3. Sharing What We Know with Others
Stakeholder Engagement
Throughout the year, Hbc participated in a number of meetings, forums and conferences to gain insight and share ideas regarding evolving ethical sourcing issues.
Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR)
In 2007 Hbc, together with CBSR and other retailers, participated in a collaborative project to help raise the bar for CSR in Canada. The main objectives were to conduct comprehensive research on best practices, resources and the lay of the land on key CSR issues, which include ethical sourcing. As well, Hbc wanted to strengthen the CSR network in Canada and provide an opportunity to engage a range of staff from Hbc to educate and embed CSR knowledge. Among the ethical sourcing challenges identified through this project were geography, poorly enforced local laws, consumer demand for quality at low prices and the complexity of supply chains. Overall, retailers agreed that our industry needs to understand the root cause of non-compliance and to focus our efforts on sustainable practices such as factory training and remediation programs rather than zero tolerance.
Retail Council of Canada (RCC) Responsible Trade Committee
Hbc continues to participate in the RCC’s Responsible Trade Committee. The committee’s mandate is to encourage retailers to adopt responsible trade practices and to share information, best practices and tools among retailers to promote responsible trade initiatives. The committee works to communicate the commitment of Canadian retailers to responsible trade, and consults and builds alliances with consumers, NGOs, academics and other industry partners.
Fair Factories Clearinghouse (FFC)
The FFC is a non-profit corporation founded in 2003 and funded by member contributions and a grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Since 2003, Hbc has been a founding member of this organization. The FFC creates a collaborative forum for managing and sharing non-competitive information about workplace conditions in a manner that is cost-effective and provides a joint-member effort to help improve factory workplace conditions around the world. Hbc continues to participate in moving the collaboration agenda forward within the FFC and within Canada with co-operation from the RCC.
New Developments
New Developments
As a vendor to the Walt Disney Company, Hbc has voluntarily joined the Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA) forum, an open network of more than 70 companies, trade unions, NGOs and governments. Like Hbc, the Walt Disney Company is committed to improving social compliance throughout its supply chain. To this end, vendor partners like Hbc are required to demonstrate the capacity to promote remediation of factory conditions. Hbc will participate in the MFA forum’s Bangladesh Buyers’ Group going forward and will share information and best practices with other participants.
UN Millennium Development Goals
Hbc continues to embrace its involvement with the UN Global Compact and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. In 2006, Hbc added an environmental component to our social compliance audit and, in 2007, moved to participate in remediation initiatives such as the MFA forum.
Through our compliance program, we hope to:
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Develop a global partnership for development
We believe our ethical sourcing program addresses goals number one through five and are therefore focusing future efforts on goals six to eight.
