Corporate (Large Company) Sustainability Leaders in Canada

Those interested in finding companies that are highly rated for Corporate Sustainability with an emphasis on aspects that are financially material may want to look at research company RobecoSAM's list of 2014 leaders from around the world, including 17 from Canada. A similar list is Corporate Knights' 2014 Global 100, which has 13 companies from Canada. Both these lists contain only very large companies.

Then there's a list focussed only on Canada - MacLean's Top 50 Socially Responsible Corporations 2013.

Companies that show up in all three:

• Bank of Montreal
• TD Bank
• Bombardier
• Cenovus Energy Inc
• Teck Resources Ltd

All five are also amongst the 60 companies in the iShares Jantzi Social Index ETF (XEN), which is limited to Canadian companies, and the 443 companies of the UK-listed iShares Dow Jones Global Sustainability Screened UCITS ETF (unfortunately not available to Canadian investors, not even through a US-listed version, an odd situation given the vast array of US-listed ETFs), which contains 28 Canadian companies.