Canada Energy Regulator – 2024–25 Departmental Plan – Vision, Mission, Raison d’être and Operating Context

The CER’s vision, mission, mandate and role are detailed at Governance of the Canada Energy Regulator – Mandate, Roles and Responsibilities on the CER website.

Raison d’être: The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) regulates interprovincial and international pipelines and powerlines, offshore renewable energy projects, oil and natural gas operations in frontier areas, and energy trade.

Operating Context

Managing risks and seizing opportunities in the work the CER does on behalf of all Canadians will affect how the CER achieves planned results for 2024–25. The CER has an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Framework for managing risks in the context of the current governance model and Strategic Plan. ERM is a holistic approach to identifying, assessing, preparing for, and managing organization-wide strategic risks. By providing a framework to identify enterprise-level risk events, ERM enables the CER’s Board of Directors and senior management to strategically manage events that might stand in the way of organizational success and identify mitigations to these risks.

In 2024–25, the CER will mitigate risks related to:

  • Industry safety: There is a risk that the CER is ineffective in preventingFootnote 1 a high-consequence event resulting in significant harm to people, property, Sites of Indigenous Significance and/or the environment.
  • Indigenous Rights/Crown Consultation: There is a risk that the CER does not adequately respect and respond to Indigenous rights and interests or meaningfully carry out Crown consultation with Indigenous Peoples, or meet its commitments in the UN Declaration Act Action Plan. This may lead to inadequately addressing, avoiding, or minimizing adverse impacts on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and interests, and a loss of confidence and/or trust in the CER’s commitment to Reconciliation by Indigenous Peoples, Canadians and/or Parliamentarians.
  • Workforce: There is a risk that the CER cannot adequately attract, retain, and develop a diverse, inclusive, and modernizedFootnote 2 workforce. This could lead to voluntary attrition, decreased productivity, not fulfilling the CER mandate and erosion of CER culture.
  • Sustainability of Funding: There is a risk that uncertain funding levels could result in insufficient resources to deliver current and future work, leading to an inability to carry out regulatory work, balance and execute on Strategic Priorities versus core work, and experience a reputational loss.
  • Cybersecurity Breach to CER Systems: There is a risk that CER’s technical infrastructure and systems are inadequately and/or insufficiently supported. This may lead to a cybersecurity breach; unauthorized disclosure of protected CER data; and/or unauthorized alteration or destruction of CER data, IT systems and digital services; and/or a disruption of CER systems and inability to carry out daily operations.
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