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GENERAL

About Seaspan ULC

Seaspan ULC is a British Columbian company that operates a federally regulated tugboat and barge services business on Canada’s West Coast.

Seaspan ULC is also affiliated with several companies and partnerships that provide a wide range of other marine services in British Columbia, namely:

  • Seaspan Ferries Corporation, which provides commercial ferry services.
  • Marine Petrobulk Limited Partnership, which provides marine fuel bunkering services.
  • HaiSea Marine Limited Partnership, which will provide ship escort and docking services to vessels calling at the LNG Canada Project in Kitimat, BC. Together with Seaspan’s tug and barge business, Seaspan Ferries Corporation, Marine Petrobulk Limited Partnership and HaiSea Marine Limited Partnership make up a group of businesses we call the “Seaspan Marine Group”.
  • Vancouver Shipyards Co. Ltd., Victoria Shipyards Co. Ltd. and Vancouver Drydock Company Limited Partnership, which provide ship building, repair and refit services collectively under the banner of “Seaspan Shipyards”.

As a point of clarification, this Accessibility Plan specifically applies to:

  • Seaspan ULC employees – both mariners and office personnel – who work within Seaspan ULC’s tug and barge business; and
  • Seaspan ULC employees who provide services to the broader Seaspan Marine Group (including executive management, finance and accounting, human resources, Health Safety, Environment and Quality, legal and general administrative services).

It does not apply to the affiliated entities listed above.[1] Therefore, Seaspan ULC is henceforth referred to in this document as “Seaspan Marine” to distinguish it from the affiliated businesses to which this plan does not apply.

As a long-standing and proud member of British Columbia’s maritime community, we are guided by our core values of Safety, Care, Efficiency and Accountability. We are committed to supporting causes where we live and work and safeguarding our rivers and coastal waters.  We believe it is our responsibility to provide a safe and barrier-free environment for our employees and customers.

Requirements

As a federally regulated company in the transportation sector, Seaspan Marine is governed by the Accessible Canada Act (ACA).

The ACA is a federal law enacted by the Canadian government in 2019 to promote and ensure equal access and inclusion for persons with disabilities. The ACA applies to all federally regulated entities, including companies, organizations, and government agencies.

Per the ACA, all federally regulated entities with more than nine employees must:

  • Prepare and publish an initial Accessibility Plan
  • Establish an accessibility feedback process
  • Report annually on the progress towards the plan and address any feedback received

Our Accessibility Plan must be reviewed in its entirety and published every three years.

Overall, the Accessible Canada Act represents a significant step towards creating a more inclusive and accessible society for all Canadians, including those with disabilities. By complying with these requirements, Seaspan Marine can help ensure that we are providing equal access and opportunities to all members of society.

Executive Summary

At Seaspan Marine, we recognize the importance of providing employees and customers with equal access to our workplace, programs and services. While we have made advancements in our overall diversity and inclusion (D&I) practices, we are still at the beginning of our accessibility journey.

We are committed to advancing our systems and processes to ensure inclusion for everyone. The following table provides an overview of our commitments over the next three years:

Table 1.
Executive Summary: Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Plan 2023-2026

Priority Area Commitments
Employment Commitment 1: Incorporate accessibility into our recruitment practices and promote open career opportunities to people with disabilities.
Commitment 2: Ensure that employees with disabilities feel that they are supported from day one on the job with Seaspan Marine.
Commitment 3: Promote a culture that supports employees with disabilities.
Commitment 4: Plan an employee communication campaign to inform employees of new accessibility policies and services available to them.
Built Environment Commitment 1: Continue working towards providing employees with easy and accessible signage including braille.
Commitment 2: Understand how we can improve accessibility in our built environment for our Seaspan Marine employees.
Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Commitment 1: Identify opportunities for Seaspan Marine to maximize accessibility through existing features and tools available through 3rd party providers.
Communication (other than ICT) Commitment 1: Reduce barriers to internal communications for employees throughout our centralized intranet site.
Commitment 2: Ensure employees can fully participate and engage in our all-hands meetings.
Commitment 3: Improve accessibility to our public-facing communication tools.
Procurement of Goods, Services, & Facilities Commitment 1: Include accessibility as part of our D&I criteria during our supplier intake process.
Design & Delivery of Programs & Services Commitment 1: Understand the barriers that may exist for our customers in how our programs and services are delivered.
Commitment 2: Ensure that our customer-facing employees are aware of and able to effectively communicate and support customers with disabilities.
Transportation Commitment 1: Ensure that all employees, regardless of their ability, have safe and accessible transportation between the main transit hub and the worksite.

