Accessibility Plan

1.0 - GENERAL    

2.0 - PRIORITY AREAS

3.0 - CONSULTATIONS

4.0 - CONCLUSION

1.0 - GENERAL    

1.1 - About Pembina

Pembina Pipeline Corporation is a dynamic energy transportation and midstream provider, serving customers for 70 years. Pembina owns an integrated network of hydrocarbon liquids and natural gas pipelines, gas gathering and processing facilities, oil and natural gas liquids infrastructure and logistics services, and a growing export terminals business. Through our integrated value chain, we seek to provide safe and reliable infrastructure solutions which connect producers and consumers of energy across the world, support a more sustainable future and benefit our customers, investors, employees and communities. 

PKM Canada Marine Terminal LP (“Vancouver Wharves) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pembina Pipeline Corporation. The Vancouver Wharves Terminal is a 125-acre diversified bulk and liquids marine terminal operating within the Port of Vancouver. The terminal has the capacity to accommodate up to four vessels with extensive rail infrastructure capable of receiving and unloading unit trains. The facility also has significant dry bulk and liquid storage capacity equipped with specialized conveyance and handling systems for efficient loading and discharging of ocean-going vessels and barges. 

1.2 - Requirements  

As a federally regulated company in the transportation sector, Vancouver Wharves is governed by the Accessible Canada Act (ACA). 

The ACA is a federal law enacted by the Canadian government in 2019 to promote and ensure equal access and inclusion for persons with disabilities, particularly through the identification and removal of barriers, as well as preventing of new barriers. The ACA applies to all federally regulated entities, including companies, organizations, and government agencies. 

Per the ACA, all federally regulated entities must:  

• Prepare and publish an initial Accessibility Plan; 

• Establish accessibility feedback process; and 

• Report annually on the progress towards the plan and address any feedback received. 

Our Accessibility Plan must be reviewed in its entirety and published at least every three years.  

Overall, the ACA represents a significant step towards creating a more inclusive and accessible society for all Canadians, including those with disabilities. By complying with these requirements, BCMEA can help ensure that Pembina Vancouver Wharves are providing equal access and opportunities to all members of society. 

1.3 - Executive Summary  

Pembina is committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and empowered workforce, and ensuring equitable access to its services, facilities, and communications. Our comprehensive Accessibility Plan, divided into the seven priority areas of the ACA, outlines the company's approach to addressing accessibility challenges and promoting an environment where employees and customers, including those with disabilities, can thrive. The objective of this Plan, and the resulting commitment, align with Pembina’s strong commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and overall employee well-being.  

By implementing these initiatives and meaningfully engaging stakeholders, Pembina strives to be a leader in equity, diversity, and inclusion by setting an example for a more accessible and inclusive corporate landscape. 

Table 1.  

Executive Summary: Pembina Accessibility Plan 2023-2026.  

1.4 - Accessibility Statement 

Pembina Pipeline Corporation is committed to providing an inclusive workplace that ensures a barrier-free environment for all stakeholders, including clients, employees, job applicants, suppliers and any visitors who enter the premises, work for the company, access information provided by the company, or use the company’s goods and services. We believe in integration and equal opportunity in alignment with our core values:    

• Safe: We care for each other  

• Trustworthy: We have each other's backs  

• Respectful: We seek to be gracious and kind  

• Collaborative: We are great together  

• Entrepreneurial: We create to succeed  

1.5 - Feedback 

Pembina Pipeline is committed to providing an open and transparent feedback process. For more information, to provide feedback, or to request alternative formats of this Plan, please contact Pembina through one of the following methods:  

• Anonymous feedback form: EthicsPoint - Pembina Pipeline Corporation  

• Email:  [email protected]   

• Direct mail:  4000, 585 - 8th Avenue S.W., Calgary, Alberta T2P 1G1 

• Telephone:  1-844-587-5499 

1.6 - Alternative Formats 

Pembina’s Accessibility Plan is available in the following formats:    

• Print 

• Large Print  

• Electronic  

• Audio  

A Braille copy of Pembina’s Accessibility Plan may be requested by email at [email protected] and by phone at 1-844-587-5499.  

Top of page

2.0 - PRIORITY AREAS  

2.1 - Area 1: Employment  

Our Accessibility Goal  

Cultivating a positive employee experience by promoting a diverse and inclusive environment where our all employees, including those with disabilities, feel engaged, recognized, and empowered.  

