Working as a team, the ESG Steering Committee is comprised of functional expertise from the forestry executives in each of the Divisions in the Supply Chain – Woodlands, Sawmills, Pulp & Paper, and Consumer Products - and enabling process expertise from the corporate executive teams – finance, legal, human resources, safety, communications, and government relations.

Executives bring forward the expertise of their divisional leadership teams regarding sustainable forest management, manufacturing, customer needs, energy use, air and water impacts, waste, operations, and community partners. Together, they are responsible for sharing ESG related information with their leadership teams to ensure information is disseminated to all employees and linked to operating plans for execution.

Working with the divisional leadership teams, forestry executives continually identify risks and opportunities in each business. Business risks and opportunities such as costs, products, markets, capital projects, and workforce are reviewed annually and quarterly with the co-CEOs. ESG related risks and opportunities identified in each operating division are brought forward to the ESG Steering Committee and are also reviewed with the co-CEOs during annual budgeting sessions and quarterly performance reviews.

In addition, the Steering Committee is responsible for producing an annual ESG report to ensure our sustainability approach is communicated to our external partners.

1. CLIMATE CHANGE:

Climate change is top of mind to many internal and external stakeholders and government policies are rapidly increasing business costs. The Supply Chain is dependent on forests, therefore understanding the impacts of changing climate on forests is critical to sustainability. A discussion of JDI’s approach to mitigating the impacts of climate change can be found in the following sections: Climate Change & Adaptation (page 96) and GHG Emissions & Energy Use (page 106).

2. WORKFORCE AVAILABILITY:

The labour market is experiencing rapid change due to issues related to demographic shifts, an aging workforce, changing interests of the workforce, and the rural nature of our operations. Attracting and retaining talent at all levels of the organization is critical for success.

3. LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS:

Forest policy and operating approvals are often informed at a local level. Inadequate information can lead to poor public policy. More information related to JDI’s approach to local stakeholder interests in our operations and forest management are found in the following sections: Sustainable Forest Management (page 36), Forest Conservation & Biodiversity (page 52), and Air & Water Quality Management (page 72).

4. REPORTING & TRANSPARENCY:

Stakeholder expectations for more information about business’ impact on the environment and society are rapidly evolving. To satisfy stakeholder expectations for more information, the mandate of the Steering Committee is to enhance transparency in the 2021 Report and the quality of disclosure, in line with ESG reporting best practices. Over the next two years we will aim to shift reporting from sustainability reporting to robust ESG disclosure. In 2021 the following key actions were undertaken:

a. Conducted a comprehensive Stakeholder Materiality Assessment by engaging diverse stakeholders to identify Material ESG topics;

b. Added robust climate change reporting aligned with the TCFD standard;

c. Added third-party Limited Assurance to selected ESG metrics;

d. Outlined long-term sustainability goals for material topics;

e. Designed and implemented an internal management system to standardize, collect, verify and store ESG related data and information;

f. Expanded the boundary of the Supply Chain to include data and information on Irving Personal Care and Juniper Organics Limited.