The story in corporate sustainability right now is all about retreat: voluntary pledges walked back, advocacy groups shutting down, banks dropping emissions targets. But underneath that noise, mandatory disclosure rules in the EU and around the world are creating obligations no company can undo with a press release.
That means ESG data needs to be as rigorous and auditable as financial reporting, and large companies are taking it seriously - even if they aren’t talking about it as loudly.
We sat down with Charles Assaf, CEO of Novisto, a Montreal-based company that's raised $55M+ to turn scattered sustainability data into a single, audit-ready system of record.
As disclosure regulation tightens globally, that infrastructure is becoming as essential to compliance teams as financial reporting systems are to finance teams.
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TALKING POINTS
What's actually happening in the field - beyond the ESG backlash headlines
The shift from voluntary pledges to regulation-driven demand
What the EU's CSRD actually requires and how Canadian companies get pulled in from the outside
Why asset owners and pension funds haven't changed course, even as public pledges disappear
What "audit-ready" data really means, and how ESG reporting is maturing the way financial reporting once did
Building a global enterprise company from Montreal, and why AI raises the stakes on owning trusted data