Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) still had $200 million worth of stock to liquidate at the end of 2022 in order to permanently exit the oil business — 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 Stewardship Investing Report, which will be released on Monday. La Presse was able to consult the document. Initially, the CDPQ expected to be done with black gold at the end of the last year.
“Our exit from the sector is essentially complete, argues the institution, in the document of approximately 110 pages. We only have one title left, which we will dispose of 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. In an email, the Caisse states that it is a private placement, which therefore takes longer to liquidate compared to shares on the stock markets, she underlines. 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 an [alternative solution] 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 Royal Bank of Canada’s annual meeting on April 5, the CDPQ voted against a proposal that would have forced the country’s largest bank 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.
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 meet 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 listed in the document, but La Presse 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 into account provincial and federal taxes, 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 tons of CO2 equivalent emitted per million dollars invested, compared to 41 in 2021 and 79 in 2017.
