Governance highlights

Read highlights about our ongoing commitment to corporate governance.

Building on our commitment to good governance

At TELUS, we are committed to high standards in corporate governance and are constantly evolving our practices and pursuing transparency and integrity in everything we do. We believe that strong corporate governance is the foundation for accountability to our shareholders and we strive to be at the forefront of governance best practices.

Best practices

Our long-standing best practices provide a foundation for TELUS to effectively pursue corporate governance excellence. See some of those practices below.

  • Independent Board and committees

  • Board diversity policy

  • Majority voting policy

  • Clawback policy

  • Say-on-pay vote

  • Shareholder engagement policy

  • Separate independent Chair of the Board and CEO positions

  • Code of ethics and conduct and EthicsLine

  • Privacy management program framework

  • Enterprise risk governance and oversight

  • Board recruitment process and orientation programs

  • Mandatory continuing education sessions for the Board

  • Limit on interlocking boards and number of public board directorships

  • Board and committee succession planning

  • CEO succession planning

  • Board, committee and director evaluations

  • Director term limits

  • Share ownership guidelines for directors and executives

Details on the above practices are in the Board policy manual and also available on the Corporate Policies section.

Pursuit of excellence

In 2018, we continued to advance our practices in the pursuit of excellence and investor confidence.

0%

of independent director nominees at our 2019 annual general meeting (AGM) are women

0%

of independent director nominees at our 2019 AGM represent diversity

0%

in favour of the election of our directors at 2018 AGM

0%

say-on-pay approval at our 2018 AGM

Some of the initiatives we pursued in 2018 include:

  • Attained our Board diversity target of 30 per cent diverse members and 30 per cent of each gender by the end of 2018 –50 per cent of the independent director nominees at our 2019 AGM are diverse (six nominees) and 42 per cent (five nominees) are women

  • Continued our dedication to gender diversity by committing to the Catalyst Accord 2022, which pledges to increase the average percentage of women on boards and in executive positions in Canada to 30 per cent or greater by 2022

  • Announced the appointment of two new directors, Christine Magee in August 2018 and Denise Pickett in November 2018, who bring a wealth of strategic and operational expertise, particularly in relation to retail and customer experience

  • Continued the implementation of our committee succession planning in May 2018 by appointing David Mowat as Chair of the Audit Committee and by giving other directors the opportunity to serve on different committees

  • Continued a comprehensive review of President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and executive succession planning, which included examining progress against prior high-potential development plans and discussing the strengths and development opportunities for the next generation of executive leadership team and CEO candidates

  • Conducted a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness and performance of each Board committee and committee chair, as well as the Chair of the Board

  • Approved our strategic plan, taking into account the opportunities and risks of each of our business units for the upcoming year.

For a full statement of TELUS corporate governance practices, please refer to the “Statement of TELUS’ corporate governance practices” in TELUS’ 2019 Information circular.