

In its 2024 CSR report, the company stated that 36% of its board members were women, one member was from an ethnically diverse background, and one member was Indigenous. It stated that board resignations and nominations in 2024 resulted in female representation falling short of the target of 40% but that efforts are being made to address the gap when a seat becomes available. The company reported that female representation across the entire organization was 34%, up from 31% in 2021, a result of specific talent-management measures implemented in recent years.

The company’s occupational health and safety performance also improved in 2024, with a total recordable incident rate of 0.42 for the company as a whole. 

Decostre says the investments Boralex has made over the years to gain market share, while also improving its environmental, social and governance track record across the value chain, are paying off. 

Even as some companies are walking back environmental initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that have been denounced by U.S. President Donald Trump, Boralex plans to continue investing in sustainability and its targets.

To Decostre, it’s just good business. “We’re investing for the very long term, and we need to be a good citizen locally and globally,” he says.

Click here to find out what other companies made the 2025 Best 50.

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

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Click here to find out what companies made the 2025 Best 50.

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Boralex operates 103 wind farms, 13 solar energy facilities, 15 hydroelectric power stations and two storage units. Collectively, it has an installed capacity of more than 3,260 megawatts at facilities in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Its entire electricity sales revenue comes from renewable production, and it is working toward net-zero across its value chain by 2050.

The Best 50 Corporate Citizens are identified each year from among a universe including all Canadian corporations with at least $1 billion in annual revenues. They are assessed relative to the percentage of their investments and revenues that are sustainable, and to up to 23 other metrics that reflect both global carrying capacities in areas such as carbon emissions and aspirations for greater social equity.

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That hard work is often hard to see, the product of millions of Canadians and thousands of businesses quietly, persistently adopting new approaches to life and work, eschewing waste, prioritizing collaboration and generally learning to do more with less. Since 2002, Corporate Knights has recognized this work by publishing the Best 50 list of Canada’s top corporate citizens – the businesses that prize sustainability as well as commerce.

Now in its 23rd year, the Best 50 helps track how Canadian businesses are meeting the low-carbon and green-transition challenge – as well as where they’re getting stuck in the process.

You already know many of these companies – you’ve ridden their buses (Société de transport de Montréal), pocketed their coins (Royal Canadian Mint), used their phone networks (BCE, Telus and Rogers), shopped there (Canadian Tire) or bought the T-shirt (Gildan Activewear). The companies that made the Best 50 are mostly corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenues, as well as Crown corporations, large co-ops and members of the S&P/TSX Renewable Energy and Clean Technology Index. What sets them apart is their commitment to doing business differently – they’re companies that derive significant revenue from greener products and services, invest in increasingly sustainable projects, and prioritize equity in their operations.

Crucially, the companies’ average sustainable investment (as a percentage of total investment) hit 58.9% this year, up 9% over last year’s 49.7% – that’s compared to just 8.4% for the average large Canadian corporation.

2024 Best 50 ranking table

*Indicates a tie as a result of a formula correction
**Revised rank due to a formula correction

“How a company invests its capital expenditures today is a major determinant of how sustainable its revenue will be tomorrow. The fact that we’re seeing a significant jump in sustainable investments among Best 50 companies tells us that more corporate leaders see sustainability as a business imperative,” says Michael Yow, director of corporate rankings at Corporate Knights. There’s also evidence that companies can do better by doing good. Since the inception of this list on June 1, 2002, the stock prices of publicly listed companies on the Best 50 have outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite Index by 80% (as of April 30, 2024).

Driving into first place

In first place on the list this year is a different kind of public company: Société de transport de Montréal (STM) gets 85.4% of its revenues from delivering greener public transit. Better still, Corporate Knights researchers found that 82.3% of STM’s capital investments (up from 45.8% last year) now go toward building low-carbon infrastructure – including the expansion of its Metro line and a large underground garage to support subway service expansion.

Beyond cutting carbon, STM stands out for its commitment to equity and inclusion. In an era of runaway executive compensation, its CEO earns just 5.2 times more than the company’s average worker – well below the Best 50 average of 76 times. In addition, women make up half of the company’s board of directors, and STM has committed to “universal accessibility,” striving to minimize barriers to the use of transit for all its customers – even as it maintains a personalized para-transit service.

Second-place Stantec, which calls itself “a global leader in sustainable design and engineering,” is also committed to building sustainable cities. Ranked as the world’s ninth-most-sustainable company earlier this year on Corporate Knights’ Global 100 list, Edmonton-based Stantec has built its latest three-year strategic plan on “purpose-driven growth.” To Stantec, the climate crisis is one big opportunity; it’s focusing in particular on the energy transition, coastal resilience, ecosystem restoration, smart cities and international development.

