Moved second reading of Bill S-243, An Act to enact the Climate-Aligned Finance Act and to make related amendments to other Acts.

She said: Honourable senators, I stand before you to introduce Bill S-243, An Act to enact the Climate-Aligned Finance Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, CAFA for short. CAFA is an efficient legislative tool to attain coherence, increase transparency and implement accountability while protecting the finance system from climate risks and aligning finances with our national and international climate commitments. These aspects are essential to facilitate an orderly transition to a low-carbon economy, which is already under way and accelerating around the world.

This legislative initiative is the natural and logical progression of climate action following the adoption of the Canadian Net‑Zero Emissions Accountability Act, which I sponsored here in the Senate, but also to put Canada at the right place in the race for a clean industrial revolution to increase the chances that we remain a prosperous, competitive nation.

In this speech, I will provide context in terms of finance and climate risks which justifies the objectives and content of the bill. I will describe the work and process that led us to this proposal. Finally, I will dive into the bill itself and the problems it solves.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of the world’s leading climate scientists, has now published all three sections of its landmark Sixth Assessment Report addressing the physical basis of climate science, the impacts of the climate crisis and the pathways for the world to reduce its emissions to a safe level.

They found that countries were falling behind on the policies and actions needed, that financial flows are three to six times lower than the levels needed by 2030, and that drastic changes will be needed to all aspects of the global economy. Avoiding the worst consequences is still possible, but only if governments take immediate and decisive action such as halving global emissions by 2030. Fortunately, the report says mitigation options are readily available, as low as US$100 per tonne of CO2 equivalent or less.

During the release of these reports, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres did not mince his words. He described the second report as an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” On Monday, he said that “the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

Colleagues, we are the decision makers; we are the leaders. I don’t know if you have an idea how depressing it is for scientists, health practitioners, young generations, concerned citizens, responsible corporations, workers for just transition, Indigenous peoples, racialized communities affected by pollution and women and girls disproportionately impacted by climate change to witness such a destructive path for our planet.

By now, several points should be very clear: They see us as enablers of the crisis. They have lost confidence in our democratic process. Extreme weather events are more frequent, destructive and expensive. Climate risk is systemic and growing. Further delay in climate action is dangerous. No, this is not a moralizing speech; these are just the facts.

Recently, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget assessment found that climate change could provoke a 7.1% annual revenue loss — equivalent to US$2 trillion per year — by the end of the century. That means, “Future damages could dwarf current damages if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.”

Meanwhile, a study by the Swiss Re Institute estimates that Canada, along with the U.K. and U.S., would lose 6% to 7% of its annual GDP by 2050 with 2 to 2.6 degrees of warming.

The Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 nations in 2015. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. In November, Canada submitted its Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, at COP26 in Glasgow. Canada has committed to reducing its emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, a commitment that was formalized last year with the passage of the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.

COP26 was an opportunity for countries to submit ambitious NDCs while addressing the issue of financing the transition. It did not meet all of its objectives, but several promising initiatives emerged, including the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, led by former Bank of Canada governor and the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Mark Carney. The alliance is a group of financial actors that are committed to putting climate change at the centre of their work. I support Mark Carney’s efforts. It is clear that we will never achieve our goals without the full and proactive participation of the financial sector.

In Canada, the financial sector is lavishly supporting emissions-intensive industries with billions of dollars in direct funds. Export Development Canada supported the industry by providing between $8 billion and $12.4 billion in financing and insurance annually from 2015 to 2020, which directly contradicts the goals of reducing government subsidies and emissions. Canada’s big six banks have provided $694 billion in funding and invested $125 billion in fossil fuels since 2015.

Despite the good intentions behind these international collaborations, there is an obvious contradiction between the financial actors’ promises and their actions. Around the world, government policies and technology are changing rapidly as the transition moves forward. Canada has never met its emissions reduction targets, and our financial system is threatened by climate risks. Our financial institutions have to catch up and align their actions with the latest climate science. We have to build on the sustainable finance efforts of developed nations, like the European countries, members of the European Union and the Commonwealth countries. Then we could set off an economic transformation that will fuel future prosperity sustainably, by preserving our country and planet the way our generation experienced it.

