(1) An investment fund’s manager, acting on the investment fund’s behalf, has the right and obligation to vote proxies relating to the investment fund’s portfolio securities. As a practical matter, the manager may delegate this function to the investment fund’s portfolio adviser as part of the adviser’s general management of investment fund assets. In either case, the manager or portfolio adviser voting proxies on behalf of an investment fund must do so in a manner consistent with the best interests of the fund and its securityholders.
(2) Because of the substantial institutional voting power held by investment funds, the increasing importance of the exercise of that power to securityholders, and the potential for conflicts of interest with respect to the exercise of proxy voting, we believe that investment funds should disclose their proxy voting policies and procedures, and should make their actual proxy voting records available to securityholders.
(3) The Instrument requires that the investment fund establish policies and procedures for determining whether, and how, to vote on any matter for which the investment fund receives proxy materials for a meeting of securityholders of an issuer. The CSA consider an investment fund to “receive” a document when it is delivered to any service provider or to the investment fund in respect of securities held beneficially by the investment fund. Proxy materials may be delivered to a manager, a portfolio adviser or sub-adviser, or a custodian. All of these deliveries are considered delivered “to” the investment fund.
(4) The Instrument requires an investment fund to maintain an annual proxy voting record as of June 30 and to post this to the fund’s website if it has one. However, investment funds may choose to disclose their proxy votes throughout the course of the year, and may also choose to disclose how they intend to vote prior to the shareholder meeting.