Synthesizing Emerging Best Practices for Forward-Looking Corporate Climate-Related Disclosure: Implications for Canada

Corporate climate-related disclosure is a critical mechanism for standardizing and disseminating decision-useful information to investors amid the global low-carbon transition. However, the application of forward-looking tools—such as transition plans and scenario analysis—remains underexplored, particularly within the Canadian financial sector. For this paper, we addressed that gap through a sequential comparative qualitative content analysis. In order to do so, we conducted a thematic review of 28 global climate disclosure frameworks to develop a conceptual framework of forward-looking elements and then applied this framework to analyze disclosures from six early-mover Canadian financial institutions that had previously participated in a regulator-led pilot project. The findings revealed high alignment with global best practices in corporate ambition; moderate alignment in specificity, resilience, and decision-usefulness; and low alignment in resource allocation and comparability. Notably, there was also significant heterogeneity across institutions. These results—and the insights that come from them—provide a timely empirical benchmark for Canadian sustainable finance disclosure and highlight opportunities for advancing risk management practices beyond minimum compliance.