CIAC – Celebrating 50 years as the voice of Canada's chemistry industry
As CIAC enters its 50th year, it’s fitting to reflect on the origins of our association and what we have achieved over the past five decades.
CIAC started in 1962 as the Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association, with a small group of companies located in Quebec and Ontario. Like most business associations, CCPA’s exclusive purpose was to deal with economic issues. However, as the chemistry industry evolved over the next two decades, it faced a number of domestic and international safety incidents, (including the infamous Mississauga train derailment) which forced the association to rethink its “raison d’être”.
The reality was that the public did not trust the chemistry industry. Recognizing that, in 1985, Canada’s chemistry CEOs began developing Responsible Care®− an industry-led responsibility initiative. CCPA became the first Canadian business association to require its members to commit to a set of principles as a condition of their membership. Responsible Care required members to do the right thing, and ultimately, to be seen to be doing the right thing through public verifications.
Creating Responsible Care represented a major shift in how business associations operated, and over the last 27 years, our association’s approach has been emulated by organizations in Canada and around the world. Within the global chemistry industry, the Canadian Responsible Care model has been adopted in 60 countries.
Of course, both Responsible Care and CIAC’s membership requirements have evolved considerably since 1985. We now require our members to report their emissions annually, and to commit to continuously improving their environmental and safety performance. This approach has produced significant results – since 1992 (CIAC’s first year of mandatory emissions reporting) our members have eliminated 98 per cent of their emissions of 14 high-priority substances targeted by Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan, reduced the global warming potential of their operations by 66 per cent, and decreased the ozone-depleting potential of their operations by 92 per cent. Today, a unit of chemical product produced by a CIAC member-company is manufactured with 89 per cent less emissions than in 1992 – a remarkable achievement.
Furthermore, CIAC members are leaders in workplace safety, and have dramatically improved their record over the last two decades. In 1990, there were 3.2 injuries or illnesses reported for every 100 member-company employees, but by 2008, that number had been reduced by more than 60 per cent, to 1.19.
CIAC has a long track-record of performance, which gives us credibility when trying to influence policy, or advocate on behalf of Canada’s chemistry industry. But our members never like to rest on their laurels. In 2010, our Board made the decision to become the first chemistry association in the world to integrate the concept of sustainability into Responsible Care’s ethic, principles and verification approach. This further solidified CIAC’s stature as the global leader of Responsible Care. And the Board went even further. That same year, it voted to change our association’s name to the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, and revised the association’s role and mandate, to better represent Canada’s modern industrial chemistry value-chain.
What the next fifty years will bring for CIAC remains to be seen, but key to our association’s evolution will be its ability to maintain a manufacturing focus, to strengthen its membership, to stay ahead of the sustainability curve, and to keep step with changes in the chemistry industry in Canada and abroad. Given our fifty-year history of trailblazing, and our commitment to continuous improvement through Responsible Care, I have every confidence that CIAC will remain a strong voice for Canada’s chemistry industry in the future.