On Tuesday evening, Barrick Gold Corp.’s chief executive Mark Bristow stood inside downtown Toronto’s National Club, amid the dark wood panelling and paintings of pastoral scenes.
“People are talking about ESG like as though they’ve just found out ,” he told the audience, “but ESG is the fundamental component of a partnership.” The reason, she said, is that such factors have real impacts on financial and operational performance, and the investment sector is beginning to see these as part of their fiduciary duty.
His own organization is establishing a global standard for tailings dams, which some investors can use to review their investment decisions. Meanwhile, during the past year, the Church of England led a group of investors with roughly US$14 trillion of assets under management in an effort to make a systemic review of the world’s 1900 tailing dams.
“There were who sat down with me, and when they saw I had coal, they politely said ‘no thank you,’ got up and left,” he said. “It was almost like they were actually allergic to it.” Chad Wells, Altius Minerals Corp. Still, he said Altius is increasing its ESG disclosures, and even investing the coal royalty, which provides $12 to $14 million in revenue per year, into renewable energy projects.
But a split exists within Canada, and within the mining sector about carbon-pricing. While many of the largest companies support carbon pricing and see it as a mechanism to attract investment, the same attitude is not as prevalent among smaller exploration and development companies, even though it would have minimal impact on them as they aren’t actually producing any minerals.
Pierre Gratton, chief executive of the Mining Association of Canada, whose organization represents the country’s largest miners, including gold, copper, uranium and oilsands, said the divide on policies surrounding resource development is “highly emotional” and not always productive.
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