William Watson: ESG won't pay my bills

Financial Post: "I don’t want the Caisse pursuing non-economic goals, like encouraging sustainability or recycling or diversity or whatever. I don’t want it investing in companies that break or skirt laws or (Mintz’s point) are at the beck-and-call of the Chinese Communist Party. But, apart from excluding such outliers, I want the Caisse making its investment choices across the broadest possible range of companies, regardless of their ESG scores. We do have a government in Quebec (you may have noticed). It has been chosen democratically, is perfectly capable of encouraging the kind of social evolution it thinks voters want and, to say the least, has shown no reluctance to tinker with ESG or myriad other issues. In fact, I wish governments would attempt much less social engineering. But at least governments were elected. The unelected managers of public pension plans should not use other people’s money to try to change the world. If they want to do that, they should get into politics."