Currently, our financial sector is facing an increasingly volatile climate and uncertain future, leaving it vulnerable to major risks. These risks, however, are not reflected in market prices, tilting capital flows toward riskier, emissions-intensive assets and away from low-carbon assets. If market expectations change suddenly due to an acceleration in global policy or a technological breakthrough or a series of destructive weather events such as the ones we have now, it could cause massive repricing. In this scenario, billions of dollars’ worth of emissions-intensive assets could become stranded, resulting in losses that could then cascade through the entire financial system and trigger instability or widespread collapse.

Half of the world’s fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036 in a net-zero transition, and three quarters of Canadian oil is unburnable in a world where warming is limited to 2 degrees. Those who are slow to decarbonize will suffer, while early pioneers will profit.

Initiatives like the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures aim to improve and increase reporting of climate‑related financial information through voluntary disclosures, hoping that investors would have a greater overview of the impacts on climate of their investment portfolios. Unfortunately, the lack of legislative framework and enforcement provokes an inconsistent application. Those who do disclose find themselves at a disadvantage compared to those who don’t and end up being penalized by investors.

While the climate crisis poses incredible risk to the financial sector, the opposite is also true. Combined, these two opposite effects are termed “double materiality.” Through its massive investments in high-emitting industries, the financial sector is enabling the further increase of emissions in the atmosphere. These financed emissions add to the burden of the climate crisis.

In 2015, Morgan Stanley Capital International assessed the carbon footprint for several of its indexes and found that a US$1 million investment could be associated with as much as 439 tons of CO2 equivalent.

How can an individual financial institution address this conundrum? The financial sector is on the front line of climate risk, and despite their continued support of fossil fuels, the sector, along with major international corporations, rushed to announce decarbonization commitments to prove their willingness to change. Yet, these pledges lack transparency or accountability. At best, they bring us false comfort that climate action is under way. At worst, they are a deliberate attempt at greenwashing to delay substantial climate action.

There are still no clear standards or enforcement measures that would bring much-needed transparency to these pledges. Certainly, we applaud those private sectors who have set and are making meaningful progress toward ambitious climate targets. Bill S-243 is in full support of them. But individual corporations have neither the responsibility nor the incentive to ensure that their peers and competitors follow suit. They cannot ensure an orderly and comprehensive transition of the economy on their own let alone take responsibility for reducing the climate risk posed to the entire financial sector. Only the government can fulfill this function.

These are the issues that my proposed legislation solves. So how was Bill S-243 developed?

In September 2020, I invited several experts to the Senate to provide their insights on how to develop a more equitable and resilient economy after recovering from the pandemic. These experts included Dr. Peter Victor, economist and professor emeritus at York University; Dr. Cameron Hepburn, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University and also Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, laureate of the Nobel prize in economics and former chief economist at the World Bank. This webinar, along with our research on various advocated approaches to post-pandemic economic recovery, resulted in the publication of a white paper called “Building Forward Better: A Clean and Just Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

Last summer, we adopted the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, a legally binding accountability framework for the government to attain net-zero emissions by 2050, and it allowed for important debate in this chamber.

In January, the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, or OSFI, published the final report on the Climate Scenario Analysis Pilot to better understand the risks to the financial system that could arise from a transition to a low-carbon economy. It emphasizes the systemic nature of climate risk threatening the economy and the whole financial system, and it recognizes the need to build up capacity to assess these risks. Regrettably, it falls short of making significant recommendations for proactive climate action by financial institutions. The window for action is getting smaller, and the climate emergency does not give us the luxury of time.

Within the context of these developments, my office and I have worked on a white paper for the past several months that seeks to provoke the next logical progression in the transition. Based on international best practices and leading thinkers in economic policy, climate science and sustainable finance and on exchanges during COP26 and the GLOBE summit, we identified the gaps in the Canadian financial landscape and proposed a set of recommendations.

These recommendations define what leapfrogging from laggard to leader would look like for Canada in terms of ensuring a climate-aligned, stable, low-carbon financial system. These findings, recommendations and feedback so far can be found in the white paper published last month called Aligning Canadian Finance with Climate Commitments.