Current Level of Accessibility  

At Pembina, we embrace equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in our workforce, and recognize the value that different perspectives bring to our business. The role of Pembina's EDI team is to help guide the business on steps to improve employment equity and identify, remove and prevent barriers that may be hindering our ability to hire and retain individuals from designated groups including people with disabilities.  

To support our future and current employees, we have taken a holistic approach to creating an accessible work environment:  

• Recruitment Practices – Our EDI policies and commitments are highlighted on our Careers Page, including a detailed list of the services available for people with disabilities during the interview process and throughout their employment at Pembina.  

• Accommodation Standard – Pembina established an Accommodation Standard in 2022 to ensure that all Pembina workplaces are inclusive and allow workers to participate fully.  

• Employee Wellbeing – In addition to comprehensive, health and wellness benefits, all Pembina employees have access to an Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP) which includes confidential counselling services as well as articles, tools and resources to support health and wellness.  

• Inclusion Networks – Women’s Inclusion Network, Multicultural Resource Group, PRIDE, Indigenous Inclusion Network and Men’s Mental Health Group  

• Training – All Pembina employees are assigned accessibility training which includes an introduction to human rights, customer service standards, serving people with disabilities, communication standards, employment standards and the design of public spaces standards.  

Actions  

Commitment 1: Provide employees and job candidates with the tools, systems and knowledge that they need to participate fully in the work and culture at Pembina at all stages of the employee life cycle.  

• Expand our Accommodation Standard to include a robust accommodation request process for employees and job candidates that includes who to contact and examples of accommodation options available by Dec 2024.  

• Determine and discuss with job candidates any bona fide occupational requirements (BFORs) that may exist for open positions at Pembina starting in June 2024.  

Commitment 2: Ensure that all employees have equal opportunity access to Pembina’s training modules.  

• Work with an accessibility professional to assess SuccessFactors to ensure it meets accessibility requirements by June 2026.  

• Engage people with lived experience of disabilities (internally or externally) to establish and review accessibility standards and best practices for the development and publication of any future employee training modules by June 2025.  

• Research options for engaging trainers with lived experience of disabilities to assist with and deliver training models at Pembina by June 2026.   

Commitment 3: Further our commitment to creating an environment that allows all employees to feel engaged, recognized and empowered.  

• Expand on our current training to include employee- and manager-specific modules that promote inclusion and educate everyone on the social model and human rights model of disabilities starting in December 2024.  

• Establish an Advisory Group for people with disabilities by December 2025.  

• Starting in 2026, work with the newly established Inclusion Network to establish guiding principles of accessibility and intersectionality that provide an access-focused approach to delivering employee services, developing talent and establishing new employment practices that are inclusive to all groups.  

2.2 - Area 2: Built Environment (Vancouver Wharves)  

Our Accessibility Goal  

At Pembina, our goal is to ensure persons with disabilities are provided with safe and barrier-free access to their workplace – not only access to and from the site but wherever possible, throughout the site. Our commitment at Vancouver Wharves is to remove barriers wherever possible while maintaining high standards of safety and productivity for all our employees.   

Current Level of Accessibility  

Pembina’s Vancouver Wharves location is a 125-acre marine terminal. Many of the roles are labour-intensive and, in some cases, require extreme safety measures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our employees. We recognize that there is a need to better understand the lived experience of people with disabilities to identify barriers that can be removed or modified without conflicting with the bona fide occupational requirements present at Vancouver Wharves.  

Vancouver Wharves does include one 3-storey office building. The ground floor of the building is accessible by a ramp and provides accessible washroom facilities for employees and visitors. All employees have access to ergonomic assessments of their workstations and can request modifications as needed.  

Due to the nature of the work performed at the Vancouver Wharves, we have an extensive fire and emergency safety plan. Instructions for assisting in the evacuation of people with disabilities are provided in each of our emergency response plans and are highlighted in our Fire Emergency Floor Deputies and Warden training. In case of an emergency, Vancouver Wharves is committed to assisting persons with disabilities to safely move to a muster point. 

Actions  

Commitment 1: Ensure that all employees have an accessible path to their workstations.    

• Establish two accessible parking spaces in the parking lots for both the union and non-union employees.  By June 2024.  

Commitment 2: Provide access, wherever possible, to all employees while maintaining the high safety standards required to operate the Vancouver Wharves. 

