Managing the Bank

Making the Bank more equitable, diverse and inclusive

The Bank implemented the 2024 priorities from its equity, diversity and inclusion strategy, and made progress on its representation goals.

An important development in this area was the launch of anti-bias training for leaders and senior officers. This is part of the Bank’s broader efforts to ensure equitable opportunities and outcomes for all employees.

Also in 2024, the Bank evolved its compensation framework to bring its practices in line with recent changes to federal pay equity legislation.

Meeting employer commitments for Reconciliation

Under its Reconciliation Action Plan, the Bank made progress on a number of commitments:

• It implemented mandatory training on Indigenous cultural awareness for all employees; this work also responds to Call to Action 57 and Call to Action 92 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
• It offered workshops to help employees deepen their understanding of Reconciliation and how to be inclusive of Indigenous cultures.
• It developed an Indigenous talent strategy that includes a recruitment initiative, a hiring program and a career-development initiative.

Enhancing the Bank’s systems, tools and processes

The Bank’s operations are critical to a well-functioning Canadian economy and financial system. The Bank remained focused on enhancing its resilience and reinforcing the systems, tools and processes that enable critical operations. Focus areas included:

• updating the technology and infrastructure used at the Bank’s data centres and regional offices
• enhancing processes and strengthening compliance for third-party providers
• completing simulation exercises that tested the Bank’s ability to recover from and continue operating after a disaster

The Bank completed the migration of infrastructure and applications from its legacy environment to resilient cloud or on-site systems that increase flexibility and reliability. It continued to automate workflows and other processes, freeing up staff time for new work of greater value.

Reinforcing cyber security inside and outside the Bank

Throughout the year, cyber security threats continued to evolve rapidly. Reinforcing operational resilience against such threats remained a top priority. To this end, the Bank:

• strengthened its cyber security framework
• enhanced policies and directives to address emerging threats
• refined incident response capabilities through protocol development and readiness exercises

In addition to securing its own operations against cyber threats, the Bank also has a mandated responsibility to promote the stability and operational resilience of Canada’s financial system. To support this work, the Bank continued its leadership of the Canadian Financial Sector Resiliency Group (CFRG)—a public-private partnership focused on strengthening the financial sector’s critical infrastructure against risks to business operations, including cyber incidents.

In 2024, the CFRG completed a cross-sectoral disaster recovery exercise. It focused on assessing the risks that come from the interdependencies between the financial and telecommunications sectors.

As well, the Bank actively contributed to the G7 Cyber Expert Group. In an increasingly complex and interconnected global financial system, this working group coordinates cyber security policy and strategy across G7 jurisdictions.

Meeting the Bank’s commitment to greener operations 

The Bank continued to look for ways to reduce the environmental impact of its operations. It began a review of the climate resilience of the buildings it owns. The review will be completed in early 2025, and will help the Bank to better forecast, manage and adapt to climate change–related impacts on its properties.

The Bank also released its 2024 report disclosing the risks it faces related to climate change. The report presents an overview of steps the Bank has taken to mitigate those risks and the progress it made on its climate commitments—including its goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.