Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. If you look at the investment policies of some of Canada's largest pension plans, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, you will see a statement something like this: companies with superior corporate responsibility practices are a better long-term investment.

Foreign Affairs committee  We don't have a formal ranking system. A few years ago we did a study for Environment Canada, looking at how different jurisdictions were helping incent pension funds, particularly, to take greater accord with environmental, social, and governance factors in the investment process.

Foreign Affairs committee  In regard to corporate law there are options that would cover federally incorporated companies, which would deal with most of the large companies in Canada, but something could also be done through the Canadian securities regulators or from the pension fund disclosure point of view through CAPSA, the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the question. From an investor perspective, it's very difficult to drill down and deal with individual companies, individual situations, when you hold a company in your common stock portfolio and own a very small fraction of that individual company. It becomes very difficult for investors to engage substantially and individually with many companies in their portfolios.

Foreign Affairs committee  That makes it all the more complicated, having two Peters. My name is Peter Chapman. I'm the executive director of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education. SHARE is a Canadian organization that helps institutional investors integrate environmental, social, and governance factors into the investment process.