IPSCO adopts Ethical Funds’ environmental reporting proposal

IPSCO Inc. has announced it will adopt the shareholder proposal filed by Ethical Funds this past winter, which received 49.2% of the shareholder vote, the highest level of support ever recorded for a socially responsible shareholder resolution in Canada.

"What gets measured gets managed; what gets disclosed gets reduced,” said Robert Walker, Vice President, SRI Policy and Research, for Ethical Funds. “Transparency is the new mantra for the 21st Century corporation. IPSCO's new disclosure policy represents a significant step forward for IPSCO, shareholders, the environment, and the communities where the company locates its facilities." 

The Ethical Funds proposal calls for IPSCO to establish a policy of disclosing facility-specific toxic and greenhouse gas emissions. Previously, the company had refused to disclose its greenhouse gas emissions at any of its 14 facilities (seven in Canada and seven in the US) and its toxic emissions at its Canadian plants. The company will now offer these disclosures under Environment Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory. 

In the past, Ethical Funds has lauded IPSCO for its leadership in scrap steel recycling, environmental management system certification, and for using a production technology that has less than ten times the environmental burden of conventional steel manufacturing. In the area of public disclosure, however, IPSCO had been the only large industrial emitter of toxic and hazardous substances that did not allow Environment Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory to disclose facility and company-specific emissions to the public.

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