Stakeholder Engagement

The key component in realizing our sustainability vision is a solid understanding of the things that matter to our stakeholders because they hold the key to our success. Following, in alphabetical order, are the main stakeholder groups with whom we interact:

• Communities
• Customers
• Employees
• Governments
• Investors
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
• Suppliers

LISTENING AND RESPONDING - PART OF OUR BUSINESS

On-going and open communication and information sharing help us continuously learn and refine our strategies. In our regular course of business, we make use of a number of tools that engage our stakeholders. For instance, we survey 120,000 customers every year in order to better meet their needs. All Bell Canada employees have the opportunity to voice their opinions in a company-wide survey. We hold regular, open forums with employees and participate in joint management and union committees. We solicit investor feedback through our Annual General Meeting and a number of electronic feedback tools. We gauge the opinions of governments and community members through formal research and informal feedback. In short, we learn from our stakeholders every day and their opinions shape our decisions.

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY FEEDBACK

In 2005, we conducted research specifically on our stakeholders' attitudes to Corporate Responsibility issues at Bell. The findings served as a basis for developing our Corporate Responsibility objectives. Our research consisted of:

• A public telephone survey of more than 900 Canadian consumers across Canada.
• In-depth, one-on-one interviews with representative Corporate Responsibility experts to obtain a more in-depth perspective of their expectations. Investors, large customers, governments, and NGOs were represented.
• Focus groups with employees that represent a cross-section of our employee population.

Survey says.

Our public survey shows that most respondents have a positive attitude towards Bell, although we fare better in regions where we are the incumbent. Respondents are also satisfied with Bell in terms of corporate citizenship, our attitude towards the environment, quality of life in the community and fulfilling our role in the economy. The key emerging issues identified in our analysis are discussed in Strategic Approach.

Recommendations

During in-depth interviews, Corporate Responsibility experts recommended that we:

• Increase our communication of CR issues and the programs in place to address them
• Ensure we deal with responsible suppliers and address supply chain issues
• Address product safety and take-back, and
• Better promote our products and services as sustainable solutions.

In a similar vein, employees indicated that our Corporate Responsibility focus should be on supply chain and products and services, recognizing that the management of CR issues within our operations is at a fairly mature stage.

Taking Action

What are we doing about all of this? In fact, our stakeholder engagement process has validated some of the issues that we had previously identified. And while we are committed to continuous improvement, our current programs and practices address some of the concerns raised by our stakeholders.

In terms of issue one — communication of our CR efforts — we have:

• Substantially increased the breadth and scope of our reporting through a more comprehensive web report, accessible directly from the home page of our web site.
• Promoted our print and web reports through CorporateRegister.com, one of the world's most comprehensive directories of corporate non-financial reports.
• Generated significant media coverage for our community investment initiatives (29 million impressions in 2005).

For information on actions taken vis-à-vis other emerging issues, please see the appropriate section of this report, i.e., supply chain issues, product safety and take-back, and sustainable solutions.