Climate disclosure gives Canadian companies an edge with European investors, new research shows

Climate disclosure is one of the clearest levers Canadian companies have to make themselves attractive to European capital. (Unsplash+) Climate disclosure gives Canadian companies an edge with European investors, new research shows Published: July 13, 2026 11.50am EDT Share article Print article Canadian companies that disclose their climate-related risks and impacts have a considerable advantage over those that don’t when it comes to attracting financing from European institutional investors, according to our recent report for the Institute for Sustainable Finance at Queen’s University. That advantage matters now more than ever. Climate disclosure — companies publicly reporting on their greenhouse gas emissions, climate-related risks and how they plan to manage them — has become a harder sell. Backlash against environmental, social and governance investing is gripping the United States and many corporate leaders have gone quiet on sustainability. Canada’s stock market skews toward capital-intensive industries that rely heavily on foreign investment such as energy, materials, industrials and utilities. Remaining visible and attractive to major institutional investors is especially important for these companies, and Europe is the largest source of non-North American institutional investment in Canada, according to our data. The share of Canadian firms with climate reporting. (Yrjo Koskinen and Prateek Sood) United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the broader unpredictability of American trade policy have pushed Canada to diversify its economic relationships away from reliance on the U.S. Attracting more capital from Europe gives Canadian companies a buffer against that volatility. Climate disclosure is one of the clearest levers Canadian companies have to make themselves attractive to European capital. European investors increasingly need credible sustainability information to meet their own reporting obligations, and Canadian companies that lag on climate disclosure risk shutting themselves out of European capital markets altogether. After Trump’s tariffs Our report provides preliminary evidence of this European preference for climate-reporting firms. We examined whether climate disclosures helped Canadian firms attract foreign institutional investors following Trump’s April 2, 2025 announcement of sweeping global tariffs, which he dubbed “Liberation Day.” Average non-U.S. foreign holdings in Canadian firms by reporting status from…