Its my jam
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
Not all heroes wear capes — unless bathrobes count? We ask because we know a pretty heroic guy who has spent months in pyjamas multi-tasking parenting responsibilities while reading through 130 yawn-worthy PDFs on financial disclosures to break a series of stories that hold those in power accountable.Who is this hero of the pod, you might ask? Our very own climate investigations reporter, Carl Meyer.
It turns out Canada’s banks and oil and gas companies aren’t exactly eager to share the financial risks that climate change poses to their businesses. Quite the opposite.
From Suncor to CIBC, TC Energy to Scotiabank, dozens of publicly traded companies are lobbying against proposed rules that would force them to become more accountable and transparent about their finances — rules experts say are needed to prevent Canada’s economy from potentially ballooning into a “climate bubble” with massive consequences for anyone with a bank account.
Many of these companies complain climate disclosure requirements would be too much of a “burden,” even as these same companies post billions of dollars in profits.
What’s more, this pushback against new rules in Canada comes just as other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, move forward with even more stringent requirements.
I caught up with Carl to learn more about how his investigations came together, how he stayed sane while reading hundreds of pages of documents (spoiler: he enjoyed doing it) and what it means for folks like you and me. Check out the Q&A below.
Take care and don’t be a burden,
Arik Ligeti
Director of audience
How did the issue of climate risk transparency first land on your radar?
It started in January when I was looking into a report the Bank of Canada and the federal banking regulator had just published. Back then, I thought I was going to do a story about how the central bank was trying to encourage the release of more climate-related data from companies.
But as I asked questions I started to understand how the problem was bigger than just persuading corporate bigwigs to do the right thing. There were already systems in place, run by provincial regulators, to require some transparency from companies — it’s just that the rules were too weak. In fact, the regulators were aware of that, and so they had come up with a new proposal to require more transparency.
Yet, when I read their proposal, I was struck by how it had backed off some more stringent requirements over concerns it would be too much of a “burden” to corporations. Which companies and associations expressed these concerns about such a burden, I wondered?
It’s when I started searching for the answer to that question that I found out about all these letters to the regulators that dozens of companies and organizations had submitted. Even better, they were being posted publicly for me to download!
I started reading through all those letters one at a time, plugging them into a spreadsheet, and that’s when I started to notice some patterns about who was pushing back on transparency.
You dug through 130 submissions