faulker031

Business leaders are among the most powerful people on the planet. At the helm of huge corporations, with billions of dollars of assets to leverage, their decisions have a profound influence on all of us. At the same time, however, those very same business leaders only very rarely seem to speak out on many of the public issues that actually affect us. Consider when the former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was engulfed in a crack-smoking scandal that put the city in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The response from the city's business elite was a deafening silence . Nonetheless, the scandal must have prompted considerable anxiety among business leaders about its effect on the business and investment climate of Canada's largest city. Are CEOs right to hold back in such instances or should we expect them to take a more prominent position in public debates? There are no black and white answers to this; it largely depends on context. So here are four things to consider when decidi...

Target, the American discount retail giant that has for years been trying to claw market share from its mammoth rival Wal-Mart, was generally regarded as a more socially responsible alterntive to its big box competitor. That started to change with Wal-Mart's sustainability u-turn a few years ago, prompting Fast Company magazine to recently proclaim Walmart the winner in the "sustainability face-off" between the two companies . One area of social responsibility where Target has continued to outpunch its rival though has been in diversity and human rights. For example, Target scored a maximum 100 points in the most recent Corporate Equality Index published by Human Rights Campaign , the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization in the US. Among other things, Target extends its employee's health care coverage to same-sex partners. Wal-Mart, by comparison, until recently provided coverage to less than half of its own employ...

After talking about the G20 weekend in Toronto last week, we are happy to say that the last weekend was slightly different. And uplifting. Not only was THE Queen in town (the English, that is) but many more raunchy, outrageous and beautiful queens (and kings etc. for that matter). It was the weekend of the Pride in Toronto and as always, it was a blast. And even the sky was laughing down – unlike the rainy G20 weekend – scorching weather and a lot of fun. One thing that was striking this time was the dominant presence of big brands and corporations. Many of the wagons in the parade but also a large number of stands along the pedestrian areas represented private businesses. This did not only include the usual suspects, such as brands like Trojan (a condom manufacturer) or the Body Shop, but in fact the main sponsor of the event was one of the major four Canadian banks, TD Bank. And if one looks at the list of sponsors of the Pride you get the picture. Now this can be looked at in two...