The Ontario Securities Commission has issued guidelines to ensure Canadian companies that trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange adequately disclose environmental risks and liabilities. The guidelines require companies to:
- Provide detailed discussions of their estimates of environmental liabilities and explain that the estimates are "highly uncertain."
- Quantify costs associated with environmental protection requirements and the actual or potential effect on financial and operational results.
- Evaluate and describe the actual or potential effect that a company's environmental policies may have on operations, including qualifying the costs associated with these policies when the information is reasonably available and would provide meaningful information to investors.
- Discuss in detail risks related to national or international environmental laws material to a company's operations, including whether the company is in compliance with these laws and the costs of compliance.
