On the road to net zero, is Canada going fast enough?

There’s no question that many major Canadian companies are applying vision and innovation, and making impressive progress toward circular business models, decarbonization and greater social equity.

- TOBY HEAPS

Office towers reach toward the sky in Toronto. According to the Corporate Knights's 50 Best Corporate Citizens rankings, there has been growth in investment in sustainability - just not enough.

That’s the encouraging takeaway from Corporate Knights’s comprehensive annual assessment of corporate citizenship on the part of all Canadian companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenues.

But having done this analysis for nearly 25 years, I increasingly focus not just on the achievements of the topranked Best 50 companies, but also on what our analysis reveals about the comparative scope and pace of progress economywide. That’s the sobering part of the exercise.

But let’s start on the positive side of the ledger.

Looking at the 2024 50 Best Corporate Citizens ranking, I’m encouraged first by diversity. Three distinct sectors and business models are represented at the top of the ranking via first-place Société de transport de Montréal, followed by Stantec Inc. and the Co-operators in second and third spots. Good corporate citizenship is clearly not a niche phenomenon.

More fundamentally, I’m encouraged by the growth in investments and revenues that align with credible definitions of sustainability. We weigh these metrics heavily in our ranking given their outsized importance as drivers of economic transformation and long-term corporate success.