The Canadian Coalition for Good Governance is seeking comments on the latest version of its corporate governance guidelines.

The institutional shareholder group has issued for comment new corporate governance guidelines that set out its expected best practices for creating effective boards of directors.

The guidelines are comprised of 12 recommendations, including that firms ensure that two-thirds of directors are “independent”; that they separate the chair and CEO role; along with more wide-ranging recommendations, such as that they should “facilitate shareholder democracy”.

The guidelines also sketch out specific recommended practices for meeting these objectives. For example, it calls on firms to facilitate shareholder democracy by allowing shareholders to vote for individual directors, not slates of directors; adopt a majority voting policy; and, to seek shareholder approval for significant transactions, including any deal that involves the issuance of 20% or more of the shares of the company.

Comments on the new guidelines are sought by July 31.

IE