Bringing Corporate Purpose into the Mainstream: Directions for Canadian Law

BLP / SGI-OSF Seminars in Business & Society 2022-2023

With Professor Richard Janda and Iseoluwa Akintude DCL (PhD) candidate

Participation of Sara Seck (Professor of Law, Dalhousie), Coro Strandberg (President, Strandberg Consulting), and Robert Yalden (Sigurdson Professor in Corporate Law and Finance, Queens) 

Abstract

The presentation introduces Professor Janda’s and Iseoluwa Akintude’s January 2023 Report for the David Suzuki Foundation. The full text of the Report is available here. In their report the authors provide legal recommendations to the Canada Business Corporations Act in order to mainstream the idea that corporations should have a stated social purpose. The authors consider such recommendations a necessary step in the broader transition to a well-being economy, which prioritizes the long-term quality of life of people and health of nature over short-term profits. Their report delves into the legal history of corporate purpose and, through case studies in France and the U.K., shows how other countries have already taken the lead towards establishing the legal framework necessary. 

Bio

Professor Janda joined McGill in 1997 and teaches extracontractual obligations, business associations, administrative process and environmental law. A former clerk to Justices Le Dain and Cory of the Supreme Court of Canada, he was also Director of the Center for the Study of Regulated Industries at McGill University. He is currently leading the Myko project (www.myko.org), which explores how to connect everyone to the environmental footprint of their choices in real time. He has written, among other things, on corporate social responsibility, digital law, and theories of justice. Iseoluwa Akintude is a DCL (PhD) candidate at McGill and works on the colonial foundations of international climate finance.

Hybrid event: Zoom link.