The Notice provides guidance on compliance with disclosure rules in the following areas:

• Environmental risks and related matters;
• Environmental risk oversight and management;
• Forward-looking information requirements as they relate to environmental goals and targets; and
• Impact of adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on disclosure of environmental liabilities.

According to the CSA spokesperson Jean St-Gelais, Chair of the CSA and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Autorité des marchés financiers (Québec), “Greater transparency is needed regarding the nature and extent of environmental risks and other environmental matters”. Further, that “This guidance should greatly assist issuers in complying with their disclosure obligations, which would ultimately provide investors with much more complete information on environmental matters.”

The full Guidance is available on all the Provincial Securities Regulators websites. Here is a direct link to CSA Staff Notice 51-333 Environmental Reporting Guidance on the BC securities website.

For publicly listed companies, a quick search on the relevant Stock Exchange site will provide you with basic information about a company. For example, the majority of Canadian companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the TSX Listed Company Directory provides basic information about all the companies on the exchange, including a brief description, contact details, website address and standard industry classifications.

There are many investing websites that will provide company information, including Google Finance, the Globe & Mail’s Globe Investor site, Yahoo Finance,  MSN-Money, and BusinessWeek (which also provides the ability to search for private companies), to name a few of the more popular sites.

More in depth information about Canadian public companies can be found on SEDAR, which is the official repository of public documents required by Canadian securities regulators for all publicly traded listed companies and mutual funds. When you first enter SEDAR there are two main areas that you will want to examine, the first is the Company Profiles section, which provides similar information to the TSX profile and the Search Database page, which enables a search of all of a company’s filings. You can also access an individual company’s documents by pressing the button on the bottom of the relevant profile page.

Many Canadian companies are also listed in the USA, so are required to file public documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which are accessible through the EDGAR database. In many cases the documents filed to Canadian and US regulators will be identical, but due to differences in regulatory requirements, some additional information may be found in the US filings.

In upcoming posts, I will detail how to make sense of what you find on SEDAR and EDGAR, and also provide a few tips on how to find the most useful documents.

Of the companies that provide no public information, Fortis Inc. is notable for its lack of disclosure. The company owns natural gas and electrical utilities across Canada, New York State, Latin America and the Caribbean.  Fortis will provide an interesting future Case Study on how to estimate emissions from a non-reporting company.

