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Co-Operators Group Tops Best Canadian Companies List

<p>The 10th annual list, published by Corporate Knights magazine, puts outdoor retailer Mountain Co-Op and Domtar Paper in the second and third spots, respectively, behind the insurance firm.</p>

Corporate Knights yesterday released the 10th Annual Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada, the definitive annual list of Canada's top corporate citizens.

The leading corporate ranking of Canadian corporate citizenship transparently ranks companies' relative carbon, water, waste, and energy impacts.

Other citizenship indicators include pension fund quality, board diversity, ratio of CEO pay to lowest-paid worker, and tax dollar generation, as well as sector specific indicators such as renewable energy investments (for financial companies) and respect for human rights (for mining companies).

The Best Corporate Citizen for 2011 was The Co-operators Group Limited, a Canadian-owned, multi-product insurance and financial services organization with more than $42.4 billion in assets under administration.

With strong board diversity, board oversight (with a dedicated sustainability committee) relatively low resource use, an embedded sustainability mandate, and a deep integration of sustainability and climate resilience into its suite of insurance products, The Co-operators Group earned the honour of the top corporate citizen in Canada.

Mountain Equipment Co-op and Domtar Corporation were selected as the second and third Best Corporate Citizens in Canada in this year's ranking.

The 50 Best Corporate Citizens List is based on environmental, social and governance indicators found in the public domain, as well as an assessment of how these companies manage their carbon, energy, water usage and waste production.

The Corporate Knights Best 50 methodology for grading corporate citizenship, developed with financial support from Industry Canada, has helped raise the rigour and professionalism of what it means to be a good corporate citizen, being recognized by the global initiative, Rate the Raters, as a best practice rating.

"The prize of clean capitalism is the space race of the next decade, and the Best 50 Corporate Citizens are the rocket fuel propelling Canada forward to be a more competitive and better society." Toby Heaps, President of Corporate Knights.

The Corporate Knights' ranking applies a transparent methodology that calibrates important metrics from pension fund health and responsible accounting to executive pay and resource use.

Many of these metrics that Corporate Knights has been tracking for years have recently moved to the forefront of the business pages with the crackdown on tax havens and the pension fund crunch.

Corporate Knights also examines foreign-based companies with significant operations in Canada in a separate assessment called the Top Foreign Corporate Citizens in Canada.

Top Foreign Corporate Citizen Selection criteria include: Companies must be listed on the Financial Post 500, and rank among the top 10 per cent of 4,500 global companies according to the Global Sustainability Research Alliance.

The Alliance was created to assist the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World project , and is the world's largest sustainability research consortium (formed by Global Currents Investment Management LLC and Phoenix Advisors LLC).

The top 20 companies are listed below; the full methodology and analysis of the Best 50 Corporate Citizens is detailed at http://www.corporateknights.ca/best50 and summarized in the Best 50 2011 issue (Vol. 10.1) of Corporate Knights.

Rank Company Industry Score
1 The Co-operators Group Ltd. Insurance 85.96 %
2 Mountain Equipment Co-op Specialty retail 82.86 %
3 Domtar Corporation Paper & Forest Products 80.39 %
4 Loblaw Companies Ltd. Food & Staples Retailing 79.87 %
5 BC Hydro & Power Authority Independent Power Producers 79.39 %
6 Vancouver City Savings Commercial Banks 79.23 %
7 Cascades Inc. Containers and Packaging 79.15 %
8 Enmax Multi-Utilities 78.89 %
9 Nexen Inc. Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels 77.73 %
10 Enbridge Inc. Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels 77.10 %
11 IAMGOLD Corporation Metals & Mining 75.59 %
12 Canadian National Railway Co. Road & Rail 75.09 %
13 Catalyst Paper Corporation Paper & Forest Products 75.04 %
14 Hydro One Inc. Multi-Utilities 74.19 %
15 Encana Corporation Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels 74.18 %
16 Sears Canada Inc. Multiline Retail 74.05 %
17 Royal Bank of Canada Commercial Banks 72.94 %
18 Agrium Inc. Chemicals 72.89 %
19 Sherritt International Corporation Metals & Mining 72.46 %
20 Canfor Corporation Paper & Forest Products 71.71 %

 

This article originally appeared on Globe-Net, and is reprinted with permission.

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