Professional Matters


SUSTAINABLE CFOS


CPA Canada and A4S Begin a New Chapter in Sustainability


BY ILONA BIRO


“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” — Our Common Future, 1983


YOU DON’T NEED to be a climate scientist, an activist or even a liberal to get behind sustainability. You can be a CPA. That’s the message a group of CFOs from some of the country’s largest corporations are standing behind — they aim to bring sustainable business practices into the mainstream. Under the auspices of The Prince’s


Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S), established in 2004 by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, these CFOs recently established a Canadian Chapter of the A4S CFO Leadership Network and announced their first three projects: • managing the future today: ways to develop a strategic response to the risks and opportunities posed by major social and environmental trends; • social and human capital accounting; and • incentivizing action: the role of the finance team in encouraging suppliers, customers, investee organizations and others along the value chain to take action on sustainability. “Being part of the Canadian branch of A4S is a unique opportunity to leverage the work that has already been started globally and share that across Canadian organizations, as well as to work on programs that are unique and important in the Canadian context,” says chapter member Patrice Impey, CFO and general manager of finance, risk and supply management for the City of Vancouver. The group’s goal is to embed the


12 | CPA MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER 2017


management of environmental and social issues into strategy and business processes, empowering the CPA commu- nity to drive the conversation and propose the necessary changes that will lead to a more sustainable Canadian economy. “We have a diverse group of CFOs in


the Canadian branch of A4S with many different experiences with sustainability,” says Impey. “While we are all at different points on the journey, there is a real commitment to taking our organizations to the next step in making accounting for sustainability a driver of change for our organizations.” Sustainability has been a buzzword for decades, since Gro Harlem Brundtland released her seminal report, Our Common Future, in 1983. Written when Brundtland was chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development, sustainability became a victim of its own success, overused by governments and corporations striving to do the right thing. Thirty years later, the world has woken up to the consequences of not doing enough, and business leaders such as those in A4S are ready to do the work necessary to assist organizations in making the changes urgently needed. Those at the heart of the sustainability


movement believe in the power of CPAs to move the needle. It was Peter Bakker, chief executive of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, who said: “Accountants will save the world.” Clearly, Prince Charles agrees.


Left to right: Gord Beal, CPA Canada; Jessica Fries, A4S; Jonathan Simmons, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System; (co-chair) Steve Roder, Manulife Financial Corp.; Lawrence Davis, British Columbia Investment Management Corp.; (co-chair) Benita Warmbold, (retired) Canada Pension Plan Investment Board; Pamela Steer, Workplace Safety & Insurance Board; Patrice Impey, City of Vancouver; Brian Lawson, Brookfield Asset Management; Davinder Valeri, CPA Canada.


As he has oſten said, once the business- as-usual model is shown to be unsustain- able, the enterprises that had the foresight to adopt resilient business models will be the ones that succeed. And who doesn’t like a competitive advantage like that?


Jon-Mark Wiltshire Photography


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