TORONTO - After two-and-a-half years of provincial supervision, the Toronto Catholic District School Board has officially regained its local powers.

“All of us share a strong commitment to publicly funded Catholic education, and we collectively have a vision for the Toronto Catholic District School Board that focuses on student achievement, fiscal responsibility and public accountability,” said board chair Ann Andrachuk in a statement after the board officially took charge of its affairs again on Jan. 28.

Students from Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barry’s Bay, Ont., joined an estimated 400,000 American pro-lifers at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24.

Organized by the pro-life group at the Catholic liberal arts college, 20 students and three staff members attended the march and with the opening prayer vigil Mass held at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

“We walked, prayed the Rosary, prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet and sang chants,” said second-year student Kathleen Dunn, president of the school’s pro-life group. “It was really amazing to be a part of it.”

Toronto - Despite the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, more than 77,000 Canadian pilgrims and three million people worldwide visited the Holy Land last year.

That is a single-year record, according to the Israeli government, and reflects the success of recent policies to attract more visitors to the birthplace of Christianity.

Increasing tourism is an investment in improving the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, said Haim Gutin, Israel’s Consul and Commissioner for North and South America. Speaking at a Jan. 18 press conference, Gutin said pilgrims appear to have a heightened understanding that terrorism is a “global problem,” not just an issue for the Holy Land.

“(Terrorism) happens everywhere. It happened last week in Arizona,” he said, referring to the Jan. 8 attempted assassination of American Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six people.

“We don’t ignore political issues, but that’s for politicians,” Gutin said.

Markham, Ont. - The Knights of Columbus has more than 14,000 councils around the world but none quite like the one opened recently in a small Toronto-area parish.

The council that opened last May at Jesus Melkite Catholic Church in Markham, Ont., is, according to Grand Knight Hisham Marrow, the world’s first and only Christian Arab council in the 129-year history of the Knights. 

“Our mission is to help rebuild the churches in the Holy Land,” said Marrow, adding the council also helps the Christian Arab community and churches in Canada.

The council has 40 members, all parishioners. But Marrow hopes to extend membership to other Christian Arab parishes.

Along with collecting donations to rebuild churches in the Holy Land, the council will be raising money by selling homemade rosaries, said Marrow.

TORONTO - Sgt. Ryan Russell didn’t go to church on Sunday, and despite his Catholic baptism had no fixed address as a Christian. But he wore a St. Michael’s medallion and kept a copy of the Policeman’s Prayer in his hat.

With that, Toronto Police Service head chaplain Walter Kelly knew Ryan’s funeral should proclaim the Gospel and comfort the bereaved with Christian hope.

Sgt. Russell’s mother, Linda, helped Kelly decide to base his funeral sermon on the Sermon on the Mount, culminating in the Golden Rule. She told Kelly, “Yeah, that’s it. From a child on, he was always a giver — always sensitive to other people ahead of himself.”

Close to 13,000 police, firefighters and EMS workers crowded the Toronto Convention Centre for Sgt. Russell’s funeral Jan. 18. Hundreds of citizens lined the streets as police marched down University Avenue. The police came from across the country to pay tribute to the 35-year-old officer killed Jan. 12 by a stolen snow plow. His death leaves a grieving wife and a two-year-old son.

TORONTO - When Ontario Finance Minster Dwight Duncan receives the pre-budget submission from Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Toronto, he’s not going to be surprised by the spending priorities of the 28 agencies Catholic Charities funds. But Catholic Charities hopes to catch Duncan’s attention with their reasons for increased social spending.

Catholic Charities agencies serve Toronto communities by supporting teenaged mothers, helping the deaf, caring for young people with developmental disabilities, providing day care and counselling couples and families in crisis. They want Duncan to put money in service of the poor. They’re asking for:

•  a $100 a month healthy food supplement to welfare payments to try to reduce reliance on food banks for 375,000 people every month who visit an Ontario food bank;

•  raising the Ontario Child Benefit for low-income families to $1,500 by 2013. The $1,100 OCB is scheduled to rise to $1,310 by 2013;

ST. JOHN’S, Nfld. - The trusted friend and colleague who saved Archbishop Martin Currie’s life two years ago is being investigated in the theft of more than $500,000 from the archdiocese of St. John’s.

The archdiocese has laid a complaint with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary over cheques Bill Power wrote to himself. An employee of the archdiocese for 38 years, Power was the comptroller and business manager for the archdiocese who also managed the business of the Catholic cemeteries.

TORONTO - We can't have unity without penance, or conversion, or forgiveness, or the Holy Spirit, Auxiliary Bishop William McGrattan told about 200 people gathered for Evensong at Toronto's St. James Anglican Cathedral Jan. 23.

The traditional Anglican version of the evening and night prayers of the Divine Office included music from the 16th through the 20th centuries by the Choir of St. James Cathedral and members of the St. Michael's Choir School. Prayers were offered by representatives of the Catholic Eastern rite churches, Protestant churches, Orthodox churches and Anglicans.

As mud and water claim lives and homes around the world, Catholics in Canada are exploring ways they might help.