• Work with an accredited engineer or architect certified in accessible design to complete a detailed assessment of our built environment to determine the feasibility and budget of increasing access to Pembina’s Vancouver Wharves location by December 2024.  

• Work with Pembina employees with lived experience of disabilities to consider both the physical access to the spaces and barriers to safety features throughout the site (e.g., providing both visual and auditory alarms in the case of an emergency) in 2026.  

Commitment 3: Ensure that people with disabilities are treated with dignity and respect in the event of an emergency at the Vancouver Wharves.   

• Research options for additional Fire Emergency Floor Deputy and Warden training to meet the diversity of needs of people with disabilities in the event of an emergency by June 2026.  

2.3 - Area 3: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)  

Our Accessibility Goal  

We aim to provide our employees with barrier-free access to the digital tools and workspaces that they need to thrive in their roles. Whether they are connecting with a client or looking for information on their benefits, everyone at Pembina should have the technology and systems to support their work.  

Current Level of Accessibility  

Pembina’s ICT and Communications teams have started work to increase accessibility and remove barriers to ICT tools used by employees, customers, and the public, including working towards being WC3 compliant on our public-facing website.   

All employees have access to a variety of tools to ensure that their work experience is barrier-free. Through our IT accommodation request form, employees can easily request ergonomic keyboards, large format monitors and Surface Adaptive Kits to modify their keyboards, amongst other adaptive tools.  

Our IT team has also started looking into the accessibility tools and features available to our employees through the third-party ICT tools that are used on a day-to-day basis including Microsoft 365, SuccessFactors, and Dayforce.  

Actions  

Commitment 1: Ensure that employees have access to and are aware of the accessibility tools and features available to them through our existing third-party systems.   

• Identify accessibility features in our third-party ICT tools and create accessibility guides and training materials for each by December 2025. 

• Work with HR to communicate the ICT accessibility training materials and accommodations to employees and to integrate them into employee onboarding starting in 2026.  

• Establish guidelines and best practices that measure ICT third-party providers’ level of accessibility to assist in the selection of future tools by June 2026.  

Commitment 2: Remove barriers from our internally built ICT tools to ensure all employees, customers, and the public can access barrier-free information.     

• Complete the update of The Pipeline, our employee Intranet to provide employees with an accessible digital workplace by June 2025.  

• Upgrade Pembina’s website to fully meet W3C AA standards and engage people with disabilities to conduct a user audit of the website by June 2026.  

2.4 - Area 4: Communication, other than ICT  

Our Accessibility Goal  

Our goal is that all communications from Pembina are accessible to the intended audience, both internal and external, without barriers.  

Current Level of Accessibility  

At Pembina, we have always aimed to ensure that our communication standards are clear and accessible to everyone. Our Communications team has started work on creating new communication standards and best practices that incorporate accessible language and design.  

Actions  

Commitment 1: Develop a communication standard for Pembina that is designed to be barrier-free and supports accessibility from inception.  

• Finalize the communication guides and standards including a review process that engages persons with disabilities to provide input and feedback based on their lived experience by December 2024.  

• Provide training to all employees responsible for internal and external communications, including but not limited to HR, Marketing and Customer Service on the use of accessible communication standards and plain language when communicating in 2025.  

2.5 - Area 5: Procurement of Goods, Services and Facilities  

Our Accessibility Goal  

Pembina aims to be a leader in EDI and to maintain EDI standards in all aspects of our business. As such, our goal is to hold our suppliers and vendors accountable for providing accessible workplaces for their employees and barrier-free goods, services, and facilities to their customers.  

Current Level of Accessibility  

Pembina believes in holding our stakeholders accountable for strong ethical practices. As such we have established a Supplier Code of Conduct that we require all suppliers to agree to upon beginning work with Pembina. Our Supplier Code of Conduct encourages suppliers to maintain a safe work environment, maintain proper policies and management systems to ensure strong environment stewardship, actively demonstrate a commitment to EDI in all aspects of their workplace, comply with all applicable human rights law and regulations, and to maintain and promote professional integrity, ethics, and compliance.  

Further to our Supplier Code of Conduct, we ask all suppliers to participate in our EDI data collection, including data on persons with disabilities, and reporting practices to help support Pembina’s strategic EDI objectives.    

We have begun the process of reworking our Supply Chain Policy which details the general guidelines and guardrails for procuring sources and contracts, including how we engage suppliers.  

