John M. Valley
Nov 4, 2020
A recent article in The Lawyer’s Daily looks at the results of Osler’s sixth annual comprehensive report, 2020 Diversity Disclosure Practices: Diversity and leadership at Canadian public companies, reporting that “Canadian companies continue to show slow progress in promoting women to top executive roles, but new diversity disclosure requirements under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) promise to expand corporate diversity to other under-represented groups.”
Author John Schofield states that, according to the publication, only 26 corporations — representing 4.4% of companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) that disclose their diversity statistics — have appointed a woman as chief executive officer, and that [f]or full year 2019, the 659 companies that disclosed the number of women executives they employed reported an average of 1.69 women executives each and a total of 1,114 executive officer positions held by women.
“It is surprising that there has been virtually no improvement over the six years we’ve been doing the report — certainly no sustained improvement,” says John Valley, a leader in Osler’s Corporate Governance Group, who co-authored the report with Osler partner Andrew MacDougall and associate Jennifer Jeffrey.
The article also notes that the record was somewhat better for corporate boards — of the 710 companies that disclosed the number of women on their boards in 2019, 19% of total board seats were held by women, an increase of 2.5% from 2018. “There has been a slow but steady increase in the number of women on boards each year,” John says. “So there is progress being made. It’s just not as fast as people might like to see it.”
The article also noted that there are few visible-minority directors, and a noticeable lack of directors who are Indigenous or persons with disabilities. Disclosure requirements under the CBCA that took effect on Jan. 1, 2020, could begin to change that, states the article; the older diversity disclosure requirements under securities law, which took effect in 2014, relate only to women, John explains.
The article also looks at other results as well as best practices included in the report relating to diversity hiring, promotion and disclosure.
“We want the report to be a tool and a roadmap for people,” says John. “What we think is really crucial are the pieces that talk about best practices in terms of what companies are doing to build the talent pipeline within their organizations and how they are helping to support the development of high potential employees.”
For more of John’s insight and information on the results of the 2020 Diversity Disclosure Practices report, read John Schofield’s full article, “Diversity disclosure report provides update on new rules, highlights best practices” in The Lawyer’s Daily.