Countries forcing companies to disclose carbon emissions. What about Canada?

Regulators around the world are increasingly forcing companies to disclose their carbon emissions, along with other key climate change considerations.

It’s getting harder for companies to hide their dirty secrets.

Regulators around the world are increasingly forcing them to disclose their carbon emissions, along with other key climate change considerations such as how much financial risk they face.

Momentum is building as the rising dangers from wildfires, droughts and floods become harder to ignore, and as the alphabet soup of disclosure regimes get boiled down to clear international standards on the key questions companies most need to answer.

But while both the need and the path forward are getting increasingly clear, experts say Canada is falling behind.

At this year’s UN climate conference in Dubai, Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor and a central player in global climate finance, was talking excitedly about the reporting framework established — in record time — by the International Sustainability Standards Board.

“Now countries are starting to implement. It’s been endorsed by the securities regulator IOSCO, the European Union, the U.K., Singapore, Switzerland, Canada,” he said, before pausing.

“Well, Canada’s lagging a bit. But most of the others are starting to implement.”

Whether a slip or a dig, his comments echo what others have been saying about Canada’s pace of rolling out rules that will make it much easier to see who the laggards are on action, and where investments are most at risk.