Performance Report on Sustainable Development April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010

Executive Summary

This report outlines the Agency's performance against commitments in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) Sustainable Development (SD) Strategy 2007-2010. It focuses on the period from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010 and provides details on the activities that support the four goals of the Strategy:

Goal 1: Reduce the effects of our operations on land, air, and water
Goal 2: Demonstrate sustainable service delivery of tax and benefit programs
Goal 3: All employees apply sustainable development practices in their job
Goal 4: Use modern systems that support and maintain sustainable development

In addition, the report also outlines performance on the nine 2009-2010 Environmental Management Programs (EMPs) that support Goal 1. Each EMP addresses an environmental aspect that is of significance to the CRA. They are energy conservation, fleet, hazardous waste, halocarbons, outside emissions, paper, procurement, solid waste, and storage tanks.

Overall, we achieved 87% [Footnote 1] of the planned progress on CRA SD Strategy 2007-2010. During 2009-2010, we completed 82% of the planned work on 47 activities, and met/mostly met 82% of targets in the Agency's nine EMPs. The performance highlights by goal are as follows:

Goal 1 highlights: Reduce the effects of our operations on land, air, and water

The CRA maintained compliance with all applicable environmental legislation and met four of our seven environmental targets - the remaining three targets are still in progress. We exceeded the planned progress in the areas of solid waste management, green procurement and office paper use. With 90% of employees having access to the No Waste recycling program, we diverted an average 84% of solid waste from landfill. We increased our purchase of green products to 21%, and reduced our use of office paper by 29% from 2004-2005 levels. We also increased to 47% [Footnote 2], the percentage of our fleet vehicles that are considered green.

Goal 2 highlights: Demonstrate sustainable service delivery of tax and benefit programs

We continued to expand the availability of electronic service options to taxpayers and benefits recipients. The percentage of taxpayers that filed electronic Individual (T1) tax returns increased to 56%, while the electronic filing of corporate (T2) returns increased to 29%. Similarly, electronic deposits under the Canada Child Tax Benefits and Universal Child Care Benefits programs increased to 76% and 63%, respectively. We continued to apply the SD lens to specific program achievements. For example, between 1990 and 2009, an estimated 5.3 billion sheets of paper were saved through the CRA EFILE and NETFILE services for Individual (T1) tax returns - including 639 million sheets of paper in the 2009 tax year alone.

Goal 3 highlights: All employees apply sustainable development practices in their job

CRA senior management continued to show strong support for the SD Program. Almost all (99%) of the Executive/Cadre (EC) Group and 82% of the Management/Gestion (MG) Group included SD commitments in their performance agreements - an increase from 68% and 43% respectively at the beginning of the strategy. We also awarded $43,000 under the Sustainable Development Innovation Fund[Footnote 3] to enable the expansion of three projects across the Agency.

Goal 4 highlights: Use modern systems that support and maintain sustainable development

The SD Program maintained the highest performance rating of "strong" from the CRA Board of Management for having processes in place that ensure that SD is embedded in the way we do business. We also strengthened the SD framework through program reviews and reporting, and by providing enhanced tools to the SD Network.

Federal Sustainable Development Strategy

The Agency participated in interdepartmental consultations to prepare a Federal SD Strategy. The Strategy, which is a requirement of the Federal Sustainable Development Act (2008), provides a whole-of-government approach to federal actions to achieve environmental sustainability. We assessed the new Federal requirements to table and report on CRA SD strategies through the Reports on Plans and Priorities (RPP) and Departmental Performance Report (DPR) processes. We concluded that the Agency is well-positioned to meet the new requirements of the Federal strategy. We shared our best practices and provided guidance in several key areas to the Office of Greening Government Operations, Public Works and Government Services Canada. We also prepared a transition-year SD National Action Plan to maintain the SD momentum at the CRA and to ensure that the Agency fulfill the requirements of the Federal SD Strategy.

Conclusion and Next Steps

CRA SD Strategy 2007-2010 enabled us to build on the achievements of our three previous SD strategies. We continued to reduce our environmental footprint, further integrated SD into our business, and improved the management of the SD Program. Overall, we met or exceeded 8 of the 16 targets and we will continue to pursue the 8 remaining targets in the next period. The CRA will participate in interdepartmental consultations to ensure that the Agency is well-positioned to meet the requirements of the Federal SD Strategy. We will also carry out internal consultations to finalize a detailed internal SD strategy for 2011-2014.

Footnotes

[Footnote 1]

This excludes two activities - one activity was dropped and the other activity was deferred for the next period.

[Footnote 2]

A total of 45 of our 95 fleet vehicles are hybrids and alternative transportation fuel vehicles.

[Footnote 3]

The Sustainable Development Innovation Fund (SDIF) provides financial support for projects proposed by employees that contribute to corporate efficiencies and sustainable development.

Date modified:

2011-03-16