The Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, a new voice intended to represent the buy side shareholder, today introduced a series of 12 guidelines that set minimum standards and best practices aimed at Canadian boards of directors.

The organization, originally the brainchild of Claude Lamoureux, president and CEO of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Stephen Jarislowsky, CEO of Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., represents 23 different institutional investors in Canada with a combined $400 billion in assets under management. Members include the Alberta Teachers’ Retirement Fund, OPSEU Pension Trust, Burgundy Asset Management, Franklin Templeton Investments and Mackenzie Financial Corp.

“This is really the first time there’s been some institutionalization of that ownership position,” says David Beatty, the coalition’s managing director, and Toronto based professor of strategy at the Rotman School of Business. He says the coalition’s goal is to become a participant on public policy and governance issues in the country. “I think that the buy side has not been well represented (on issues of) corporate governance and the formulation of public policy,” he says.

The guidelines released today focus on three areas including how individual directors are selected and how boards recruit good directors; how boards are structured to create governance strengths; and how they work to ensure good governance processes.

The coalition also released a self-appraisal form to help boards gauge their level of success in meeting the minimum standards set out by the guidelines. Beatty says the evaluation is already being applied to 15 different companies of interest to investors in the coalition.

Ultimately, he says both the guidelines and the form are intended to facilitate dialogue and identify points for discussion with corporate boards of directors.

A full list of the Coalition’s corporate governance guidelines and the self appraisal form can be found at the Coalition’s Web site.