Accessibility Statement

Seaspan Marine is dedicated to identifying and addressing barriers that prevent people with disabilities from fully participating as employees or customers of Seaspan Marine.

We will continue to engage with our community, our employees, and our customers to further advance our practices and ensure accessibility remains a priority.

Accessibility Committee

Seaspan Marine’s current Accessibility Plan project group includes:

Linda Wortman
Chief Financial Officer

Jordan Pechie
Senior Vice President Seaspan Marine Transportation

Jessica McHaffie
Manager, Marine Personnel

Miles Martyniuk
Health Safety Environment and Quality Coordinator

Andrew Graham
HR Business Partner

Karen Obeck
Director, Corporate Facilities and Real Estate

The Accessibility Plan project group will hand off to Seaspan Marine’s Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Committee and the D&I Committee will work with departments to implement the Accessibility Plan and respond to feedback in a timely manner.

Feedback

Seaspan Marine is committed to providing an open and transparent feedback process. For more information, to provide feedback, or to request alternative formats of this Plan, please contact Seaspan Marine through one of the following methods:

Anonymous feedback form: seaspan.com/who-we-are/diversity/accessibility-plan/feedback/
Email: info@Seaspan.com
Direct mail: 10 Pemberton, North Vancouver, BC. V7P 2R1
Telephone: 778.729.0288

Alternative Formats

Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Plan is available in the following formats:

  • Print
  • Large Print
  • Electronic
  • Audio

A braille copy of Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Plan may be requested by email at info@seaspan.com or by phone at 778-729-0288.

PRIORITY AREAS

Area 1: Employment

Our Accessibility Goal

Seaspan Marine works to foster a culture that is respectful, inclusive and reflective of all the people who live in our region. Each of our employees has different career needs and goals – be it skills development, stability, variety, advancement or innovation, but share a commitment to safety and a passion for the marine industry. 

We are committed to creating the same sense of safety and inclusion for people with disabilities as for all our employees.

Current Level of Accessibility

Seaspan Marine has made a conscious effort to expand our Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) initiatives to make the workplace inclusive and safe for all employees. Our D&I initiatives include the establishment of an Employment Equity Statement on all our job postings and providing managers with conscious inclusion training and inclusive training workshops.

Additionally, we have an established Wellness Group dedicated to providing employees with a variety of services including ergonomic assessments, workplace accommodations, and acting as a liaison between medical providers and the employer.

Actions

Commitment 1: Incorporate accessibility into our recruitment practices and promote open career opportunities to people with disabilities by:

  • Identifying accessible job boards and recruitment sources to expand our posting reach for open positions by June 2024.
  • Developing a process for candidates to request accommodations during the recruitment and interview process by June 2025.

Commitment 2: Ensure that employees with disabilities feel that they are supported from day one on the job with Seaspan Marine by:

  • Creating a formal process for employees to request accommodations or confidentially disclose disabilities as part of their onboarding process by June 2025.

Commitment 3: Promote a culture that supports employees with disabilities by:

  • Communicating to employees that Seaspan encourages employees to request accommodations at any point while employed by Seaspan, not just during recruitment and onboarding by June 2024.
  • Facilitating the opportunity for employees to form an Accessibility Resource Group by June 2025.

Commitment 4: Plan an employee communication campaign starting in 2023 to inform them of new accessibility policies and services available to them. Communications will include awareness of disability definitions and common barriers to accessibility.

Area 2: Built Environment

Our Accessibility Goal

Seaspan has made recent upgrades throughout our facilities that promote a barrier-free environment. We recognize that the work is not done and are committed to continuing our efforts to provide employees with an accessible workplace that fits their needs.

Current Level of Accessibility

The Seaspan Marine building at 10 Pemberton Avenue in North Vancouver BC has been recently renovated to include ramps, automatic doors and an accessible washroom on the main floor. The second level, however, can only be accessed by stairs at this time. A ramp and automatic door were installed to provide barrier-free access to our outdoor waterfront shared area where employees often enjoy their lunch or meet with special interest groups.

Seaspan Marine employees also have access to the adjacent building which includes an accessible lunchroom, additional washrooms, as well as accessible showers and change rooms.

Way-finding signage has been installed throughout our facilities. We use consistent and descriptive names for all our buildings and have developed a standard naming convention for meeting rooms and other internal signage.

