Climate transition plans still critical despite other pressing risks: report

Teck Resources' Highland Valley Copper Mine is seen near Logan Lake, B.C., on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. Teck's business strategy centres around a focus on metals needed for the energy transition. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

TORONTO — Canadian businesses face all sorts of pressing challenges these days, but a new report argues climate transition plans are still crucial to their long-term success.

Just as tariffs, interest rates and artificial intelligence have thrown curveballs in recent years, the report from Business Future Pathways says companies must prepare for a huge range of climate change impacts.

“We want to make sure businesses have plans built for disruption, which essentially will mean their long-term sustainability and success,” said Fate Saghir, who serves on the group’s financial advisory committee on top of her job as head of sustainability at Mackenzie Investments.

Financial institutions launched Business Future Pathways in May specifically to help companies put together their plans in order to ensure their success and help them attract capital.

While the group’s first report argues for their importance, it also shows that only about five per cent of Canadians firms have actually put out robust plans on the risks they face and what they’re going to do about them.

The level of reporting makes Canada lowest among the G7, well below countries like France and Japan where at least 20 per cent of companies are using such plans.

“We are falling behind,” said Saghir.

And while climate debates can quickly get wrapped up in ideological issues, Saghir said transition plans are meant to deal with the real risks to businesses.

“This is really meant to provide very pragmatic sector-specific guidance, and it’s meant to anchor in financial risk.”

Jonathan Arnold, a lead author of the report, said putting together a transition plan helps companies anticipate challenges ahead, as well as identify potential opportunities.

Arnold, who is the research director of sustainable finance at the Canadian Climate Institute, said investors and financial institutions are increasingly expecting companies to anticipate what’s ahead and know how to respond.

“It’s really is about bringing this right into how businesses plan for disruption in the future,” he said.

Disruption can be hard to manage, as can be seen as companies grapple with shifting trade policies, but transition plans can help, said Arnold.

“Planning for that disruption doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and transition plans are really a way of facilitating that for a business and helping to improve its access to markets and capital, and how it’s going to pivot in the face of the new climate era.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2025.

Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press