Canadian ESG

Written by Bernie Thurston | 20 March 2019

Canada

BlackRock lists ESG offering in Canada

Canadians have a reputation for being politically to the left of their southern neighbours. With this in view, BlackRock, the largest Canadian ETF provider, is listing a suite of ESG ETFs that cater to these left-of-centre political views.

iShares ESG MSCI Canada Index ETF (XESG) – 0.20%
iShares ESG Canadian Short Term Bond Index ETF (XSTB) – 0.18%
iShares ESG MSCI USA Index ETF (XSUS) – 0.25%
iShares ESG Canadian Aggregate Bond Index ETF (XSAB) – 0.18%
iShares ESG MSCI EAFE Index ETF (XSEA) – 0.30%
iShares ESG MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF (XSEM) – 0.35%

Each track MSCI indexes that weight companies based on MSCI’s assessment of how good and bad they are. The funds will charge fees that are higher than their plain vanilla counterparts.

They come at a time that BlackRock is diggings it’s heals into ESG, rolling out more ESG products globally. They also come at a time that researchers have revealed that BlackRock (with Vanguard not far behind) has one of the worst proxy voting records on global warming. BlackRock has voted in favour of climate-related shareholders proposals only 10% of the time, the analysis shows.

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