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Canadian Tire
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Business Ethics

Our Commitment

We are committed to maintaining our place as one of Canada’s most trusted companies by embracing clear ethical conduct standards across our operations and ensuring that our culture prioritizes operating with integrity.

Our efforts to foster emotional connection, brand recognition and customer loyalty have allowed Canadian Tire to remain one of Canada’s Most Trusted Brands.1 Not only are we proud of this achievement, but we also consider it to be a significant competitive advantage.

Our current and future success relies on the diligence we have demonstrated over the decades to earn and preserve the trust Canadians have in us. Foundational to this are the high standards of business conduct set out in our Code of Conduct (the Code), which governs how we meet our goals as a Company and ensures we do so while building and protecting our reputation with employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. While the majority of our subsidiaries are bound by the standards set forth in the Code, some of our subsidiaries also maintain their own codes of conduct, including CT REIT as a publicly-traded entity and Helly Hansen. The enterprise also relies on supplier codes of conduct to outline the expectations of the third parties we work with.

We believe it is vital that everyone on our team has a shared understanding of what it means to act with honesty, integrity and respect in line with these codes of conduct, and we achieve this through our Triangle Ethics Office and the compliance programs the Triangle Ethics Office oversees.2 The Triangle Ethics Office is able to leverage our leadership’s commitment to ethical conduct and our Core Values to drive a culture of integrity that fosters a positive and productive working environment and helps us manage risk. Our standards of business conduct apply to all employees3, directors and independent contractors, from the CEO to corporate-operated store employees across the country and even employees that work abroad as part of our global sourcing operations.

We Are Here to Make Life in Canada Better by growing the trust that Canadians have in our brand by operating with honesty, integrity and respect.

Our Approach

1

Maintaining a culture of integrity

The Triangle Ethics Office is run by a team of employees dedicated to updating, communicating and overseeing compliance with the codes of conduct for CTC and its subsidiaries (apart from Helly Hansen), with executive oversight and reporting obligations to the Board’s Audit Committee.

Our onboarding process requires new employees, directors and independent contractors to review and sign off on their respective codes of conduct. All current employees and directors are also expected to review and acknowledge any updates to their respective codes of conduct. Ongoing education and awareness of our ethics program is facilitated through the annual Code sign-off process, which is also paired with an employee training module every other year that covers the employee’s code of conduct, scenarios that reflect the four commitments described below and an assessment requiring an 80% grade to pass. In 2022, 97% of our employees4 completed the annual sign-off of their respective code of conduct. All CTC, Canadian Tire Bank and CT REIT directors also completed their respective code of conduct annual sign-off in 2022.

The onboarding process also requires all new employees to complete training on harassment and discrimination, prevention of workplace violence, and occupational health and safety. It is the responsibility of all employees to ensure that the Company continues its long tradition of maintaining a respectful and safe workplace. Employees are informed of their responsibilities and obligations and given tools to manage and reduce the risk of harassment, discrimination, violence, and workplace hazards.

Our values in action: We take personal responsibility

The commitments outlined in our Code of Conduct reflect our values and form the foundation for how we go about business and interact with internal and external stakeholders.

Commitment 1

We treat others as we would like to be treated.

Commitment 2

We safeguard our Company assets, information and reputation.

Commitment 3

We conduct our business honestly and with integrity.

Commitment 4

We contribute to the communities in which we operate.

Our approach to supporting an ethical business culture is periodically put through a review process. In early 2023, the Triangle Ethics Office completed its annual review of the CTC and CT REIT codes of conduct and related protocols that were leveraged in 2022 to confirm our processes were operating effectively and efficiently throughout that year.

Employees are encouraged to seek guidance from the Triangle Ethics Office with any questions on our codes of conduct. In the event that a situation arises that the employee feels is in breach of a code, they also have numerous channels (including anonymous submission) to bring the complaint or concern forward to the Triangle Ethics Office, which will review the concerns raised, conduct or facilitate an investigation as necessary and ensure an appropriate resolution is found. On a quarterly basis, the Triangle Ethics Office issues a report to the Audit Committee of the Board that consists of a statistical summary of reported incidents and their resolutions, incident trends, granted waivers of compliance with the Code (if any) and significant developments that occurred during the reporting period that could impact our standards, including regulatory developments.

Investigating complaints by third parties

The Triangle Ethics Office oversees the resolution of all matters related to the ethical conduct of our operations, including complaints made by individuals outside of the enterprise, such as our customers and suppliers. Whatever channel an individual uses, the matter will be directed to the Triangle Ethics Office to ensure that the conduct in question is investigated in a manner consistent with the standards we strive to uphold at the Company.

2

Engaging in fair competition

The fundamental objective of competition law is to maintain and encourage free and fair competition in the marketplace. These laws reflect the belief that in a marketplace characterized by honest and vigorous competition, the most innovative and efficient companies will thrive, and consumers will have the best products and services available at fair prices.

Our reputation and long-term success are based not only on how effectively we serve our customers and how successful we are at increasing shareholder value, but also on the way we conduct our business and our competitive practices in the marketplace. As such, we have an established competition law compliance governance structure, which includes a Competition Law Corporate Operating Directive and Compliance Manual that sets out operational expectations that must be complied with across the Company. We also conduct ongoing training to assist employees in identifying situations where competition law issues may arise and knowing how to address those situations and when to seek legal advice.

3

Setting ethical standards for our vendors and other business relationships

It is important to us that our values be shared among those with whom we do business. We believe we can achieve the best outcomes by agreeing that specified ethical standards will apply across our value chain and will govern our business relationships before we start doing business with a new supplier or other third party. As a Company with global relationships, this can result in going above and beyond local compliance requirements to ensure that we are consistently embodying our values of honesty, integrity and respect across our value chain.

All our vendors are required to demonstrate and attest to their understanding and compliance with the standards set out in our Supplier Code of Business Conduct, which is reviewed regularly. We also have programs in place to audit our vendors against our standards. Learn more about our responsible sourcing practices here.

1 https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/2023/gustavson-brand-trust-2023-final.pdf.

2 Our Helly Hansen subsidiary currently manages the sign-off and compliance of its code of conduct outside of the Triangle Ethics Office through its human resources department. As an enterprise, we are working to bring Helly Hansen’s ethics operations within the management of the Triangle Ethics Office to ensure we have enterprise alignment and cohesion in how the business conducts itself.

3 Unless otherwise indicated, all references to our employees across our ESG reporting include full-time and part-time employees of CTC, and do not include employees of Dealers, franchisees or agents.

4 Our Pacific Rim offices and international subsidiaries are currently not included in the Triangle Ethics Office’s annual code of conduct sign-off process, but we have plans to integrate these in the future.

Unless otherwise indicated, information in this ESG Report is provided for the 2022 fiscal year. For further information on our approach to ESG reporting, including our Glossary, which sets out definitions of capitalized terms and acronyms that are not otherwise defined on this page, and our forward-looking information disclaimer, please click here.