Developing a made-in-Canada Sustainable Finance Taxonomy

Barb, welcome.

Thank you for joining.

And so I gave you a brief introduction.

Um, and we've, we, a- as he said, have sort of prefaced the taxonomy quite a bit already in our conversation, so no pressure.

Uh, but everybody is very curious on understanding, uh, the developments, uh, the latest status.

So with that, perhaps we can dive right in, and we'll get a little bit more into your role, I think, as we go.

Um, so in December of last year, 2025, the federal government announced two years of seed funding to develop Canada's sustainable investment guidelines, which is what we are referring to as the sustainable finance taxonomy.

Maybe just a level set, uh, for the audience, what is a sustainable finance taxonomy, and why does Canada need one?

Who's bought an appliance of late? Right.

So when you go buy an appliance, you have to figure out the energy efficiency.

Do any of us have any expertise to know whether that appliance is really that efficient or not? Do you have enough information? Probably not.

And a lot of us will rely on the ENERGY STAR rating, the energy guide, right? But my question is, when you see that, do you, uh, do you argue with the salesman or salesperson that it's not right? No, because there's credible standards behind it, right? You have trust in the, in the ENERGY STAR label, and that's effectively what we wanna do with the taxonomy.

We wanna be able to make sure that it's clear, it's very easy to use, it's credible for people, um, whether it's, um, people who understand Canada's difficult transition or people who don't, and that there's consistency, so it's not changing every time it's, uh, reviewed every five years, which I'm gonna guess would be a problem for some of our issuers, and I know it would be a problem for the investors.

So that's fundamentally what we're trying to do.

And sorry I wasn't exactly great in the ordering, and I think the next question is why.

[chuckles]

Well, well, exactly.