Company	Sector	Symbol	Total Emissions (tonnes CO2eq)	CDP 2010	Company Data
Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd.	Materials	TSX: AEM	104,052	Yes
Agrium Inc.	Materials	TSX: AGU	3,202,620	Yes
ARC Energy Trust	Energy	TSX: AET.UN	804,313	Yes
Bank of Montreal	Financials	TSX: BMO	65,506	Yes
Bank of Nova Scotia	Financials	TSX: BNS	60,853	Yes
Barrick Gold Corporation	Materials	TSX: ABX	4,950,944	Yes
BCE Inc.	Telecommunication Services	TSX: BCE	357,449		Yes
Bombardier Inc.	Industrials	TSX: BBD.B	405,670		Yes
Brookfield Asset Management Inc.	Financials	TSX: BAM.A	636,295	Yes
Cameco Corporation	Energy	TSX: CCO	459,154	Yes
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce	Financials	TSX: CM	113,680	Yes
Canadian National Railway Company	Industrials	TSX: CNR	4,462,753	Yes
Canadian Natural Resources Limited	Energy	TSX: CNQ	27,640,000		Yes
Canadian Oil Sands Trust	Energy	TSX: COS.UN	11,666,211	Yes
Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.	Industrials	TSX: CP	2,922,771	Yes
Canadian Tire Corporation Ltd.	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: CTC.A
Cenovus Energy Inc.	Energy	TSX: CVE	4,811,303	Yes
Eldorado Gold Corporation	Materials	TSX: ELD
Enbridge Inc.	Energy	TSX: ENB	6,307,800	Yes
Encana Corporation	Energy	TSX: ECA	5,885,063	Yes
Enerplus Resources Fund	Energy	TSX: ERF.UN	955,687	Yes
First Quantum Minerals Ltd.	Materials	TSX: FM
Fortis Inc.	Utilities	TSX: FTS
George Weston Limited	Consumer Staples	TSX: WN
Gildan Activewear Inc.	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: GIL
Goldcorp Inc.	Materials	TSX: G	847,420	Yes
Husky Energy Inc.	Energy	TSX: HSE	8,838,400	Yes
IAMGOLD Corporation	Materials	TSX: IMG	217,223	Yes
Imperial Oil Limited	Energy	TSX: IMO	10,286,000	Yes
Inmet Mining Corporation	Materials	TSX: IMN	117,795	Yes
Kinross Gold Corporation	Materials	TSX: K	1,056,858	Yes
Loblaw Companies Limited	Consumer Staples	TSX: L			Yes
Magna International Inc.	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: MG	645,050	Yes
Manulife Financial Corporation	Financials	TSX: MFC	150,549		Yes
Metro Inc.	Consumer Staples	TSX: MRU.A
National Bank of Canada	Financials	TSX: NA	8,052	Yes
Nexen Inc.	Energy	TSX: NXY	4,722,700	Yes
Penn West Energy Trust	Energy	TSX: PWT.UN	3,450,938	Yes
Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc.	Materials	TSX: POT	8,888,000	Yes
Power Corporation of Canada	Financials	TSX: POW	274,151
Research In Motion Limited	Information Technology	TSX: RIM	42,306	Yes
Rogers Communications Inc.	Telecommunication Services	TSX: RCI.B	195,181	Yes
Royal Bank of Canada	Financials	TSX: RY	211,562	Yes
Saputo Inc.	Consumer Staples	TSX: SAP	517,560	Yes
Shaw Communications Inc.	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: SJR.B
Shoppers Drug Mart Corporation	Consumer Staples	TSX: SC
SNC - Lavalin Group Inc.	Industrials	TSX: SNC	39,457	Yes
Sun Life Financial Inc.	Financials	TSX: SLF
Suncor Energy Inc.	Energy	TSX: SU	19,523,758	Yes
Talisman Energy Inc.	Energy	TSX: TLM	12,509,000	Yes
Teck Resources Limited	Materials	TSX: TCK.B	2,859,000		Yes 2008 data
TELUS Corporation	Telecommunication Services	TSX: T	334,695	Yes
Thomson Reuters Corporation	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: TRI
Tim Hortons Inc.	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: THI
Toronto-Dominion Bank	Financials	TSX: TD	233,505	Yes
TransAlta Corporation	Utilities	TSX: TA	35,742,289	Yes
TransCanada Corporation	Energy	TSX: TRP	12,400,000		Yes
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc.	Health Care	TSX: VRX
Yamana Gold Inc.	Materials	TSX: YRI	264,895		Yes
Yellow Pages Income F	Consumer Discretionary	TSX: YLO.UN

Top Sources of Greenhouse Gas data on Canadian Companies

1. Self reported company data
2. Carbon Disclosure Project
3. Environment Canada Facility Level Database

1. Self Reported Company Data -  A growing number of companies are self reporting GHG emissions data relating to their operations. A first port of call in any search for emissions data should be the company’s website. Sometimes companies make it difficult to find, but common locations include the Environment or Sustainability sectors of the website, in the CSR or Sustainability reports, or under more obscure headings such as Community or even buried in their Annual Reports.

2. Carbon Disclosure Project -The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) represents 534 institutional investors, holding $64 trillion in assets under management and conducts an annual survey of almost 3000 companies internationally. Each year the CDP reports its findings as reports based on industry sectors and national surveys. The 2010 report on Canadian companies and the individual international sector summaries contain detailed emissions data for each company that has reported its GHG emissions to the CDP and is freely available from the CDP Reports page.

3. Environment Canada Facility Level Database – One comprehensive, but sometimes frustrating resource for GHG emission data is the Federally regulated Environment Canada Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting Program. The information is freely available to download as an MS Excel spreadsheet, or can be queried online. I say the database is frustrating, because it lists sources by individual facilities, rather than by company. The spreadsheet version of the database does provide Parent Company ownership information, so it is possible to reconstruct a more accurate picture of each company’s emissions, given a little work. The on-line access also allows you to search by Parent Company, providing an overview of each company’s emissions in Canada. Although searching online in this way doesn’t necessarily provide all the relevant facilities when the Parent company is not the sole owner of an individual plant.

This new site aims to provide a resource for those interested in understanding Responsible Investing and how to assess the environmental and social performance of Canadian companies.