The Best 50 includes many firms in industries central to the energy transition, such as power generation and transmission (which includes a whopping 14 companies, from giants such as Hydro-Québec and Ontario’s Hydro One to renewables specialists such as Innergex – last year’s top company – and Brookfield Renewable). But the list also identifies values-based companies in many other sectors, including manufacturing (six), communications (five), banks and insurance (four), and rail transportation, engineering services and forest products (two each). More evidence that any company, in any industry, can choose a more sustainable path.

The fact that we’re seeing a significant jump in sustainable investments among Best 50 companies tells us that more corporate leaders see sustainability as a business imperative.

–Michael Yow, director of corporate rankings, Corporate Knights

This year’s Best 50 list also demonstrates that the road to the future is not perfectly straight. For instance, CEOs are still pushing the limits on executive compensation. While the average ratio of CEO pay to average employee pay dropped this year to 76:1 from 108:1 among last year’s Best 50 cohort, that stemmed mainly from unusually large decreases at just two companies compared to 2023. Our researchers report that, of the companies appearing on both years’ lists, 21 firms green-lit increases in their CEO pay ratios, and just 13 managed decreases.

In another sign of fitful progress, executive gender diversity improved to just 28.4% this year, versus 26.8% last year. But while there are still more CEOs named Michael than there are female CEOs in Canada, 12% of Best 50 companies are led by women. Especially making their presence felt are Marie-Claude Léonard, a 20-year STM veteran who leads the top firm on the list; Tracy Robinson, appointed CEO of Canadian National Railway in 2022, who is the first Canadian woman to run a national railroad; Marie Lemay, who heads the most-improved organization, the Royal Canadian Mint; and Mairead Lavery, who runs Export Development Canada, the company with the lowest ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay.

Climate commitments legend

1.5°C: Business Ambition for 1.5C

SBTi: Science Based Targets initiative

FCCA: Fashion Charter for Climate Action

NZAM: Net-Zero Asset Managers Initiative

NZAO: Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance

NZBA: Net-Zero Banking Alliance

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Click here to find out what companies made the 2024 list of Canada’s Best 50 corporate citizens.

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Yet in the transit-friendly annals of Montreal mobility, STM last year was overshadowed by a fresh-faced regional counterpart, the very new light-rail operator known as Réseau express métropolitain (REM). Last summer, VIPs gathered for the ribbon cutting of the first leg of REM’s shiny new LRT network, which is operated by a public–private partnership, will cost $8 billion and will eventually connect the island with its mainland suburbs. REM had barely carried its first passengers before it made international news, thanks to per-kilometre construction costs that came in dramatically lower than most comparable transit ventures.(REM has also faced criticism for construction delays and missed deadlines.)

However, STM’s accomplishments for 2023, though far less sexy, are much more salient in terms of Montreal’s push to slash emissions. The agency’s ridership finally broke free of the post-pandemic/work-from-home doldrums, reaching 82% of its pre-2020 levels – the third highest for all North American transit operators and well ahead of rivals like the Toronto Transit Commission (73%) and New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (65%). Even more remarkably, STM’s 2023 ridership jumped by 21% from 2022, reaching almost 230 million trips.

“Our vision is to be a leader in sustainable mobility,” says CEO Marie-Claude Léonard, who’s been with the agency 21 years and CEO since 2022. “This leads us to go even further in integrating sustainable development at the heart of all our organization’s activities. Our ambition is that each of our actions and decisions take into account the impacts on human life, the planet and economic sustainability.”

So here’s the question: what exactly makes a transit agency sustainable, above and beyond its raison d’être as well as the convenient fact that Quebec’s electrical grid is almost entirely green? As it turns out, STM – which tops this year’s Corporate Knights Best 50 ranking – has several answers to what may seem like an obvious question.

Take, for example, its bus fleet. As with many municipal transit operators, those vehicles were, once upon a time, entirely diesel, meaning they spewed fumes, particles and carbon into the city’s air. But STM has moved quite aggressively to replace its end-of-life diesel buses with hybrids and electrics. Today, 42% of its buses fall into one of those two categories, and the agency is aiming to have an entirely electric fleet by 2040 (i.e., no more hybrids). The plan is to house them all in a vast underground garage (albeit one that has gone way overbudget).

NYC’s MTA, by contrast, is still fiddling around with a hydrogen fuel cell bus pilot, while the TTC, which has been running hybrid and some electric buses for several years, is bogged down with supply chain issues as it tries to transition its fleet.

