Volume 12: Issue | Numéro 1 (2016)
Evguenia Paramonova
Recent developments in Canadian company law are stirring the legal imagination by suggesting that corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) could be integrated into mainstream governance frameworks. However, if such a transformative project is indeed underway, it remains incomplete. Landmark decisions from the Supreme Court of Canada have left more questions than answers concerning the fiduciary duties of directors. Commentators bemoan the lack of interpretive guidance from lawmakers on what it means to act in the “corporation’s best interests”, given the corporation’s recasting as a “good corporate citizen”. This article explores the cross-disciplinary potential of emerging business norms to provide such interpretive fodder. A variant of CSR, entitled “Creating Shared Value” (CSV), has had significant normative pull with companies, business academics, and policymakers alike. Emphasizing the social embeddedness of corporations, CSV suggests that a manager’s core objective is to maximize “shared value” (rather than shareholder value) by developing strategies and operations based on loci of mutual interest between the company and its stakeholders. By presenting managers with a clear objective and guidelines for balancing competing interests, CSV addresses two significant flaws in the current formulation of the fiduciary duty. The CSV norm ought to be embodied within existing corporate governance legislation, thus completing a “feedback loop”— business patterns will generate norms that breathe life into law so that law will have more instrumental vigour to regulate those business patterns. Ultimately, this could achieve more meaningful corporate sustainability patterns.
Sara L Seck
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD MNE Guidelines) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability (IFC Performance Standards) are widely viewed as key international standards to which extractive companies operating internationally should comply. Indeed, these standards, together with the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), are promoted by Canada in its November 2014 enhanced corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy for extractive sector companies operating abroad. The strategy states that the Canadian government expects companies operating outside of Canada to “respect human rights and all applicable laws, and to meet or exceed widely-recognized international standards for responsible business conduct”. Yet the OECD and the IFC take distinct approaches to the embedding of indigenous rights and environmental rights, two categories of human rights commonly affected by extractive company operations. For example, the OECD MNE Guidelines address human rights and environment in different guidelines, and there are no specific guidelines concerning the rights of indigenous peoples. The IFC Performance Standards, on the other hand, refers to human rights only briefly in the first performance standard as part of its social risk assessment, but provides more detailed standards on various environmental and social matters including biodiversity conservation, pollution prevention and indigenous peoples’ rights. However, in early 2016, the OECD released a Due Diligence Guidance for Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in the Extractives Sector (OECD Stakeholder Engagement Guidance) designed to provide practical guidance in line with the OECD MNE Guidelines. This paper will examine the commonalities and differences between the IFC and OECD approaches to the integration of business responsibilities for human rights with a focus on procedural environmental rights and the right of indigenous peoples to free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). The paper will also briefly assess the potential effectiveness of these instruments in light of associated compliance mechanisms.
Parens Patriae and Public Trust: Litigating Environmental Harm Per Se
Monique Evans
In Western legal traditions, environmental harm is generally viewed through a strict anthropocentric lens—an approach that has thus far failed to deliver on the goal of environmental sustainability. The author argues that recognition of environmental harm per se in Canadian law would enhance environmental protection and presents vehicles for addressing such harm through litigation. In particular, the author examines options for litigating environmental harm per se: governmental actions under the parens patriae jurisdiction and their converse— citizen actions against government under the doctrine of public trust. Although both options have their own limitations, both could be used to effectuate the law’s potential role in creating a sustainable future.
Annie Chaloux
Les trente dernières années ont montré une intensification de l’action internationale du Québec dans le domaine de l’environnement. Celui-ci a cherché à montrer l’importance et la pertinence des États fédérés dans la gouvernance environnementale internationale et à légitimer le rôle de ces acteurs dans la régulation de ces problématiques d’action collective à l’échelle internationale. Si l’on assiste à un foisonnement de l’activité internationale du Québec, peut-on en dire automatiquement que celui-ci a mis en œuvre et respecté ses engagements internationaux contractés avec ses partenaires nord-américains? Cette question, pourtant cruciale tant sur les plans pratique et théorique, ne génère, pour l’heure, qu’une littérature parcellaire et incomplète, alors que le Québec a développé, au cours des années, un discours fort important sur cette diplomatie verte québécoise. Cet article propose d’approfondir cette question et d’analyser en profondeur dans quelle mesure le Québec met en œuvre et respecte ses engagements internationaux dans le domaine de l’environnement grâce à l’étude détaillée de trois études de cas spécifiques dans l’espace nordaméricain, soit le Plan d’action de lutte contre les changements climatiques de la Conférence des gouverneurs de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et des premiers ministres de l’Est du Canada, le système de plafonnement et d’échange d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre de la Western Climate Initiative et l’Entente sur les ressources en eaux durables du bassin des Grands Lacs et du fleuve SaintLaurent du Conseil des gouverneurs des Grands Lacs. Les résultats de cette recherche démontrent que pour les trois études de cas analysées, le Québec tend à mettre en œuvre et à respecter ses engagements internationaux avec ses différents partenaires nord-américains, constituant ainsi un acteur international de confiance à l’égard de ses engagements internationaux.
