Wednesday, May 3, 2000

OTTAWA - Today, at a news conference in Ottawa, the nation-wide Corporate Responsibility Coalition, made up of 27 citizen groups, revealed the many gaps in corporate responsibility in Canada. As the Conference Board of Canada holds its first ever Corporate Social Responsibility Week, the Coalition cited numerous Canadian examples of corporate irresponsibility, and called for corporate responsibility measures to be added to Bill S-19, which amends the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) and is currently being reviewed by the Senate Banking Committee. More than 155,000 corporations are incorporated under the CBCA, including half of the Financial Post Top 500 corporations in Canada.

Despite widespread support for laws to ensure corporations act responsibly, Bill S-19 does not contain any of the Coalition's corporate responsiblity proposals. "Corporations must be responsible every day of the year," said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch, "and the only way to ensure that corporations always act responsibly is to require them to do so in law."

The Corporate Responsibility Coalition wants Bill S-19 changed to empower corporate shareholders and stakeholders and to ensure corporations are held accountable for wrongdoings. Among other measures, the Coalition wants the following changes to the CBCA:

• remove several barriers to shareholder proposals so that corporations will be more responsive to shareholder values;
• add requirement that corporate directors take into account stakeholder interests when making decisions, and account publicly for how they do so;
• add requirement to disclose the corporation's compliance record with many laws;
• add whistleblower protection for corporate employees;
• add a right for stakeholders to initiate a review of a corporation's overall activities;
• increase penalties for corporate wrongdoings; and
• require corporations to help create a nation-wide corporate watchdog group.

Coalition representatives presented these proposed measures to the Senate Banking Committee at a hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

"The problems caused by corporations, including environmental destruction, social inequality and the circumvention of democratic processes, demand that Parliament take bold steps to reform the corporate structure," said Gil Yaron, Director of the Citizens' Council on Corporate Issues, a member group of the Corporate Responsibility Coalition.

"Even good corporate citizens need clear rules to play by," said John Purkis, Special Projects Coordinator, Sierra Club of Canada, also a member group of the Coalition.