The setting sun reflects off the glass walls of two office buildings in Toronto’s Financial District as the sun sets on Nov 7, 2022.Julie Segal is senior manager of climate finance at Environmental Defence Canada, and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. Rosa Galvez is an independent senator for Quebec, who introduced Bill S-243, the Climate-Aligned Finance Act, to the Senate in March, 2022.
Financial experts like Allison Herren Lee, a former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the leadership of Vancity and Quebec’s Caisse d’économie solidaire Desjardins credit unions, the province’s Fondaction pension fund and a broad swath of environmentalists across the country were among those outlining why Canada should set new rules to hold banks, pension funds, and insurance companies accountable for climate action..
While in 2021 all of Canada’s Big Five banks committed to reduce the climate-related emissions from their investment and loan portfolios to net-zero by 2050, the three years since have demonstrated a concerning trend of climate-related backsliding.their anti-coal lending policies, meaning that despite net-zero promises, the two banks are once again open to funding the most polluting fossil fuel — a sector definitively misaligned with climate action.of 3.9-to-1.
want sustainable finance regulation, and support increases to 78 per cent if the rules explicitly counter greenwashing. A desire for rules which clean up greenwashing makes sense, given the chasm between banks’ climate promises and their capital placement.Third, governments’ responsibilities include setting policies which ensure private-market actors align with public interest.