Performance Report on Sustainable Development April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010

4.0 Other Sustainable Development Program Results

4.1 CRA Contribution to Government-wide SD Priorities

CRA SD Strategy 2007-2010 also supports the Government of Canada's priorities for SD, as outlined in the June 2006 document, Coordinating the Fourth Round of Departmental Sustainable Development Strategies. Our SD National Action Plan 2007-2010 identified 15 activities that contribute directly to the priorities established in the coordinating document. Of the 15 activities, we completed 8 activities - progress on the remaining 7 activities was approximately 70%. See Appendix B for details.

4.2 New Federal Directions for Sustainable Development Accountability

The Federal Sustainable Development Act (2008)
The CRA continued interdepartmental consultations, much of which focused on departmental preparations to comply with the newFederal Sustainable Development Act that became law in June 2008. Among other things, the Act requires that a Federal Sustainable Development Strategy (FSDS) be tabled in Parliament by October 2010. Within one year of the tabling of the FSDS, departments and agencies are required to table their respective SD strategies as part of their Report on Plans and Priorities (RPPs). Accordingly, progress on SD strategy commitments will be accounted for through Departmental Performance Reports (DPRs).

The intent of the Act is to shift SD accountabilities from parallel planning and reporting processes, to the mainstream of government planning and reporting processes. SD accountabilities would be identified in RPPs - through the Main Estimates process - and reported on through DPRs. The main implication is that from a planning and reporting perspective, departments and agencies are no longer legislatively bound to table stand-alone SD strategies and reports. However, given that the FSDS partially implicates the CRA SD Program, the CRA, like other departments will prepare a detailed internal SD strategy to guide implementation of its SD Program. We will also continue to publish detailed annual SD reports to account for our complete performance on SD. 

4.3 SD Program Costs and Benefits

During the period, the Agency invested approximately $1.68 million in direct costs (personnel and operating) for the SD Division in HQ and regional offices to implement the SD program (see Table 2).

Table 2 : 2009-2010 Sustainable Development Program Budget
(in thousands of dollars)
  Resource Type
Expenditure Area Salary O&M Total
Headquarters 1,040 122 1,162
Regions 387 80 467
SD Innovation Fund -- 50 50
Total 1,427 252 1,679

Many of the initiatives in the CRA SD Strategy, while aimed at environmental improvement, have the added benefit of improving the Agency's operational efficiency, and offer benefits to other areas of society. Examples include:

An example where measurable results have been achieved is the Agency's use of office paper. Table 3 shows that since the implementation of our Environmental Management Program (EMP) for Paper, we have significantly reduced the amount of paper used per employee, as well as total expenditures on office paper.

Table 3 : Reduction in Annual Office Paper Consumption and Cost [Footnote 1]
Fiscal Year Average Consumption in Sheets per FTE Office Paper Expenditures
2002-2003 7,011 $2.43 million
2003-2004 7,399 $2.42 million
2004-2005 7,234 $1.81 million
2005-2006 6,407 $1.56 million
2006-2007 5,761 $1.45 million
2007-2008 5,721 $1.48 million
2008-2009 5,385 $1.46 million
2009-2010 5,147 $1.41 million

We substantially reduced the amount of paper used to deliver the Individual (T1) tax program through the implementation of online tax filing options. While offering Canadians enhanced convenience and efficiency, these programs reduce the Agency's environmental footprint. From 1990 to 2009, the use of electronic filing (EFILE and NETFILE) for the Individual tax program has resulted in the following paper savings:

This is equivalent to savings of:

4.4 SD Program Assessment

The CRA Board of Management assessed the Agency's performance in terms of SD - specifically examining whether the Agency follows appropriate processes to ensure that SD is embedded in the way we do business. The SD Program maintained the highest performance rating of "strong" from The Board.


Footnotes

Page details

Date modified: