Who defines the best corporate citizen?

Update: Corporate Knights has heard back that Ken Whyte refused an invite from CBC's The Current for a Maclean's-Corporate Knights debate on corporate citizenry. Maybe he prefers television.

TORONTO, CANADA, JUNE 17, 2009 – At dawn this morning, Corporate Knights President and Editor-in-Chief, Toby Heaps, challenged Maclean’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Ken Whyte to a public debate. Corporate Knights seeks to reduce the confusion created, in its opinion, by Maclean’s decision to launch a cover story in its current issue titled “Canada’s 50 best corporate citizens”—eight years after Corporate Knights pioneered its annual issue on the “Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada.” The Maclean’s “Canada’s 50 best corporate citizens” issue is dated June 22, the exact date that independent magazine Corporate Knights distributes its eighth annual “Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada” issue as an insert in the Globe and Mail newspaper to 95,500 subscribers across the country.

“While we welcome newcomers to the corporate responsibility realm, it’s unfortunate that Maclean’s seems to have taken a run at our market share by using a trademark that is, in our considered opinion, confusing with our distinctive trademark,” said Mr. Heaps.

“The good news,” said Mr. Heaps, “is that concern about this confusion, shared by many eminent Canadians*, presents an excellent chance, at a time of economic and ecological upheaval, for Ken Whyte and I to flesh out for the Canadian public, what exactly is a good corporate citizen, and how one goes about defining one.”