Actions  

Commitment 1:  Expand on our current supplier EDI data collection process to include data related to the supplier's commitment to and support of accessible workplaces and products.   

• Leverage ISNetworld (ISN), our contractor and supplier information management and qualification software, to collect data on our suppliers’ commitments to offering barrier-free options and promoting accessibility for their employees and customers by December 2024.  

• Utilize the data collected in ISN as part of the vendor qualification processes starting in 2026. 

2.6 - Area 6: Design and Delivery of Programs and Services  

Our Accessibility Goal  

Provide barrier-free services and communications to our customers to strengthen our partnerships and promote accessibility for all our stakeholders.  

Current Level of Accessibility  

Pembina’s Vancouver Wharves is a bulk marine terminal. We work with our customers to assist in the export and import of diversified dry bulk and liquid materials.  

Due to the nature of the work, most of our services are not customer-facing and accessibility in our services has not been made a priority.  

Actions  

Commitment 1: Provide Pembina’s customers with barrier-free communication, wherever possible.  

• Develop a formal feedback process for customers that includes questions identifying barriers that they may experience during their interaction with Pembina by December 2024.  

• Ensure that customer-facing employees are provided with training on the use of plain language and incorporating the social model of disability when interacting with people with disabilities starting in 2025 (See Area 4: Communications, Commitment 1). 

2.7 - Area 7: Transportation  

Pembina recognizes transportation as one of the key focus areas of the ACA and the importance of creating a national transportation network that is accessible to all Canadians. However, transportation for the public is outside the scope of services that Pembina provides. As such, we do not have any commitments in this area.  

Top of page

3.0 - CONSULTATIONS

3.1 - Summary    

The concept of “Nothing without Us” supports the notion that persons with disabilities must be involved in the ideation of Pembina’s Accessibility Plan to support the company in identifying opportunities to progress accessibility in policies, procedures, and the built environment. Pembina consulted British Columbia Centre for Ability (BC CFA) in the development of our Accessibility Plan. In addition to the consultation with BC CFA, the plan was developed in consultation with and reviewed by a Pembina employee with disability.  

3.2 – Consultation Process 

The BC CFA was provided with a draft of our Plan as a Word document for their review. Pembina followed this with a live session on September 25, 2023, to discuss the impact and significance of the company’s goals towards creating an accessible workplace and experience for employees, association members, and the public. One member of the BC CFA review panel, who is a person with a disability, was not able to attend the live session and provided feedback on the Plan separately via email. 

The session was hosted virtually via Zoom and the consultation team from BC CFA was asked in advance about any accommodation that would be needed for the session.   

During the session, participants had the option to turn on closed captioning. Each priority area of the Plan was discussed and was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation for everyone to see.   

3.3 - Results  

During the session, we reviewed each of Pembina’s Accessibility Commitments and gathered feedback from the BC CFA. Overall, the BC CFA found the Plan to be clear and logical and shows a commitment to making a positive impact on the community through accessibility measures.   

Most of the Commitments and corresponding action plans provide a coherent and logical progression. However, the BC CFA identified a couple of key areas where further elaboration on the actions was needed to provide a clear and meaningful commitment. This was incorporated throughout the Plan by:      

• Identifying areas where we can engage with people with lived experience to develop and provide feedback on systems, processes, and policies; and  

• Reviewing the plan for any acronyms or jargon that needed to be spelled out or explained in more detail.  

3.4 - Future Consultations  

Future versions of Pembina’s Accessibility Plan will place greater emphasis on conducting a more comprehensive consultation process to fully align with the concept of "Nothing Without Us". Pembina’s goal is to engage broader mechanisms for consultation with customers, employees, and Pembina’s Inclusion Networks through testimonials and storytelling, feedback surveys, and facilitated consultative sessions. Pembina recognizes that the more robust the consultation phase is in future republications, the more likely it is that barriers will be identified and meaningful progress on accessibility and EDI will be achieved. 

Top of page

4.0 - CONCLUSION

Pembina's comprehensive accessibility strategy aims to foster an inclusive environment where employees and customers, including those with disabilities, are empowered and provided with equitable opportunities. Through commitments ranging from enhancing employment practices to refining digital tools, communication, and procurement processes, Pembina demonstrates its dedication to leading with equity, diversity and inclusion.  

By setting a strong precedent for a more accessible corporate landscape and embodying our commitment to a diverse and empowered future, Pembina aims to be a leader in accessibility and EDI.  

Top of page