50 Best Corporate Citizens in Canada 2012

There are many lists that rank companies and their CSR business efforts by country and globally. We have featured several here on the Miratel blog like the Top 50 Canadian CSR Business List, Top Diversity Employers in Canada 2012, 55 Greenest Canadian Employers,  30 Top Green Organizations in Canada According to Employee Engagement and even the Top 500 Global Green Rankings, which included 19 Canadian Companies. Today, we’ll be looking at the 11th annual Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada in 2012.

The list was compiled and published by Corporate Knights. Corporate Knights “is a media, research and financial products company focused on quantifying and animating clean capitalism drivers for decision makers.” Corporate Knights has both a magazine and a website dedicated to their mission and they have also branched into Corporate Knights Capital. Corporate Knights Capital is “a division of the leading publishing and investment research company [Corporate Knights], [it] is [a] source for objective, data-driven ‘clean capitalism’ ratings for over 2000 companies globally.”

 “There is growing recognition among the country’s biggest companies that business-as-usual isn’t a sustainable option over the long term” Tyler Hamilton, Editor-In-Chief Corporate Knights.

Corporate Knights used a comprehensive and broad set of criteria to help rank these companies. For this particular listing their criterion was: energy productivity, carbon productivity, water productivity, waste productivity, percentage of taxes paid, percentage of women on their board, percentage of minorities on their board, clean capitalism pay link, sustainability themed board, ratio of highest-paid to average employee compensation, DB pension plan assists/pension obligations, and core business impact score.

Below is a sampling of the top 15 Canadian companies who ranked as the best corporate citizens according to Corporate Knights’ latest report and their score:

1. Desjardins Group: 84.86 % (read the top company spotlight)
   

   Images courtesy of corporateknights.com

2. Vancouver City Savings: 84.01 %
3. Co-operators Group: 82.21 %
4. Canadian National Railway Co.: 79.12 %
5. Royal Bank of Canada: 77.88 %
6. Mountain Equipment Co-op: 76.09 %
7. Hydro One: 75.62 %
8. Enbridge Inc.: 74.98 %
9. First Quantum Minerals Ltd.: 74.65 %
10. HSBC Bank Canada: 74.26 %
11. SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.: 73.22 %
12. Enmax Corporation: 73.20 %
13. Nexen Inc.: 72.42 %
14. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.: 72.26 %
15. Cascades Inc.: 70.99 %

Other notable names on the list include: Magna International Inc., Toronto-Dominion Bank, The Imperial Oil Ltd., Canadian Tire Corp Ltd., Bank of Montreal, Loblaw Companies Ltd., Sun Life Financial Inc., Sears Canada Inc., and Rona Inc. to name a few.

This list took a very extensive look at what it means to be a good corporate citizen as there are many ways that can be defined. Conscious consumerism is an ever-growing trend that does not seem to be slowing down or reversing anytime soon so it benefits companies on many levels to make a concerted effort to incorporate CSR business policies into its everyday practice. The very existence of so many rankings signifies the value of transparency and responsible corporate practices. Hopefully all these rankings will spur more companies to rise to the challenge so they will make the list in 2013.
________________________________________________________________________________________

For nonprofit, CSR business, digital and other news,please connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.