Corporate Knights dubs Shoppers tops

Corporate Knights magazine named Shopper's Drug Mart as Top Corporate Citizen as part of the fifth annual ranking of Canada's Best 50 Corporate Citizens. The rankings, sponsored by The Ethical Funds Company, will be published in the June 26th issue.

Companies are measured against 13 different indicators including tax generation, pension fund coverage, toxic releases, transparency around political lobbying, ratio of CEO compensation to company's relative earnings, and board diversity. All indicators came from publicly available sources.

Shoppers Drug Mart placed at the top because it paid 100 per cent of its statutory tax obligation, scored 100 per cent in CEO pay relative to company earnings, fully funded its pension plan, had board membership that included three female directors out of 11, and also had a high relative number of female key executives (39 per cent), while showing no subsidiaries in tax haven countries or shareholder conflicts.

The survey found two key areas where corporate Canada is lacking: pension fund coverage and diversity. The survey found that among 145 defined benefit pension plans, unfunded liabilities spiked by 34 per cent last year, growing to 25.6 billion dollars.

The survey also found that only 13 per cent of TSX composite company key executives are female and less than 10 per cent sit on boards. "At the board level, for a society as diverse as ours, Canadian companies have a stunningly low number of visible minorities," Corporate Knights editor Toby Heaps commented. Almost 90 per cent of TSX Composite boards have not a single visible minority among their ranks.

The Hon. David Peterson and the Hon. Jim Bradley were also presented with the Corporate Knights Award of Distinction for introducing the Countdown Acid Rain program in 1985 that initiated a series of actions across North American jurisdictions that culminated in significant reductions of acid rain.