When we adopted our RI policy in 2005, we chose to assign responsibility for monitoring this policy to a specialized committee of the Board. Thus, the investment committee had no control over ESG issues and the RI committee had no control over investment issues.

In December 2017, our Board merged the two committees into one (IRIC) responsible for both dimensions of the investment activity. Since this committee meets ten times a year, rather than four times in the case of the RI committee, ESG and RI issues are now addressed twice as frequently.

As a result, we expect ESG integration by our portfolio managers to be taken more seriously by them as their ESG performance is monitored by the same group that monitors their financial performance.

Persuant to the implementation of this merger, we notice that every IRIC meeting covers both financial and extrafinancial themes. As well, committee members have developed a culture and a narrative about investment management and ESG integration. This has facilitated the strong support demonstrated by the IRIC when the expansion of our impact investments was put forward and had to be decided upon.

We have made progress in three areas:

1. Increased size of the green bond mandate representing 15% of our bond portfolio;
2. Increased size of assets allocated to the global equity mandate focused on sustainable growth from 6% to 10%;
3. Negotiations with the investment manager with a view to migrating from a listed global real estate mandate to a listed sustainable global real estate mandate.

Since the end of 2018, we can say that approximately 12% of Bâtirente's assets are directly directed into investment strategies that promote the energy transition. This is well above the target indicated by Cristina Figueres in her speech at the PRI in Person Conference in Berlin in September 2017.

Since 2015, Bâtirente has been measuring the carbon footprint of its equity portfolios on an annual basis. After four years of carbon footprinting, we have gained a better understanding of how our investment practices impact the footprint of our portfolios. We now feel confident we can undertake a new step in this ambition by developing a consistent climate policy that will be the occasion to set footprint reduction targets, distribute our carbon budget amongst our equity asset managers, better define the objectives of our engagement policy with regards to climate impact, continue to expand the scope of our alllocations to impact dedicated assets and assess the extent to which we could incorporate our fixed income portfolio into this climate policy. We expect to adopt our climate policy before the end of 2019.

In 2018, we measured the impact of our global equity portfolios in terms of sustainable development and the UN SDGs. We profited from the Impact-Cubed offer to participate in their pilot measurement of that impact through their just launched new tool. We were keen to know what outcome we would observe for our various global equity portfolios, especially regarding our Sustainable Growth Fund. In aggregate we were satisfied with the very strong performance of the latter. Another of our funds did very well through that SDG lens. SDGs would definitely represent a next step once we're done with the climate policy and its implementation.

We have maintained, and even increased, the high level of our involvement in the Réseau PRI Québec, where our CEO remained a member of the Advisory Committee and Chair of the Public Policy Committee (PG). Our Marketing Manager has joined the Network's Events Committee. 

In 2018, the PG Committee was very active. It developed a questionnaire addressed to the main political parties standing as candidates in the October 2018 provincial legislative elections. This approach aimed to raise political parties' awareness of responsible finance issues. The committee also collaborated with the London PRIs to enrich the representations made to the Federal Expert Panel. 

The Réseau PRI Québec's annual conference in November 2018 was a resounding success with more than 360 participants.

The Francophonie PRI committee began its activities in 2018 and already has several achievements to its credit, including a side event at the PRI in Person in San Francisco.

Our CEO met with a number of potential signatories. Just to name a few: the Bank of Canada Pension Fund and the Chagnon Foundation.

The CEO of Bâtirente co-authored an article entitled "The United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI): A look back at ten years of promoting responsible investment (RI)" in the collective book entitled "Elements of Responsible Finance: A Multidimensional Perspective" published under the auspices of the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec.

He also modareted the workshop dedicated to shareholder engagement during the Québec PRI Network RI Conference in November 2018.