Actions

Commitment 1: To continue working towards providing employees with easy and accessible signage by:

  • Establishing a budget and potential timeline for incorporating universal design, including high-contrast, plain-language, and Braille signage throughout the interior of our Seaspan Marine building by June 2024.
  • Consulting with people with lived experiences of disabilities to ensure that signage upgrades meet their needs by December 2024.

Commitment 2: To understand how we can improve accessibility in our built environment for our Seaspan Marine employees we will:

  • Develop a list of possible accessible upgrades to common spaces.
  • Investigate the feasibility, time, and budget for installing these features in the Seaspan Marine building by June 2024.

Area 3: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Our Accessibility Goal

Our goal is to provide barrier-free access to Information and Communication Technologies. We aim to identify ways to remove barriers in our existing ICT infrastructure and enable all employees and customers to engage fully with Seaspan Marine.

Current Level of Accessibility

Seaspan Marine’s ICT infrastructure is largely governed by our parent company, the Washington Companies. We can make requests for assistive technology for employees as needed.

We are currently using some in-house ICT software programs that have not accounted for accessibility in their design. We are in the process of replacing these programs with 3rd party programs that offer more modern features.

Actions

Commitment 1: Identify opportunities for Seaspan Marine to maximize accessibility through existing features and tools available through 3rd party providers by:

  • Developing an accessible template to request accessibility features and information from all 3rd party ICT providers by June 2024.
  • Creating an inventory of all accessibility features available to employees and identifying which features are default system settings and which need to be turned on by June 2024.
  • Providing employees with an ICT Accessibility Guide that highlights tools that can be used to remove barriers for themselves and others by June 2025.

Area 4: Communication, other than ICT

Our Accessibility Goal

We commit to making communication easier for everyone at Seaspan Marine. We aim to implement accessible communication design standards to ensure barrier-free information to our employees and customers.

Current Level of Accessibility

We understand the importance of ensuring that our employees, customers, and the public can interact with Seaspan Marine without barriers. As such, we have already started working towards including universal design in all our communication strategies. We prioritize the use of plain language by minimizing acronyms and jargon; we include descriptive captions on our social media posts; and have started exploring ways to make our external website more accessible by including the use of alt-text for images.

Actions

Commitment 1: Reduce barriers to internal communications for employees throughout our centralized intranet site by:

  • Investigating SharePoint’s accessibility features to better understand how we can reduce barriers to information on our intranet by June 2024.
  • Consulting with professionals with lived experience of disabilities to develop a best practice guide to share with department leads to start implementing universal design on their department intranet page with support from IT by June 2026.

Commitment 2: Ensure employees can fully participate and engage in our all-hands meetings by:

  • Providing meeting recordings with close captioning to employees who attended the meeting remotely starting in 2024.
  • Sharing meeting materials in alternative formats with employees with disabilities before or after meetings whenever possible starting in 2024.

Commitment 3: Improve accessibility to our public-facing communication tools by:

  • Continuing to investigate and implement accessibility features on our external-facing website including the use of alt-text on all images by June 2025.

Area 5: Procurement of Goods, Services, and Facilities

Our Accessibility Goal

At Seaspan Marine, we understand that creating a barrier-free Canada is everyone’s responsibility. We are committed to making accessibility part of our assessment criteria when selecting and working with vendors.

Current Level of Accessibility

Our Supply Chain Management Team operates its own internal D&I group that is tasked with identifying opportunities to include D&I criteria in our vendor evaluation process.

Accessibility had not yet been included as a priority in our procurement process.

Actions

Commitment 1: Include accessibility as part of D&I criteria during our supplier intake process by June 2025.

Area 6: Design and Delivery of Programs and Services

Our Accessibility Goal

We aim to better understand the barriers that our customers may encounter when interacting with Seaspan Marine and ensure that we are creating opportunities to remove barriers wherever possible in our programs and services.

Current Level of Accessibility

Seaspan Marine’s services include Ship Docking, Tanker Escort & Emergency Towing and Marine Services. We provide critical transportation for many of BC’s largest industries and major marine construction projects, delivering safe, reliable and on-time service, every time.

Many of our services are delivered from our ships; however, we communicate regularly with customers by phone, email, and in person, and customers can provide feedback through our customer relationship management program. We currently do not have assistive technology in place to facilitate customer engagements.

Actions

Commitment 1: Understand the barriers that may exist for our customers in how our programs and services are delivered by:

  • Developing a customer survey and feedback process using universal design standards to ask about the customer experience as it relates to accessibility by June 2024.
  • Collecting feedback from customers regarding possible barriers to access by June 2025.
  • Determining actions for improving customer accessibility by June 2026.

