The Canadian Securities Administrators says it has indefinitely paused work on developing new mandatory climate disclosures and updating diversity reporting rules in response to recent developments in the United States.
Stan Magidson, chair of the CSA, says it made the decision to support companies because of the rapid shift in the global economic and geopolitical landscape.
He says the regulator will instead focus on making Canadian markets more competitive, efficient and resilient.
In recent years, there’s been a push to require companies to report more details on what climate-related risks they face and how they plan to address them, as well as disclosing their own emissions and efforts to reduce them.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted its own climate disclosure rules last year, but they faced legal challenges and the regulator decided in March to stop fighting against the lawsuits to effectively suspend them.
The CSA says companies still need to disclose material climate-related risks as part of general disclosure requirements, while existing diversity reporting rules around the representation of women on boards also still apply.
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The Canadian Sustainability Standards Board issued voluntary climate disclosure guidelines in late December that the CSA was set to adapt into required rules.
The federal government also committed last fall to requiring climate disclosures from federally incorporated private companies.
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