John M. Valley
Oct. 13, 2023
The findings of Osler’s 2023 Diversity Disclosure Practices Report: Diversity and leadership at Canadian Public Companies, showed “steady-as-you-go” progress, said report co-author, John Valley, Chair of Osler’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practice and partner in the Corporate practice, in an interview with Canadian Lawyer.
He stated, “The continued relatively higher rate at which women are being added to boards is important. That is really the only way we’re going to make progress over time towards parity. And we saw an increase this year, where women were being appointed to fill vacant or newly created board seats over 45 percent of the time. That’s up a couple of percent from last year… The continued rate at which women are being appointed to fill those empty board seats or those newly created board seats is really going to be the marker for how we continue to see progress.”
Additionally, John highlighted the importance of public reporting to driving change in behaviour and increasing awareness of the need for diversity in corporate leadership.
Looking forward, the report identifies room for improvement in the number of women in the C-suite, and the representation of visible minorities, Indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities on boards and in executive leadership.
“Proportionally, the representation of Indigenous peoples, both on boards and executive officer positions is very low. They’re five percent of the Canadian population based on the most recent census data and currently hold less than one percent of the board seats,” says John.
However, the report points to small increases in the number of visible minorities on boards and in the C-suite.
Considering future proposals and expanding areas of reporting, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) is looking to add the numbers of LGBTQ2S+ board and executive members as a category to its disclosure requirements.
“We’ll probably hear from them in the next few months with proposals,” says John. “It would be a very tight turnaround to have the proposed instrument in place for the next proxy season, but it’s an important issue, so it’s hard to rule out anything.”
Read the full article, “Women fill more board seats while more visible minority executives hired: Osler diversity report,” on the Canadian Lawyer website.