Another: the organization, like most others these days, has put out all sorts of ambitious long-term strategic plans that aim to cut carbon. But STM has made sure its senior management team has skin in the game. “The performance contracts of our managers, executive committee and CEO include targets related to service offering, health and safety, and employee mobilization, all of which contribute to maximizing the benefits of public transit,” it says.

What’s going on here is that STM has focused on driving ridership growth, a goal that transit aficionados love but which requires more effort from politicians, who love to announce big-ticket expansion projects and then turn up at the VIP events when they open.

It’s true that STM has a big project on the books: a five-station extension of the Metro network. But the agency is intent on rebuilding all that ridership lost during and after the pandemic, which is tough sledding, as many other cities have discovered. (Its capacity to build out the subway network further is sharply limited by funding freezes imposed by the provincial government, as well as competition from REM’s light-rail network.)

Our ambition is that each of our actions and decisions take into account the impacts on human life, the planet and economic sustainability.

—CEO Marie-Claude Léonard

Part of its fleet transition strategy, for instance, is intended to provide riders with the smoother and quieter rides that e-buses deliver. “The fact that they emit fewer GHGs will attract new customers that are looking for even more sustainable ways to commute,” the agency says.

STM is also pushing to steadily expand the network of bus priority routes – that is, those with bus-only lanes and traffic lights programmed to give buses a head start. “In 2023,” according to an agency spokesperson, “34% of bus trips made use of reserved lanes and 39% made use of priority traffic lights.” Again, the goal is to get riders to their destinations as quickly and conveniently as possible – an approach that is known to drive up ridership numbers (and thus reduce the use of carbon-emitting private vehicles).

The agency moved to add security on its vehicles and in its stations following a threefold jump in complaints from riders about the presence of homeless or intoxicated people and open substance abuse. While STM is hardly unique in contending with this particular set of rider gripes – symptomatic of the housing affordability crisis that afflicts so many big cities now, as well as the opioid epidemic – the agency tries to cast its response as a way of building loyalty and increasing, or at least not losing, ridership.

Whatever Léonard and STM’s 11,000-plus employees are doing, it seems to be working. Unlike the inhabitants of many other big cities, Montrealers appear to have gotten back into the transit habit, which surely comes as close to the definition of sustainability as it gets these days.

Click here to find out what other companies made the 2024 Best 50.

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In the past few years, energy economics have flipped to the point where renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. Companies have also discovered that happy, healthy employees, customers and communities create healthier markets – and happier shareholders.

More than ever, Canadian companies are getting this message. Since 2002, Corporate Knights’ ranking of Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens has been tracing public and private companies as well as Crown corporations with more than $1 billion in revenues. Our researchers probe 25 key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess how firms manage their resources, employees and finances in comparison to their peer group, with 50% of each company’s score tied to the percentage of their revenue and investments that qualify as sustainable. For the Best 50, that percentage keeps climbing.

Tellingly, the 2023 list is dominated by renewable-energy players high in sustainable revenue. Topping the Best 50 this year (up from second place in 2022 and 20th in 2021) is a pure-play clean energy company: Innergex Renewable Energy. The Longueuil, Quebec–based renewable-power producer operates 40 hydroelectric facilities, 35 wind farms, 11 solar farms and one energy-storage facility in Canada, the U.S., France and now Chile. It has 11 more projects in the works (see page 52 for profile). In fact, Innergex is the only pure-play renewable-energy company on the Best 50 (giving it 100% sustainable revenue). The company has also continually improved on its disclosure of environmental indicators, which helped it climb to the top of the ranking.

In second place this year (up from third in 2022 and 14th in 2021) is Brookfield Renewable Partners, the renewable-energy platform of Brookfield Corporation, the former Brascan empire (which got its start providing electricity in Brazil). With a market cap of $20.2 billion, more than seven times Innergex’s $2.7 billion, Brookfield Renewable produces 25,400 megawatts of electricity through hydro, wind and solar facilities in Canada, the U.S., Colombia, Brazil, Europe and Asia. The company’s latest annual report says it’s also focusing on investing in “emerging transition asset classes” such as carbon capture and storage, recycling and biogas, “where our initial investment positions us for potential future large-scale decarbonization investment.”

In third place is Hydro-Québec, which was the top company in 2022, 2021 and 2018. While the company largely maintained its sustainable revenue from last year, competition is growing fiercer as more renewable-energy companies jump ahead.

