I agree with your assessment. The objective of a board is really to provide strategic advice to a corporation. The tactical decisions really should be left to management. The idea of a board is to oversee their fiduciary responsibility and they also look at long-term and short-term initiatives that will help the organization succeed. They ultimately are there to represent the interests of the shareholders. That's why shareholder democracy is such a key component of this bill as well.
I firmly believe when it comes to diversity, for example, we're trying to say that right now we want to see diversity better reflected in our governance structure. To put things in perspective, 59% still don't have written policies when it comes to diversity—I'm talking about corporations—and 45% of the listed companies do not even have a woman on their boards.
We're trying to say that we're trying to have a conversation here. We're trying to clearly send a direction on behalf of the government. We're trying to say, “Look, at a strategic level you need to really focus on diversity because this is obviously a key area of concern and also an opportunity as well.”
I think we're trying not to be prescriptive. We're not trying to create more red tape. We're not trying to create additional hurdles and challenges, because the vast majority of these businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises. But we are trying to indicate very clearly to them that they need to move in this direction.