The feedback so far has been inspiring, and I sincerely thank all my colleagues who have taken the time to read and respond to my analysis, discussion and recommendations.

Rich with this knowledge, Bill S-243 was co-designed through collaborations and consultations led by Karine Péloffy from my office and Professor Amr Addas of the Concordia University Sustainability Ecosystem, supported by the Trottier Family Foundation. We organized a series of consultations and working‑group meetings. We convened over 40 national and international experts in sustainable finance from various backgrounds. They represented investment entities, pensions, think tanks, law firms and academia and brought together both finance and climate expertise in the hopes of developing a stringent, measured and coherent solution to help our financial sector align with our climate commitments.

During these consultations, we received exceptional feedback, which is synthesized in a “What We Heard” discussion paper that was released earlier today. These consultations sought to obtain advice on fiduciary duties of directors, reporting and planning from institutions, capital adequacy requirements, disclosures, technologies and how they are used and much more. The resulting feedback is directly reflected in this bill proposed today.

Bill S-243 complements the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, increasing structure, coherence and efficiency in attaining our committed goals by bringing the financial sector into the race to net zero — the last crucial piece to activate the transition machine.

Countries like the United Kingdom and New Zealand have already legislated the requirement for mandatory climate disclosures for many of their financial institutions. The White House issued an executive order in May 2021 which, along with recognizing the risks to the stability of the financial system caused by climate change, established a policy “. . . to advance consistent, clear, intelligible, comparable, and accurate disclosure of climate-related financial risk . . . .” In October 2021, the order was followed by a roadmap to build a climate-resilient economy, which embodies the precautionary approach while aiming to mobilize “. . . public and private finance to support the transition to a net-zero U.S. economy . . .” and safeguard “ . . . the U.S. financial system against climate-related financial risk . . . .”

Recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new rules that make it mandatory for companies listed on American stock exchanges to report the full scope of their emissions. These changes would put Canadian companies trading on U.S. exchanges at a great disadvantage, unable to meet American investors’ standards and expectations.

While other G20 countries have a much larger portfolio of clean energy options, including tidal, wave, hydro, gravity, wind, solar and nuclear energy, we are sadly still developing the expensive, complex, polluting and socially divisive energy of the past. Put simply, Canadian policy is behind, and our misguided actions are having a major impact on our international competitiveness. We must act with the legislative tools at our disposal.

These are the urgent reasons why I introduced Bill S-243, which aligns the activities of federal financial institutions and other federally regulated entities with the superseding economic and public interest matter of achieving our climate commitments. It aims to make timely and meaningful progress toward safeguarding the stability of both the financial and climate systems. It recognizes the systemic risks posed to all sectors of the economy by not aligning financial flows with climate commitments.

So what is alignment? Climate commitments refer to our obligations and commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement and the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act with attention to meeting the 1.5-degree target with no or low overshoot, avoiding carbon lock-in, preserving natural carbon sinks and enhancing resilience.

To be considered aligned with climate commitments involves contributing to the realization of climate commitments; avoiding inconsistency with those commitments; avoiding contribution to prolonging the impacts of climate change or disturbing natural carbon sinks, and producing overall positive climate impacts while respecting the right of Indigenous peoples, using the best available science and not hindering other social and environmental goods. To achieve this, the bill comprises seven important measures.

The first measure addresses an issue that we heard often during our consultations: that fiduciary duty technically includes consideration of climate risk. However, in practice, the risk is ignored or under-represented.

The Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance recommended in 2019 that the federal government, “. . . clarify that fiduciary duty . . . does not preclude the consideration of relevant climate change factors.”

In addition, Queen’s University’s Institute for Sustainable Finance’s September 2021 report surveyed sustainable finance experts and highlighted the need for clarifying the scope of fiduciary duty, which was, “. . . widely recognized as a crucial initiative to act on in the near term.”

Former Supreme Court Justice McLachlin also recognized that corporations have a duty beyond just the bottom line. She said:

Corporations must take environmental impacts of their activities into account in making a decision . . . Corporations, public and private, must consider the interests of all their stakeholders. Like all good citizens, corporations must respect the environment, relations with Indigenous peoples, and the diversity of modern societies.

