Recommendations For Mobilizing Finance for Sustainable Growth in Canada

On Friday, June 14, CIET’s Olivier Cappon attended the release of the Final Report of the Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance at the Rotman School of Management on the University of Toronto campus.

The report was developed by a panel of four professionals from Rotman, the Royal Bank, la Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan, and puts forward 15 recommendations.

According to the panel, the recommendations from the report are expected to be implemented across a few generations, hopefully culminating in the country being net-zero by 2050. The panel thinks that the fact that the report includes input from many groups will create a larger sense of ownership, and therefore action.

Report Recommendations

There are two recommendations that are particularly attracting a lot of attention:

• The 1st recommendation – to map a path to a low-carbon economy sector by sector (as has been done in other countries on a smaller scale);
• and the 10th recommendation – that would promote sustainable investment in order to have assets in this class become lifted to “business as usual” status. The idea of a super deduction, whereby individuals would be rewarded for climate-conscious investments when filing their taxes is an example of the type of novel thinking that the panel explored.

It was often noted that the implementation of these recommendations will require significant education and training programs to ensure the development of expertise and the normalization of sustainable investment –both for the general public and for the finance community.

View the Final Report