Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; our collective responsibility
We’ve made it through another winter, and we are looking forward to brighter days ahead with more people getting vaccinated to help eradicate COVID-19.
This month has been a particularly active one for several of our members. Not the least of which is Canadian Pacific Railway who orchestrated one of the largest ever foreign corporate acquisitions by a Canadian company by entering into a purchasing agreement with Kansas City Southern.
Your team in Ottawa has been busy as well with meetings and interventions leading up to Budget Day, April 19th. I will have a rundown on that next month, but in the meantime, meet Greg Kolz, the RAC employee leading those efforts, below.
This edition of your RAC newsletter is dedicated to the diversity of our sector.
Diversity in all its forms is part of what makes Canada great, and RAC members are ever-increasingly reflective of the communities we serve.
Several of our members are recognized leaders as top diversity employers.
A few have made diversity and inclusion central to their corporate strategies.
Women are acceding to more and higher leadership industry roles, including our current board chair, Fiona Murray, who has announced that she will be taking her much deserved retirement at the end of April. We wish her all the best and thank her for her leadership and dedication to rail during her tenure as Chair.
Indigenous people are an integral part of rail’s future in Canada, and we profile two examples of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit leadership.
We also recognize that for all our progress on these fronts and others, we all need to do more to move from diversity to inclusion to belonging at all levels. In that spirit, we are including some links to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) resources that we hope will be helpful to members large and small.
In reviewing the most recent Rail Trends report, the breadth and scope of our impact is again clear: Canada’s economy moves by rail; Canadians move by rail.
It is our collective responsibility to ensure that we are welcoming to all who want to contribute to writing our industry’s next chapters with us.
Stay well.