The Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) still had $200 million worth of shares to liquidate at the end of 2022 in order to permanently exit the oil sector – a commitment it made more than two years ago. . There are also a dozen companies followed by the woolen stockings of Quebecers because they do not pay enough taxes.
This information is taken from the 2022 Sustainable Investing Reportwhich will air on Monday. The Press was able to view the document. Initially, the CDPQ expected to be done with black gold at the end of last year.
“Our exit from the sector is essentially over, argues the institution, in the document of about 110 pages. We only have one title left, which we will divest in the course of 2023.”
The Quebec manager of public and parapublic pension and insurance plans, whose net assets stood at $402 billion as of December 31, did not name the company whose shares have not yet been sold. Since September 2021 – when it officially announced its intention to get out of oil – the Caisse has liquidated its stakes in giants such as Total, Exxon, Canadian Natural Resources and Suncor, in particular.
On the natural gas side, the CDPQ offers fewer details. It does not quantify the value of its investments in this sector often criticized by environmentalists. The institutional investor, majority shareholder of the Quebec company Énergir, considers “natural gas as an energy necessary for the transition and a [solution de rechange] to more polluting energies, such as coal”.
Moreover, even if it has cleaned up its portfolio, the Caisse seems less severe when it comes to companies in which it is a shareholder. At the annual meeting of the Royal Bank of Canada on April 5, the CDPQ voted against a proposal that would have forced the largest bank in the country to publish its absolute greenhouse gas reduction targets. (GES). As of December 31, the Caisse held 2.6 million shares in the bank. This stake was valued at $243 million.
Taxation
With regard to taxation, the woolen sock of Quebecers says it has identified 11 files that “will need further examination”. More than 1,800 files have been reviewed by the institution to ensure that companies comply with a minimum consolidated tax rate of 15% – the threshold at the heart of a consensus reached within the Organization for Cooperation and Development Economics (OECD).
“We will continue our analyzes and our follow-ups with these companies”, writes the CDPQ, without however going so far as to name them.
In the past year, the CDPQ divested from a company due to its tax practices. His name is not indicated in the document, but The Press revealed that the institution had dumped Montreal clothing manufacturer Gildan.
The manufacturing facilities of this multinational are located in the United States, Central America, the Caribbean and Bangladesh. In 2021, Gildan’s average effective tax rate was 2.8%. Taking provincial and federal taxes into account, the tax rate for large corporations is 26.5% in Quebec.
Overall, the CDPQ has seen the carbon intensity of its portfolio decline by 53% since the presentation of its first climate strategy in 2017. The objective is to achieve a 60% reduction by the end of the decade. This index is now estimated at 37 tonnes of CO equivalent2 issued per million dollars invested, compared to 41 in 2021 and 79 in 2017.
With Richard Dufour, The Press