The “most improved” company on the list is Canadian National Railway. It climbed from 35th place to seventh this year thanks to a notable increase in investments mainly aimed at rail network safety and integrity, as well as track infrastructure network resiliency and information technology initiatives. These investments totalled $2.5 billion, or 85% of CN’s total investments, in 2021.

Edmonton engineering firm Stantec scored highest on the Best 50 when it came to the percentage of its executives’ variable pay linked to sustainability targets. With 26,000 employees and 350 offices on six continents, CEO Gord Johnston says the fast-growing company has been focused on building better communities for more than a decade. Initially, “community” meant including parks or public artworks in urban projects or adding water parks to water treatment plants. But over time it came to encompass designing buildings for mental health, promoting accessibility standards far beyond those of local building codes, and partnering with Indigenous communities to stimulate economic development. Johnston says that “we scaled community” to include not just cities, but whole countries, the world and the climate.

How does your company or employer compare to the Best 50?

Here are a few indicators to consider. The average percentage of sustainable revenues achieved by 2023 Best 50 companies is 46.3%, up from 36.8% in 2022, and nearly 10 times the 5% earned by the average large Canadian company (ALCC). They’re sinking more investment money into the green economy, too: the percentage of total investment dollars put toward sustainable investments is just shy of 50% for this year’s Best 50, up from 33.8% in 2022 – and eight times greater than the ALCC’s 6%. Some 78% of Best 50 companies link executive pay to sustainability goals, versus just 40% of other companies.

On the diversity front, the numbers are still far from where they need to be, but the average Best 50 firm has achieved executive gender diversity of 26.8%, versus 21% for the ALCC. The boards of directors of Best 50 companies have a gender diversity rate of 39.3%, versus 31% for the ALCC.Companies are even further behind when it comes to hiring racially diverse leadership.Though board racial diversity among Best 50 companies improved slightly from 8.8% last year to 11.7% this year, executive racial diversity dropped from 12% to 10.6% this year.

Best 50 bring home higher returns

Overall, the data consistently show that shares of the Best 50 outperform their “less-best” industry peers. Corporate Knights researchers compared the stock performance of the public companies on the 2023 Best 50 versus that of the S&P/TSX Composite Index. Since 2002 (the year we published our first Best 50 list), Best 50 companies have rewarded their shareholders with 128% higher returns than the overall composite index. It’s evidence that the “triple bottom line” (profit, people and planet) doesn’t compromise the single bottom line – but expands it.

2023 Best 50 ranking table

*Indicates a tie as a result of a formula correction
**Revised rank due to a formula correction

Winding road to sustainability

But for billion-dollar corporations in particular, sustainability is a journey, and progress is rarely predictable. Rogers’ (no. 29) recent takeover of Shaw Communications, for instance, has been roundly criticized for reducing competition in Canada’s telecom industry. (And Rogers’ decision to pay CEO Tony Staffieri $31.5 million during his first year pretty much blows up the company’s CEO-to-employee pay gap). Rogers’ arch-rival, Telus (no. 10), has been embroiled in a recent labour dispute that left its unions bristling. And Teck Resources (no. 32) has recently been in the news for its controversial plan to splinter off its carbon-heavy coal mines, which have become an ESG liability for investors. Though the Vancouver-headquartered company has installed $1.2 billion worth of water treatment technology in the Elk Valley, “chronic toxicity impacts” persist in Elk Valley waters, according to the B.C. government.

Nonetheless, all three of these companies earned their Best 50 rankings. Teck scored highly in relation to its peers in part because 6.8% of its revenue comes from recycled minerals and minerals needed for the low-carbon transition. Rogers secured the 29th position because 55% of its investments involve improving telecommunications infrastructure, a key component of the energy transition. Rogers also earned points for its energy-efficient data centres and its refurbishing and recycling of used devices. Telus earned 10th spot, as it scored highly against its peers on sustainable revenue and sustainable investment as well as on all four diversity metrics. No company makes the right decision every time. But two decades into the Best 50, the ranking proves that a large number of Canadian companies are willing to evolve and invest in a cleaner, more equitable future.

The real bottom line is that business and the planet constitute a closed ecosystem – in this fragile biosphere the smartest companies know that putting sustainability first is the ultimate key to lasting success.

Rick Spence is a business journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

Climate commitments legend

1.5°C: Business Ambition for 1.5C

SBTi: Science Based Targets initiative

FCCA: Fashion Charter for Climate Action

NZAM: Net-Zero Asset Managers Initiative

NZAO: Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance

NZBA: Net-Zero Banking Alliance

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