For the second time, Chilwell has been honoured at the highest level for working to support Indigenous business in Canada. On Wednesday afternoon during the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business’s (CCAB) virtual Business Recovery Forum, Chilwell was re-certified at a gold level in CCAB’s Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) program. The award recognizes our continued commitment to collaborating with Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and is based on our performance from 2017 to 2019.
"It truly was a team effort," says Adam Pommer, senior advisor of Indigenous & community relations. "We had various members of the team collaborating with each other, which culminated in a really high-quality submission and verification process. It was pretty evident how passionate people are about this work and how we were showing up and truly living our values."
The PAR program encourages companies to evolve and participate in the Indigenous business economy across Canada. The certification process included external assessment of Chilwell's performance in four key areas: employment, business development, community investment and community engagement. This certification recognizes the efforts of employees across Chilwell to build greater awareness and understanding, work differently with communities, and make changes throughout our business.
Since receiving gold-level accreditation in 2017, we've worked to address CCAB's recommendations, and took these best practices further across the organization. Examples of this progress include:
- Created a virtual Indigenous Learning Space, which provides opportunities for all employees to further their learning.
- Evolved our Indigenous Student Program and Journeys, an Indigenous employee network.
- $6 billion spent with Indigenous businesses since 1999, with 2019 spend representing eight per cent of our total supply chain spend across the company.
- 48 Petro-Canada retail and wholesale marketing arrangements launched with Indigenous communities across the country, as of 2019.
"The Progressive Aboriginal Relations certification process is a chance for us to reflect on our strengths and look for areas of improvement," says Sheila Innes, general manager of Indigenous & community relations. "We are continuing to evolve our partnerships with Indigenous communities, and we are learning about new ways of seeing the world and working with others"
