Community engagement
Building and maintaining strong relationships with our stakeholders
Our approach
With operations throughout Canada, Imperial is member of many communities in our country, big and small. Community engagement wherever we operate is an essential part of our approach. Engagement promotes a better understanding of our stakeholders’ concerns, helps us identify and resolve issues and contributes to good decision making. It also helps our communities understand our values and what they can expect from us.
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 and Aboriginal groups, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees and non-governmental organizations to help identify and manage issues of mutual concern and interest. We seek dialogue with those groups and individuals that are directly impacted by our operations as well as those who may 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 our Best Practices in External Affairs (BPEA) strategic planning tool provide direction to our employees and contractors on engaging with our stakeholders.