Enterprise Ireland findings reveal key opportunity for businesses to address ESG gaps
TORONTO – January 8, 2024 – As Canadian businesses institutions face mandatory ESG reporting and climate disclosures this year, new research finds that more than half of Canadian businesses aren’t prepared to manage coming ESG regulatory changes.
In a new survey, Enterprise Ireland finds that while 84 per cent of Canadian business leaders agree that ESG principles are an important part of their corporate policy, 74 per cent admit it’s a challenge to put these mandates into action.
And despite the shift toward ESG regulations in Canada beginning this year, the Irish government’s trade and innovation agency found that 53 per cent of Canadian companies surveyed report being unprepared to manage coming ESG regulatory changes.
Under federal law, government agencies and private companies, mainly in mining and apparel manufacturing, must submit reports by May 2024 to address forced or child labour in their supply chains. And at the end of the 2024 fiscal year, major Canadian banks and insurers will have to provide mandatory ESG reports, including stress testing for climate change impacts, with larger institutions expected to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2025.
“In a rapidly evolving global landscape, investors, consumers, and governments are calling on businesses to prioritize ESG, which opens a significant opportunity for Canadian organizations to bolster their offerings and remain competitive,” says David McCaffrey, Country Manager at Enterprise Ireland Canada. “By taking a meaningful approach to ESG principles, these companies will also get ahead of impending domestic reporting requirements and comply with existing regulations in several global markets.”
The survey, Closing the ESG Divide, found that 42 per cent of companies find resource constraints are a major roadblock to implementing ESG initiatives – which includes the adoption of technology to help them achieve their goals, capture data, and report on progress. Also out of the companies surveyed 4 in 10 lack the tech needed to deliver and measure ESG initiatives and only one-third have a dedicated ESG role or department.
To help address these gaps, Irish companies have developed solutions with partners across Canada to support in improving ESG measures and metrics. Solutions include:
- Intuition, a global knowledge solutions company, partners with financial institutions across Canada to deliver workshops and webinars, educating their teams on ESG reporting and investing strategies.
- Inclusio, the first purpose-built, science-based culture tracking and learning solution, enables organizations to collect actionable insights on their team demographics to better understand their needs.
- Fenergo, a SasS based solution, works with Canadian financial institutions to efficiently integrate ESG into their current Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution, eliminating silos and enhancing automation to reduce manual data rekeying, thus improving process and data accuracy.
While the majority of Canadian businesses face barriers when it comes to implementing ESG mandates in 2024, 73 per cent of decision makers are committed to action, and said they are likely to deploy innovative technologies in the future to deliver on ESG initiatives.
About the Survey
The survey was conducted by Angus Reid Group from August 8-17, 2023 with a sample N=332 of senior decision makers and above in Medium to Enterprise businesses (50-500+ employees) across a variety of sectors to gauge their attitudes, perceptions and implementation of ESG initiatives. The survey was conducted Canada-wide in English and French.
About Enterprise Ireland
Enterprise Ireland is the Irish Government’s trade and innovation agency. It invests in the most innovative Irish companies through all stages of their growth and connects them to international customers across multiple industries. The organization’s goal is to build successful, long-term business relationships between international companies and Irish partners. With 40 offices worldwide, including in Toronto and Montreal, Enterprise Ireland’s teams of industry experts consult with international businesses to understand and solve their business needs. www.enterprise-ireland.com
