Our Management Approach – Community Relations

Major Community Relations Risks and Opportunities	Opportunities Effective community relations can be used to ensure timeliness of projects, and to enhance trust and reputation Community investments can have a positive impact on the well-being of our customers, partners and fellow citizens Risks Interruption of operations due to stakeholder concerns Without targets, we could find ourselves directing community investments inefficiently
Policy	Our Sponsorships and Donations Policy describes what types of organizations we will and will not support. We plan to develop a Stakeholder and Aboriginal Relations Policy in 2009.
Operational Responsibility	The Director of Stakeholder and Aboriginal Relations and his team develop tools and approaches, and work with business units to implement them. Our Vice-President of Marketing oversees the community investment program. A Manager of Sponsorship and Community Investment directs daily activities
Key Strategies and Procedures for Implementation	Integrating the activities of the Stakeholder and Aboriginal Relations department into the activities of operations groups in the field is a focus. We use Consultation Manager, a web-based tool, for tracking commitments made to stakeholders and actions taken, and for ensuring we remain in compliance with regulatory requirements regarding stakeholder engagement. Through our participation in LBG Canada we learn about best practices and ways to make community investment more strategic and focused on impacts. To align with our growing market, we are increasing our focus on community investments and relations beyond Calgary’s borders.
Major Changes in 2008 to Systems or Structures to Improve Performance	We established a wind energy technician scholarship for Aboriginals at Lethbridge College. We developed a training manual and support materials for Consultation Manager.
Training and Awareness	Employees are informed of our community interactions through our intranet site and our internal newsletter. The Manager of Sponsorship and Community Investment regularly updates key departments about relevant activities.  We trained many consultants and land agents to use Consultation Manager. We plan to offer cultural awareness training in 2009.
Monitoring and Follow-up	As described in the Strategy section above, we use Consultation Manager as our primary follow-up tool on stakeholder issues; and GrantStream for community investments. A financial audit is done on select community investment figures. We are increasingly asking recipients to measure and report on the tangible impacts of our contributions.
Goals and Performance	Through our participation in Imagine Canada we aim to contribute 1% of our pre-tax profits to non-profit groups. We would like to improve the ratio of community investment to sponsorship dollars, so that community investment figures increase. See performance data.
Key Successes and Shortcomings	We received regulatory approval for our Crossfield project. Nearby residents provided input to landscape design. The town council was actively engaged. At a resident’s request, we conducted baseline EMF testing. We launched Gen E™, a program that provides teachers with tools to bring the concepts of energy conservation and emerging renewable energy technologies into the classroom.