The Globe and Mail attempts to identify Canadian stocks with a positive ESG screen in its Tuesday, April 17, edition. The Globe's guest columnist Emily Halverson-Duncan writes in the Number Cruncher column that ESG, or environment, social and governance, is shorthand for three key criteria that socially responsible investors can use to evaluate a company. Overall ESG score measures how a company pro-actively manages the ESG issues that most affect their business. Scrutiny using ESG-focused investment mandates not only promotes ethical business practices, it also helps investors avoid ownership in companies that may be subject to controversy and scandal. In order to qualify, stocks needed to have an overall ESG score in the top one-third of peers; stocks also needed to have a controversy score less than or equal to three or an ESG peer-group score equal to three or higher. Lastly, stocks were required to have their five-year beta less than one to help avoid high correlation to the market. Stocks that qualify for purchase into the strategy today are Hudson's Bay Co., First Capital Realty, WSP Global, West Fraser Timber, Celestica and Thomson Reuters.