growing together through our environmental practices

At TELUS, our environmental performance is an integral part of our triple bottom line approach. Our commitment to environmental sustainability is demonstrated by our own efforts to minimize our environmental footprint, as well as by the delivery of communication solutions that help minimize the impact our customers may have.

As a telecommunications company with national infrastructure, our impact on the environment is determined by the scope of our operations, such as the number of central and radio and cellular towers we maintain, and by the for our service to be both ubiquitous and reliable.

Environmental management

TELUS' environmental leadership is demonstrated by our commitment to integrate environmental considerations into business decisions, including the build-out of our network, power management, property transactions and fire suppression. It is also evident in innovative communication solutions, such as TELUS remote worker (teleworking), teleconferencing and distance learning, all of which help reduce our impact on the environment. Our intention is to exceed regulatory standards or internally achieve best practices whenever possible, and to realize continuous improvement in the processes we have to protect the environment.

Environmental risk management (e.g., site assessments, site remediation, aspect identification and target setting) continues to contribute to our overall enterprise-wide risk assessment.

TELUS International

In 2006, TELUS evaluated for the first time the environment, health and safety (EHS) aspects of our call centre operations in the Philippines. Based on a high-level audit, the risks associated with these operations from an EHS perspective relate primarily to the requirement for training team members on environmental issues such as spills and releases. This risk is being mitigated by a roll-out of web-based training courses as appropriate. The majority of environmental risk associated with operations is controlled by building landlords and not TELUS. For the most part, TELUS International results are not specifically included in any discussion of TELUS' environmental results. We will further assess environmental aspects of TELUS International in 2007.

Environmental management system (EMS)

We work to achieve our environmental goals through applying our environmental management system (EMS), which is based on the ISO 14001:2004 model. This standard is globally accepted as the benchmark by which leading organizations measure EMS. Our objective is to review our environmental risk on an ongoing (minimum annual) basis by assessing our aspects and impacts, developing policies and procedures to minimize impacts, and setting targets and monitoring progress.

In 2006, TELUS retained PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. to perform a gap analysis of our EMS in comparison to the standard. The results of this review were received in the fourth quarter of 2006 and are summarized as follows.

Strengths noted in the review included the recognition that there is a strong commitment to environmental management across the company as demonstrated through a high level of awareness of key environmental issues, environmental management practices and continuous improvement requirements. It was also noted that our environmental policy effectively communicates TELUS' commitment to our stakeholders and our internal resource for environmental management is viewed as effective by team members across the company.

The gap analysis identified a number of areas where we do not fully meet the ISO 14001:2004 standard. This included a need for:

• Better processes for identifying new environmental risks, including those posed by changing laws and other requirements
• A comprehensive and consistent program to better enable appropriate environmental performance by contractors
• EMS documentation separated based on policy and procedural documents, reviewed regularly, including consistent targets, and demonstrating stronger control of records.

Based on the review, we have established a three-year plan to address deficiencies to the extent practicable. Our longrange target is to be fully compliant with the ISO 14001:2004 standard by the end of 2009.

Application of EMS (policies, objectives, targets, reporting) - Environmental policies have formed the backbone of our EMS since the early 1990s. Our current corporate environment policy was adopted in 1997 and last modified in 2006. All policies are supported by specific procedures and targets for key aspects of our business including spills and releases, Halon, fuel storage, remediation of sites and waste management. As indicated by the gap analysis described above, we need to formalize some of our procedures and separate the various components of our EMS process, which we plan to do over the course of the next three years.

Our environmental policy is available at about.telus.com/ publicpolicy/environmental.html.

To ensure good governance, we present environmental reports to the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors each quarter. In addition, selected environmental indicators in our 2006 corporate social responsibility report have been verified by PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a portion of the Management's discussion and analysis section of our annual report is devoted to environmental risk.