The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) has announced its support for the recent release of the revised Sustainability Reporting Guidelines issued by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The Sustainability Reporting Guidelines make recommendations for reporting on the economic, environmental and social performance of companies, also known as triple bottom line reporting.
The revised guidelines take conventional financial reporting to the next level by providing stakeholders with information about broader dimensions of business performance. Leading Canadian companies, as well as global capital markets, have begun to realize the integral role environmental and social aspects of corporate performance play in creating economic value, and are demonstrating increasing interest in triple bottom line reporting. The guidelines provide a global framework for greater harmonization of practices in this area. As an original member of the GRI Steering Committee, the CICA played an active role in developing the guidelines, and supports their advancement as part of its Canadian Performance Reporting Initiative.
"The CICA was a critical resource in developing these GRI guidelines," says Bill Swirsky, FCA, CICA Vice President, Professional Affairs. "In contributing our expertise, we applied key principles of financial reporting, such as relevance, reliability and comparability, some of which were previously lacking in sustainability reporting. As a result, we believe these guidelines represent a significant step toward establishing generally accepted, globally-harmonized standards for measuring and reporting on the environmental, social, as well as economic aspects of corporate performance."
