Canada’s biggest bank faces shareholder vote on climate standards

Canada’s biggest bank faces shareholder vote on climate standards

Banking















Bloomberg

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) shareholders will vote on whether the bank should tighten its standards for sustainable finance, action inspired by a 2021 pipeline financing deal that was criticised for green-washing and general concern over lax standards for so-called sustainability-linked debt.

Investors for Paris Compliance, a shareholder advocacy group set up last year to hold Canadian companies accountable for their net zero commitments, filed a resolution calling on Canada’s biggest bank to “update its criteria for ‘sustainable finance.’” Debt with that label should “preclude fossil fuel activity and projects facing significant opposition from indigenous peoples,” the group said.

The resolution was prompted in part by RBC’s role helping pipeline company Enbridge Inc. issue a sustainability-linked loan and sustainability-linked bond last year, said Matt Price, Investors for Paris Compliance’s director of corporate engagement for the finance sector. At the time, Enbridge was building a new section of its Line 3 oil sands pipeline, a project that would, by some estimates, add as much CO₂ to the atmosphere each year as Argentina. It was also vehemently opposed by indigenous peoples in Minnesota who feared the desecration of their