Commitment 2: Ensure that our customer-facing employees can effectively communicate and support customers with disabilities by:  

  • Researching and identifying training opportunities for our customer-facing employees by June 2024.
  • Identifying priority groups of employees for accessibility training by June 2024.
  • Enrolling priority employees in accessibility training starting in 2026.

Area 7: Transportation

Our Accessibility Goal

Seaspan Marine understands the importance of providing accessible transportation. We are committed to a barrier-free future for our employees that provides ease of access for all.

Current Level of Accessibility

Seaspan Marine is not responsible for the transportation of members of the public. However, due to our location, we provide shuttle services to our employees from a central transit hub. We recently purchased an electric vehicle that is not currently equipped with accessibility features.

Actions

Commitment 1: To ensure that all employees, regardless of their ability, have safe and accessible transportation to and from their worksite by:

  • Including accessibility in the considerations for the future procurement of our shuttle vehicles based on the depreciation of our current assets. We anticipate that our current vehicles will be in use for at least the next five (5) years and are committed to providing more information on this goal in our annual updates.

CONSULTATIONS

Summary

The concept of “Nothing Without Us” supports the notion that persons with disabilities must be involved in the ideation of Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Plan to support us in identifying opportunities to progress accessibility in our policies and procedures and built environment. We consulted the British Columbia Centre for Ability (BC CFA) in the development of our Accessibility Plan.

Consultation Process

We provided the BC CFA with a draft of our Plan as a Word document for their review. We followed this with a live session on May 9, 2023, to discuss the impact and significance of our goals towards creating an accessible workplace and experience for our employees, customers, and the public.

The session was hosted virtually via Zoom and the consultation team from BC CFA was asked in advance about any accommodation that would be needed for the session. During the session, participants had the option to turn on closed captioning.

Each priority area of the Plan was discussed and accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation for everyone to see.

Results

During the session, we reviewed each of Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Commitments and gathered feedback from the BC CFA. Overall, the BC CFA found the Plan to be clear and in plain language. BC CFA believes that the Plan demonstrates Seaspan’s clear commitment to reviewing current practices to enhance accessibility in the workplace.

The majority of the commitments and their associated action plans follow a clear and logical sequence. However, the BC CFA identified a couple of key areas where additional clarity would make the commitment more meaningful. This was incorporated throughout the Plan by:

  • Adding opportunities to connect with people and professionals with lived experiences of disabilities to inform Seaspan Marine’s strategies for enhancing accessibility in the built environment and communications
  • Ensuring that universal design principles guide the development of templates and surveys to enable the full participation of all groups.
  • Modifying terminology to be more inclusive of people with various disabilities.

Future Consultations

Future versions of Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Plan will place greater emphasis on conducting a more comprehensive consultation process to fully align with the concept of “Nothing Without Us”. Our goal is to engage broader mechanisms for consultation of organizations, employees, and customers through testimonials and storytelling, feedback surveys, and facilitated consultative sessions. We recognize that a more robust consultation process for future versions of our plan will allow us to identify additional barriers and make meaningful progress on accessibility, and D&I will be achieved.

CONCLUSION

Seaspan Marine’s Accessibility Plan aims to demonstrate our strong dedication to identifying, removing, and preventing barriers to accessibility in all seven (7) priority areas described in the Accessible Canada Act. We know that the initial publication of this Plan is just the first step towards creating a more equitable workplace and that there will be more we need to do. By setting targets and holding ourselves accountable, we will create a workplace that provides equal opportunities for all.

We recognize that promoting Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) at Seaspan Marine will have far-reaching benefits for our employees, customers, and our business as a whole. We will dedicate resources to making meaningful progress on our Accessibility Plan commitments to contribute to a more accessible Canada for all.

While we acknowledge that advancing accessibility is just one aspect of our D&I journey, we are determined to create a workplace that is safe, accessible, and equitable for all marginalized groups, including but not limited to, Indigenous people, racialized individuals, members of the 2SLBGTQ+ community, and women.

[1] Seaspan Ferries Corporation, Vancouver Shipyards Co. Ltd., Victoria Shipyards Co. Ltd. and Vancouver Drydock Limited Partnership are provincially-regulated businesses and thus are not subject to the Accessible Canada Act.  Marine Petrobulk Limited Partnership and HaiSea Marine Limited Partnership will develop and implement Accessibility Plans for their employees in due course in accordance with the timelines required under the legislation.