Setting Standards for a Canadian Sustainability Standards Board

If all goes well, a new body within existing accounting standards institutions will soon drive standardized approaches in sustainability reporting in Canada. There are some important challenges and critical questions that need to be addressed when forming the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) and defining its focus, composition, and mandate. The authors identify the following major questions that the committee should consider as it contemplates future oversight of sustainability standards: 1) How can Canadian standards setting be a model of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples? The consultation process needs substantive Indigenous involvement or participation in the formation of the committee and in the development of the related consultation paper. 2) How will the CSSB manage tensions between international consistency versus local adaptation? In the establishment of the working rules of the new CSSB, it is important that maintaining international comparability is the north star for standards setting, and the development of the Canadian versions focuses primarily on additional elaboration that facilitates and enables adoption in the Canadian context. 3) How will the CSSB manage tensions between single-materiality (i.e., primary consideration of the impact of sustainability issues on the firm and its immediate stakeholders) and double-materiality (also providing comprehensive and comparable information on the wider impact of the firm on the environment and society)?