Richer Canadians + MORE Jun 20th

Sustainable investment, aka Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) or Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) oriented investing to many people has the image of being the domain of fringe do-gooders. That’s not so if one is to judge by events like the recent workshop held at U of Toronto’s Rotman School (that’s a management school, not a sociology or arts school). The workshop (U of T press release here) had a lot of pension industry heavyweights from Canada and around the world like the CPPIB, Ontario Teachers, Caisse de Dépôt, TIAA-CREF, CalPERS discussing what was worth doing and how to do it. U of T has made available the workshop notes here. The notes have links to background papers and to headliner Al Gore’s (yes the real Al Gore and he actually took part in at least some of the workshop) paper on Sustainable Capitalism.There is a lot of emphasis on investing with a long-horizon, an idea that seems to unite pension funds and socially/environmentally focussed people in the five main topics the workshop covered – stranded assets (what happens when climate change or price of oil destroys business models), integrated reporting (going beyond financial-only reporting to include social etc), evils of quarterly earnings guidance (stop being so obsessively short-term!), executive compensation (wrongly structured and excessive) and constructive investor behaviour (i…

Earlier today, I read that Environment Canada issued a rainfall warning for parts of southern Alberta, forecasting up to 100 millimetres of rain in the next two days.  Based on the images and videos I’ve seen on Twitter, many communities in southern Alberta need all the help they can get to battle the severe flooding and torrential rains.  Stay safe.  #abflood.
On Thursday, the TSX and Dow markets tanked after U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke indicated government stimulus packages are close to drying up.  As well, the central bank’s bond purchases will likely slow later this year and should end in 2014.  This means the money well is starting to run dry.  This news sent our S&P/TSX composite index down almost 2.5% today and the Dow Jones industrial down 2.3%.  Ben Bernanke also hinted rising interest rates are coming.  I guess they have to, since somebody, eventually, has to pay for this financial mess.
Lastly, anytime Rob Carrick mentions my blog in The Globe and Mail, it’s a real honour…

The net worth of the average Canadian continues to climb as debt ratios fall. Statistics Canada reported Thursday that the debt-to-income ratio dropped to 161.8% in the first quarter of 2013 while overall national net worth rose to $7.1 trillion or $202,000 per person, an increase of 2.1% from the fourth quarter of 2012. “Higher asset prices, primarily real estate, led the advance, while national saving accounted for 3% of the increase in national net worth,” Statistics Canada said.

Most Canadians think about real estate on a regular basis, and a good number of them are obsessed with it, an online survey suggests.

This GIC rate is offered by Outlook Financial and was updated on 2013-03-14. Click on the link above to get more details or apply online.