Community engagement

Building and maintaining strong relationships with our stakeholders

Our approach

With operations throughout Canada, Imperial is part of many communities in our country, big and small. Community engagement wherever we operate is an essential part of our approach. It helps our communities understand our values and what they can expect from us. In turn, for us, engagement promotes a better understanding of our stakeholders’ concerns and ideas, helps us identify and resolve issues and contributes to good decision making.

To be effective, our outreach efforts must be built on honest, transparent, accurate and timely information. We listen to and engage with a broad range of stakeholders including governments, regulators, industry, local residents, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, non-governmental organizations and Aboriginal groups to help identify and manage issues of mutual concern and interest. We seek dialogue with those groups and individuals that our operations directly impact or that can have a direct impact on our operations or reputation.

Our stakeholder interactions are guided by five principles:

• Inclusion: We will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to be meaningfully involved in issues that affect them
• Respect: We will work to develop and maintain constructive relationships through positive interactions based on mutual respect, trust and openness
• Timeliness: We will identify and involve stakeholders early in the process and provide timely opportunities for participation, in order to understand expectations, interests and concerns
• Responsiveness: We will encourage stakeholders’ input to understand how they wish to be consulted. We will listen to stakeholder needs and interests, and will strive to remain flexible and respond promptly
• Accountability: We will document agreements made with stakeholders to ensure commitments are met

These values, along with our Aboriginal Relations Guiding Principles and Guidelines, our OIMS system on community awareness and our Best Practices in External Affairs (BPEA) provide direction to our employees and contractors on engaging with our stakeholders.