Human rights

The economic prosperity created through international trade isn’t possible without people. Our role allows us to connect Canadians with companies around the world. But trade connections can also lead to adverse human rights impacts. 

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) state that all businesses should have policies and procedures in place to identify, prevent and mitigate their impact on human rights, and should report on how they address this impact.

We align our human rights commitments and conduct due diligence in accordance with the UNGPs. Our commitment to respect human rights does not mean that we need to avoid all transactions or impacts where environmental, social or human rights risks or impacts exist. Rather, the expectation of international frameworks is that–where such risks or impacts are present–we will seek to effectively manage those risks and impacts. Our approach is to identify, assess and mitigate potential human rights impacts we could be connected to through our customer relationships, and to enable remedy should impacts occur.
 

As part of our due diligence process, we work closely with our customers and support their efforts to identify, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts. When potential or actual severe risks are identified, we conduct a full assessment of the risks and seek to address them with our customers. This can involve asking specific questions about their human rights practices and giving them information and guidance to improve their practices and effectively manage risks and impacts.
 

We engage with diverse stakeholders, including the Government of Canada, our ESG Advisory Council, civil society organizations, industry and trade associations, bank partners, other ECAs, international partners and customers. We use our breadth and depth of influence to share our approach on human rights risk management and to gather feedback from stakeholders to continue to strengthen our practices. 

At any time, stakeholders can submit queries and review response letters from our CEO here.