Executive summary

The current reporting period of April 1, 2001, to March 31, 2002, marks the first year of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Strategy (2001-2004), the second SD strategy for the CCRA. The strategy has four goals to contribute to SD:

The first two goals are meant to help managers and employees with SD. They are intended to enable all key contributors to integrate SD "thinking and doing" into all aspects of the CCRA. By achieving results on these goals, we will ultimately achieve results on the other two substantive goals. Their results are expected to reduce the negative impacts of the operations of the CCRA on the environment.

During the period, with the support of our internal SD network across the CCRA, we made very good progress towards meeting our SD goals. We completed 38 (77%) of 49 targets, moved ahead on 9, and had 2 for which no work had started 1 . In preparing our managers (goal 1), we met key milestones such as the finalization of the SD policy, which outlines the responsibilities of management and employees to SD. We drafted a learning strategy for SD that will manage SD learning throughout the CCRA. We also launched the SD toolkit that is a valuable source of online SD knowledge and best practices. We strengthened our management system for the SD program by documenting and formalizing the annual process for performance reporting. However, further work must be done to ensure that the internal SD reporting process is completed annually without fail. Much work also remains to integrate SD into management tools, and further articulate our approach to incorporating SD as a corporate value. Our focus for coming periods will be to continue implementation of the learning strategy for SD, improve/update guidance materials for managers and employees, and increase CCRA-wide participation levels in SD initiatives.

We met all our targets to engage employees (goal 2). Our main activities were the promotion of Canadian Environment Week, International Volunteer Day, and Waste Reduction Week activities throughout the CCRA. Much of our efforts were also directed at engaging our regions. The SD Division gave SD awareness sessions and presentations upon request and resources and logistical support to help organize national SD events. The Pacific and Prairie regions were particularly successful in organizing active SD committees, inspiring employee support, and establishing partnerships for SD initiatives.

For goal 3, we reached 80 percent of our targets to reduce negative environmental impacts that result from our internal operations. Developing Environmental Management Programs (EMPs) for 10 identified environmental aspects was a significant accomplishment that established a solid foundation upon which the CCRA can manage and monitor its environmental compliance and management. In the area of contaminated sites management, we completed 77 initial site assessments and did more detailed assessments on a further three sites. Remediation work was done on one property, which is now under risk management. We also developed a database and a comprehensive list of contaminated CCRA sites. We continued our work on the national clean water strategy by testing 85 facilities that use water supplied from non-municipal sources, and conducted detailed risk assessments at 13 priority sites. We will continue work into the next period to complete detailed assessments of the remaining 72 sites. We included the energy efficiency criteria from the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) C2000 Program into a building design model for ports of entry. We continued to work closely with NRCan to implement the Ground Source Heat Pump Project identified in the Memorandum of Agreement signed by both organizations. This partnership supports our commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by using energy-efficient options and renewable energy sources. For the next period, we will continue to implement the targets established for our EMPs. These include efforts to increase efficiencies in our internal use of paper, protect water quality, explore and embrace energy efficient options, and clean up our contaminated sites.

We have a far way to go in enhancing our programs to contribute to SD (goal 4). While we included the SD checklist in the planning guide for branch business plans, its presence does not guarantee that SD considerations will be integrated into policies, programs, and decisions. Success in this area requires greater understanding of the principles and use of SD by managers and employees. Despite this, our program branches continued to increase their provision of electronic service delivery options to increase operational efficiencies and reduce paper use.

Partnership is an important success factor for SD implementation, and the CCRA demonstrated its commitment by continuing collaboration on more than 12 national and regional interdepartmental committees on federal operations and programs.

The main lessons learned from this first period are the need to develop sharper, more specific targets, and to intensify partnerships and monitoring to ensure that the requirements of the targets are well understood by branches and regions. There is also a critical need to develop more tools that will guide and enable the use of SD principles in daily tasks. These are all areas that we will continue to address over the life of this SD strategy for 2001-2004, and others to come.


1 These 49 targets include 14 that are classified as "ongoing." Of these 14, we completed work on 13, while 1 was in progress at the end of the period.

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