The climate-aligned finance act, therefore, creates a duty for directors, officers and administrators to exercise their powers and functions in a way that enables their organization to be in alignment with climate commitments.

The second measure is the alignment of various federal-adjacent organizations with climate commitments. This set of straightforward amendments requires the Bank of Canada, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, the public sector, the Canada Pension Plan and key Crown corporations, such as Export Development Canada, to perform their duties in a manner that is aligned with our climate commitments.

The third measure is an obligation for setting targets, planning and reporting on climate commitment alignment for federally regulated organizations unless they have no or negligible emissions. These reporting entities include federally regulated financial institutions, parent Crown corporations, federally incorporated companies and other federally regulated entities, such as railways and airlines. Their targets and plans must apply to all emissions in their value chain, represent the best available science and be aligned with the climate commitments. Federal financial institutions — including banks, insurance companies, pensions, the Bank of Canada and some key Crown corporations — will be subject to additional requirements, such as the consideration of their financed emissions in their targets and plans.

Colleagues, we required this from the government last year with the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. Now it is time to extend a similar requirement to the financial sector.

The fourth measure is ensuring certain boards of directors have the climate expertise they need for the transition and that conflicts of interest are avoided. This bill establishes a definition of climate expert and requires that major Crown corporations have at least one climate expert on their board. The conflict of interest provision will be introduced in two steps. For the first four years after coming into force, board members associated with an organization that is not in alignment with climate commitments would have to declare their conflicting activities in the reporting entity’s annual climate commitments alignment report. From the fifth year onwards, such individuals will not be eligible for board appointments. We have heard that all financial boards are populated with the same few hundred people. This measure aligns with the trend of bringing diversity and wider expertise to boards.

The fifth measure is the establishment of capital adequacy requirements that better reflect the microprudential and macroprudential risks generated by financial institutions. When financial institutions invest in non-transition-ready sectors, ripples of financial risk are generated and propagated throughout our financial system. Requiring banks to hold more capital — an amount proportional to their investment in emissions-intensive operations, for example — would cause banks to internalize the costs of those systemic risks that their financial activities generate.

To that end, the bill requires the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to develop new guidelines for capital adequacy for financial institutions with respect to climate commitments. The first guidelines would apply to entities governed by the Bank Act and would be published in the year following the entry into force of the legislation. A second set of guidelines would then be developed for funding requirements and investment policies with respect to climate commitments by pension funds, insurance companies and other entities that report to the superintendent.

The sixth measure would have the government develop an action plan for aligning financial products with climate commitments. Full alignment requires a global approach that exceeds the scope of a Senate private member’s bill. The federal government has considerable powers and the constitutional jurisdiction required to act on these issues.

Finally, the seventh measure guarantees the holding of timely public review processes on the progress of the implementation to ensure iterative learning.

The bill requires that two reports be presented. A document tabled every year in Parliament by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions will report on the progress made by the entities under its jurisdiction in implementing the requirements. The Minister of Finance will table a similar report for Crown corporations.

Within one year of the act coming into force, a single report will be co-developed by the Bank of Canada, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and representatives of Indigenous peoples based on the consultations that will have taken place to obtain Indigenous peoples’ perspectives on such matters as long-term investment and the resilience of the financial system. Another report will be prepared by the Bank of Canada on monetary policy in relation to climate change, and it will be developed in consultation with persons with climate expertise. These reports will also be tabled in Parliament.

An independent review of the provisions of the act and their administration shall be carried out every three years in consultation with persons with climate expertise, followed by a report that will also be tabled in Parliament.

I also want to mention a recurring theme in the bill. Based on comments made by representatives of Indigenous peoples, the Climate-Aligned Finance Act recognizes their interests in the following ways. First, the preamble of the act refers to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on these peoples. Second, climate expertise includes “Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.” Third, the definition of the term “alignment with climate commitments” includes respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples, including those set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Finally, the Bank of Canada must prepare a joint report with representatives of Indigenous peoples on their perspectives.

In conclusion, the financial sector is not exempt from the impacts of climate change; it’s — quite the opposite. Traditional tactics to solve economic problems have not helped the climate crisis. In fact, past approaches have advertently or inadvertently worsened the climate crisis by supporting polluting industries.

Canadians need the financial sector to act according to this climate reality. Meridional Canada warms twice as fast as the planet’s average, and the Arctic three times as fast. We must, therefore, accelerate transition in an orderly manner.

The Bank of Canada, having just released the results of its first exercise to understand the risks to the Canadian financial system, is falling behind in the race to net zero. Several national and international organizations and jurisdictions are not only leading this reflection but are proposing policies and legislative tools, with some already being implemented. Canada must follow suit if we aim to remain a competitive, prosperous, sustainable economy for this and future generations to come.

I look forward to having a robust debate with you in this chamber and with society at large. I expect that our fellow colleagues, bankers, economists, auditors and anyone with interests in developing a sustainable economy in a healthy environment for Canadians will bring perspectives and positive contributions to this debate. I imagine a few committees will be interested in aspects of this bill, particularly the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, but also the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. I look forward to hearing from experts during committee studies, and I remain open to improvements that could strengthen this legislation.

Thank you, colleagues. Meegwetch.

Yes.

Thank you so much for the question, Senator McPhedran.

I can tell you that this is a concept of double materiality. That means that, on one hand, the financial sector acknowledges and says that the climate risk is systemic and, whether it is through the transition or the physical risk with all these extreme weather events that have been very destructive, they turn assets into stranded assets. On the other hand, they are financing the fossil fuel industry. They call this double materiality.

Now, the standards on sustainability — and this is on a global scale — they are saying this concept needs to be studied and the disclosure cannot only be voluntary. It has to be more complete in order to assess the risk more precisely and to apply the remedy because the risk, as you were saying, is there, and it’s growing; it’s alarming. It can bring us to a very difficult point of a different nature than other financial crises. People tend to think this could be very similar to the 2008 financial crisis, but it’s not. This is an external crisis coming from several factors that are cumulative and convergent.

I hope I answered your question.

Are you referring to the issue of greenwashing?

You reminded me that at some point we were talking about “unknown unknown” risks. We were talking about radical uncertainty. As an engineer, I know how to manage risk when we are able to measure it, model it, and predict it. That is what we do in engineering when we adapt our infrastructure.

The problem, financially speaking, is that according to experts, this risk is unknown. We cannot really measure it, because these factors are convergent, cumulative and exponential, and they are truly very difficult to predict. That is why experts are telling us that we must use microprudential and macroprudential approaches to ensure we can resolve the problem both on an individual entity level and on a systemic level, because the risk is systemic.

Thank you very much for your question and for appreciating the work that has been done.

So far, the reporting of climate risks is just a recommendation and it is voluntary. Experts have said that just 9% of the entities monitored produced a report on their climate risks. Among that 9%, just 2% took action in response to the risks they identified.

There is another criticism that, because there are no strict requirements or guidelines to disclose these risks, this ultimately just serves as a sort of greenwashing. Some entities are taking advantage of this situation to overstate how much they are doing, but no one can validate the claims.

Our bill seeks to improve the disclosure of climate risks, but it goes much further than that, because the entities must prove that their efforts are in line with climate commitments. This means that they not only have to disclose the risks, but also have to offer solutions. Disclosure and solutions became mandatory with our bill.

I don’t know whether you follow budget news, but the issue of sustainable finance is one aspect of the budget. That’s good, and I would point out that in the last election, several of the political parties’ platforms included sustainable finance elements to develop, so that’s very good.

Ultimately, it is true that this bill may be of interest to the three committees I mentioned, but obviously, as you said yourself, it is not my decision to make. Everyone will speak with their facilitators or leaders and ultimately they will be the ones to decide, but certainly the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance are the two committees . . .

The other reason I can say this is because our bill is agnostic when it comes to technology. It does not say whether or not to use a certain technology. We are asking the entities to show us the efforts they are making to align their activities with Canada’s domestic and international climate commitments. So long as they are doing just that, we have nothing to say about the technology they use. I would say that the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance are the two committees that I would favour.