Canada-China Relations Committee on May 8th, 2023

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Today's decision could have an impact on your investments. We're talking about $400 billion, even though that's not only your investments in China, but your entire portfolio. It could nevertheless have an impact on it.

Do you think you should be kept informed before acting? Could that be a game changer?

[Vincent Delisle]

I don't think so.

As I was saying, I don't think it's up to us to intervene in such decisions.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Leduc, do you have anything to say about that?

[Michel Leduc]

I would say that we have the easy job in investing the money and making big decisions around—

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

You find that easy?

[Michel Leduc]

Well, relatively.... Everything is relative.

Making these big decisions is something for elected officials to do. We try to monitor as best we can and keep up with the changes and make decisions that are in the best interests of contributors and beneficiaries in the context of these diplomatic decisions.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Mr. Trudel.

We'll now go to Ms. McPherson for our final two and a half minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all very much for being here.

Mr. Leduc, I'm going to focus on you again because I have some interesting questions for you.

First, before I get back to asking you a little bit about how you evaluate the risk versus the human rights, according to the budget in 2022, the federal government said that they would “move forward with requirements for disclosure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations, including climate-related risks, for federally regulated pension plans.”

Has there been any guidance from the Minister of Finance with regard to that?

[Michel Leduc]

There are various ways that we engage with the Canadian government and other stakeholders in Canada on those issues. There was a council that was created, the sustainable finance council, which is very focused on disclosure.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

When was that created?

[Michel Leduc]

It was created about two years ago, I believe, and we're involved—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Since 2022, there's been no difference in the way that you receive the information.

[Michel Leduc]

I think the product of that work has been to develop a taxonomy in trying to better understand how you can create disclosure rules and standards that are very usable for investors like us. That has been the main focus of that work, and we are very encouraged by the work.

CPP Investments was part of a global task force—this goes back about five years ago—that started the focus on creating a standardized process globally for investors around climate change risks, for example.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay.

One thing you mentioned to my colleague Ms. Yip is that you are seized with the issue and are monitoring very closely. I have to say that this sounds like a lot of answers I get from question period. It doesn't give me much confidence. There's no transparency there for somebody like me, who is not an investment specialist.

[Michel Leduc]

That's a very good point.

I would say that we're very engaged and very involved. We're a participant in capital markets. Rules around climate change and human rights affect the value creation of the constituent parts—the businesses that are part of capital markets.

We're not a passive investor. We're an active, productive and engaged investor. It's having that long investor horizon and not being focused on making our 90-day numbers or even our annual numbers, but truly understanding the nature of the businesses as an engine of value creation. How they treat their employees and how they treat their communities are very important. We would say that the world is in a much better place with investors like us in it, investors who have the muscle to force change. If it were just passive investors, the billions of people who own little units and don't act together...

To have institutional investors with that power and influence is so important. Having us as active investors is also very important.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

That was an excellent point to end on. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you very much, Ms. McPherson.

That brings us to the end of our time with the “r greater than g” club, to conjure up Thomas Piketty.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your time this evening. It's been very illuminating.

Now we will take a quick break as we set up our next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

We're back in session with our second panel this evening.

As a quick heads-up to everybody, I'll let you know that we will be going into committee business in about an hour and a half, so we will try to use our time as efficiently as possible.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Sir, I have a point of order.

Really?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Well, no, pardon me. It's an hour and 15 minutes.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I think you will find that you have unanimous consent to adjourn at 9:30.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

I tried to whiff that one by you. All right. There we go. Okay—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

We don't want to go until 10:00, do we?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

—but we digress.

For the benefit of our witnesses joining us online now, I want to welcome you here, first of all.

We have Paula Glick, co-founder of Honeytree Investment Management Ltd., and Dr. Ari Van Assche, full professor at HEC Montréal.

From the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, we have Jennifer Coulson, senior managing director and global head, ESG, and Daniel Garant, executive vice-president and global head, public markets.

From the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, we have Stephen McLennan, executive managing director, total fund management.

All of you have done your sound checks. Mr. Garant, we will ask you to speak up a little bit when it's your turn to either speak or answer a question.

We'll try to keep everybody pretty close to the times allocated for questions and answers so that we can get as many questions and answers accomplished as possible.

You've all had your Zoom set up, so you have the interpretation available to you, if you need that.

Without any further preliminaries, I would now like to go to Paula Glick.

You have an opening statement of five minutes or less, Ms. Glick. Please continue.