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Ethical Investors in Canada

Student

By Jennifer Peers

Ethical investing has been around for over a century, dating back to 18th century Quakers (Rayer, 2017). However, the demand for stocks that reflect the values of investors has become more prominent with issues such as global warming becoming more exacerbated over time. Accompanying the growing demand for ethical investments are a whole slew of new terms for it, including; socially responsible investing, impact investing, environment, social and governance investing, sustainable investing and green investing among others.

We collected survey questions from 1994 to 2019 to see how Canadian’s feel about ethical investing. We identified fifty survey questions related to ethical investing. The survey questions and corresponding data have been shared on OpenICPSR for those interested in the data.

Several interesting observations emerged from the data collected. In particular, a data set from 2007 to 2011 appears to show a decline amongst Canadians over the years, in volunteering, donating, and ethical investing 

One reason for this decline could be the 2008 recession which financially devastated the global economy and many consumers along with it. During times of financial hardship, charitable giving typically declines. As one Stanford University article put it, “in 2009 the economic downturn of 2008 has given rise to one of the largest year-over-year declines in charitable giving since the late 1960s” (Reich & Wimer, 2012).

The collected data for these years also demonstrates that behaviors such as donating to charitable causes, boycotting a company on ethical grounds, and buying a product or service because of an established link to a charitable organization are more prevalent in Canada than ethical investing. This suggests that this practice is still relatively unfamiliar to Canadian consumers despite it being around for some time. Correspondingly, one survey found between 2017-2019 that most Canadians have heard about responsible investing but know little or nothing about it.

Question: To what extent are you knowledgeable about responsible investments that consider ESG factors?

Year I have heard about responsible investing but know little or nothing about it
2017 54%
2018 46%
2019 49%

While knowledge on ethical investing may be limited for many Canadians, their desire for more ethical investing opportunities is clear from the data. A recent Ipsos poll found that 63% of Canadian investors are interested in starting or building their portfolio of ethical investments. This increasing demand for investments that align with investors values will require more resources and supports from Canada’s banks and investment companies.

Mandatory masks should be the default option for Ontarians

Anthony Piscitelli

The following article By Anthony Piscitelli and Jason Thistlethwaite was published in the Globe and Mail:

Ontarians are looking for direction on how to act during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s daily press briefings have had hundreds of thousands of views, and updates from Premier Doug Ford have been eagerly awaited by Ontarians looking for provincial direction on how to address the coronavirus.

While the guidance has been useful, when it comes to mask policies our Ontario government has unfortunately left the decision-making entirely up to local municipalities. Many local governments have stepped up to fill this policy void, but with clear evidence of the effectiveness of masks in reducing COVID-19 already available, more concrete leadership should have come from the province.

Continue reading at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-mandatory-masks-should-be-the-default-option-for-ontarians/

Compiling Research to Find the Ethical Investor

Student

By Lindsay Mewhiney & Monika Nawrocki

Over the past six weeks, we worked to develop an annotated bibliography examining what the academic literature says about ‘ethical investing’. For this research, we partnered with Union: Sustainable Development Co-operative, who seeks to apply our result to support the organization’s efforts to buy and manage multi-unit residential and commercial properties for the environmental, social, and economic benefit of Waterloo Region. This research attempt to answer the questions of “why do people invest in ethical investments?” and “who is likely to invest in impact/ethical investments?”. By answering these questions, future projects will be able to utilize this research to more effectively market ethical investment products and identify potential consumers.

After consulting with Sean Campbell of Union: Sustainable Development Co-operative and Anthony Piscitelli of Conestoga College, we searched databases with a list of key terms and added relevant sources into our document. After further analyzing sources, we wrote annotated bibliographies for a total of 39 sources to provide a concise summary of each source and its practical implications for research regarding ethical investing and understanding investor motivations. 

The research we conducted primarily discusses ethical investor motivations, investor profiles, and how ethical investment marketing and communication materials for consumers can be improved to increase rates of ethical investing. This compiled research will contribute to future projects with the goal of improving economic, social, and environmental health in the community, carried out by Union: Sustainable Development Co-operative and partner organizations.

The annotated bibliography can be found here:

https://threehundredthirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ethical-Investments-Annotated-Bibliography.pdf