Across the world, LGBTQ+ communities are confronting a growing tsunami of hostility – laws targeting their identities, escalating social ostracism, and rhetoric that feels ripped straight from darker chapters of history. But there’s another battlefront, quieter yet no less fierce: the sleek, hushed boardrooms of corporate power. In Canada, as in much of the world, the lavender ceiling remains stubbornly intact, nearly invisible yet profoundly unyielding.Take this sobering statistic: among the more than 9,300 directors who graced Toronto Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2015 to 2022, just 0.15 per cent were openly LGBTQ+.

LGBTQ+ people are underrepresented on corporate boards of directors and throughout most organizations in Canada. This report summarizes findings from an analysis of representation on Toronto Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2015-2022 along with a review of the existing research on LGBTQ+ representation on boards and within organizations.

Comply-or-explain disclosure requirements for gender diversity on corporate boards have existed in Canada since 2014. We discuss the initial findings from our on-going project to analyze the effects of Canada’s regulation. Our qualitative content analysis of the texts of Canadian corporate disclosures involves a four-year period and entails over 3,000 firm-year observations. With a focus on firms’ explanations for non-compliance, our results suggest that firms avoid the costliest actions, that they rely on obfuscation and other approaches to make it difficult for evaluators to interpret the disclosures, and that they offer thin, weak, or otherwise suboptimal explanations for failure to make progress that draw on tired tropes about meritocracy and pipeline limitations.

Yet the challenge is not primarily about the pipeline. There are many board-qualified LGBTQ+ people who are not being given opportunities to serve as a corporate director today. Canadian boards are often seen as “boys’ clubs” that have excluded not only women (who are only 27 per cent of board directors today) but also other people from under-represented groups (racialized people, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people to name a few). By blaming the pipeline, they are giving themselves an excuse for not trying harder to build a more diverse, and therefore more effective, board.

In the face of climate change, rising economic inequality, systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is once again time for a new set of guidelines. While the 1994 guidelines — which concern best practices around board independence and oversight — continue to be relevant, they served the governance needs of the 1990s. Two-and-a-half decades later, we ask, Where is the leadership in a world in crisis? The guidelines we have developed in response to this question are based on the principle that companies must account for the interests of all stakeholders — what we call 360º governance. Canada must upgrade its corporate standards or risk being left behind.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted more than ever the corporate world’s role in addressing social issues. And beyond that, regulators, institutional investors, consumers and workers are intensifying their attention to climate risk, systemic racism, women’s economic inclusion and Indigenous rights, among other challenges of our century. Governance and other reforms to address these challenges are speeding ahead in countries around the world, and Canada risks being left behind.

In the face of climate change, rising economic inequality, systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is time for a new set of governance guidelines. We ask now, “Where are the directors in a world in crisis?” The guidelines are based on the principle that companies must account for the interests of all stakeholders that surround them (hence, 360º Governance): (1) Corporate Purpose (2) The Board’s Duty (3) The Definition of Stakeholders (4) The Rights of Indigenous Peoples (5) Reporting on Stakeholder Impact (6) The Formation of a Stakeholder Committee (7) Addressing Stakeholder Conflicts (8) Executive Compensation Policies (9) Board Refreshment (10) Board Diversity (11) Organizational Diversity (12) Climate Change (13) Corporate Activism It also lists a number of resources for anybody looking to upgrade their board governance.