Since 2020, the year when annual meetings began to be held virtually due to COVID-19 health restrictions, we have made numerous criticisms of the conduct of these meetings.(4) In the OECD Governance Principles, it is written: “[…] 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.”(5) Virtual meetings allow for gains that we readily acknowledge, but they should not allow for not holding in-person meetings. Like Teachers,(6) we believe that annual shareholder meetings should be held in person, with virtual meetings being added as a complement (in a hybrid format, as all banks did in 2023), without replacing inperson meetings. It is understood that all shareholders must enjoy the same rights, regardless of their mode of participation, in person or remotely. This position is supported by several organizations, including the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG)(7) and many significant institutional investors.