Our commitment

Governments grant a permit for development, but a community gives crucial support. That’s why community engagement is essential for understanding the concerns of our neighbours, as well as to build and maintain strong, long-term relationships

Growing our business responsibly means consulting with stakeholders prior to development, maximizing local benefits and opportunities, and ensuring environmental protection before, during and after operations.

Our approach
Open communication with the local community is essential to our business. It’s why we integrate community engagement into every aspect of our business planning. 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. This engagement takes many forms, including individual meetings, community presentations, open houses, newsletters and electronic media.

Our consultation efforts are guided by our principles of inclusion, respect, timeliness, responsiveness, and accountability. We also maintain detailed management systems, such as our Operational Integrity Management System (OIMS) and Best Practices in External Affairs, as roadmaps to ensure we are working effectively to seek and respond to community input. It’s just part of how we work to be a good neighbour in your community.

We know that to be effective our outreach efforts must be built on honest, transparent, accurate and timely information. That’s why we listen to and engage with a broad range of individuals and organizations, including governments, regulators, industry, local residents, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, non-governmental organizations and Aboriginal groups to help identify and address 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. We recognize local communities have expectations and concerns about our operations, and we have a formal system in place through OIMS to ensure they are addressed in a timely manner.

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.