SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Since 2020, the year in which annual meetings started to be held virtually due to public health restrictions relating to COVID-19, we have
often criticized how these meetings are conducted. 1
According to the OECD’s Principles of Corporate Governance:
“[…] due care is required to ensure that remote meetings do not decrease the possibility for shareholders to engage with and ask
questions to boards and management in comparison to physical meetings. Some jurisdictions have issued guidance to facilitate
the conduct of remote meetings, including for handling shareholder questions, responses and their disclosure, with the objective of
ensuring transparent consideration of questions by boards and management, including how questions are collected, combined,
answered and disclosed. Such guidance may also address how to deal with technological disruptions that may impede virtual
access to meetings.”2
Virtual meetings have benefits that we readily recognize, but they should not be used to the exclusion of in-person meetings. Like
Teachers’,3 we believe that annual shareholder meetings should be held in person, with virtual meetings being in addition to (the hybrid
model used by all banks in 2023), not in replacement of, in-person meetings. It is clear that all shareholders must enjoy the same rights,
regardless whether they participate virtually or in person. This position is supported by a number of other organizations, such as the
Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG)4 and many large institutional investors.