Floods have claimed 680 lives in Brazil and left 21,500 homeless in the worst natural disaster to hit South America’s largest country in 40 years. In Australia floods have killed 30 people, 20,000 have been forced out of their homes and 60 towns submerged in the western state of Queensland. Colombia was hit with mudslides just before Christmas that killed 301 people, injured 292, destroyed more than 5,000 homes, damaged over 300,000 homes and flooded 1.32 million hectares of farm land.

In the 20th century big business was strictly business.  

But in the 21st century companies can’t stay in business if they’re ignoring the environment, hushing talk of human and labour rights or not returning calls from shareholders who want to know what the board is doing and why.

Socially responsible investors are no longer on the fringe of the investment world. Where 10 years ago talk of ethical investing drew smirks and rolling eyeballs, today it’s a top-line concern of boards, CEOs and CFOs.

“The huge difference (compared to 10 years ago) is that we’ve seen acceptance in the mainstream,” said Michael Jantzi, CEO and founder of Jantzi Sustainalytics.

On the environment, social issues and governance, corporations now see non-financial issues, once considered “externalities,” central to running a successful business in the long term, said Jantzi, who established Canada’s socially responsible investing (SRI) stock index — the Jantzi Social Index — in 2000.

“We’re only going to see an increased level of interest in these issues,” he said.

Particularly on the environment, corporations now regard the risks as anything but external, said Social Investment Organization executive director Eugene Ellmen.

“The BP disaster really was a wake-up call. It was a wake-up call for the mainstream industry,” said Ellmen.

SRI investors knew BP was running risks in the Gulf of Mexico long before it happened and avoided the stock. Investors who ignored the environmental risks paid the price.

The investment industry in Canada is not the world leader in sustainable, socially responsible investment.

With 13 separate jurisdictions and regulators at the federal level opting for voluntary codes of conduct and optional enforcement, the global investment industry is setting the tone.

Two international covenants have become central pillars in the world of ESG (environment, social and governance) investing. The Carbon Disclosure Project includes 534 institutional investors around the world representing $64 trillion in assets. The corporations and investment funds that subscribe to the London-based CDP are committed to researching and publishing the amount of carbon their business operations release into the atmosphere.

Four-hundred-and-eighty-five investment managers, 220 asset owners and 168 professional service partners with $22 trillion in assets under management have signed the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment. The stock market meltdown of fall 2008 didn’t drive the big investors away from ESG. The largest number of UNPRI signatories came on board after the crisis.

In Canada, the big public pension funds are leading the way. The Caisse de dépot et placement du Quebec, OPSEU Pension Trust, British Columbia Municipal Pension Plan and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are all signatories to the UNPRI.

“On the Canadian scene specifically, I think we’ve got some great leadership here in the pension community,” said Jantzi.

When the big pension funds call up asking about future environmental liabilities, Canada’s publicly traded companies respond.

“Institutional investors are continuing to press for more disclosure on environmental, social and governance issues,” said Jantzi. “And the companies are having to respond.”

Canadian markets will be led more by global trends than local regulation, according to Jantzi.

“On a global scale, Canadian financial markets just don’t have a huge amount of heft,” he said.

Canadian regulators, particularly the Ontario Securities Commission, are beginning to set conditions that will make SRI standard practice. The OSC may soon require publicly traded companies to “say-on-pay.” The SRI community has long demanded that boards reveal how much CEOs and other senior management make — and disclose what incentives are built into their compensation.

Even without enforceable say-on-pay rules, ESG Services, working for Ethical Funds and its parent NEI Investments, has been researching how oil sands company CEOs are paid, and whether their pay is tied to reductions in environmental liabilities.

They’ve found that the oil sands bosses get paid even if nobody knows how much it will cost shareholders to clean up vast tailing ponds or compensate native communities for downstream health outcomes.

For private investors — people who typically buy mutual funds at tax time — the chance to influence corporate Canada on the environment, social issues and governance has expanded exponentially in a decade. Where once persistence was required to persuade a financial advisor to sell an SRI mutual fund, now all the big banks offer socially responsible funds.

There’s also been a series of buy-outs of smaller SRI mutual fund companies that have made the funds more easily available. Where Ethical Funds were once only available at some credit unions they’re now sold through Desjardins Bank and the independent brokers that deal with Northwest and Ethical Investments (NEI). Acuity mutual funds are now similarly available through the much larger distribution network of AGF Management Limited.

“It puts the socially responsible mutual fund companies on more equal footing,” said Jantzi. “A lot of those advantages haven’t fully kicked in yet.”

While the funds are more available, it doesn’t mean that they’ve been impressing investors with great results.

“The industry has been somewhat disappointed,” said Ellmen.

The JSI has struggled to keep pace with conventional stock indices since the 2008 meltdown.

“I don’t put too much stock in short-term results,” said Jantzi. “The financial sector continues to struggle and we’re heavily weighted in the financial stocks.”

Holding considerable bank and insurance stocks means holding less in oil or gold mining — the resource sectors that have kept Canadian stock exchanges afloat the past two years.

“It’s a social index. It’s weighted differently, as you would expect. Over a shorter period of time you will see things struggle,” said Jantzi.

Even with disappointing recent results, Canadians continue to be interested in ESG factors in their investments. Social Investment Organization polling suggest 70 per cent of Canadian investors want more information about socially responsible investing, said Ellmen. With between two and three per cent of Canada’s pool of mutual fund money invested in SRI funds, there’s “huge room for growth,” he said.