FORM 6-K

2.2

Company structure, products and services

BCE operates in two segments: Bell CTS and Bell Media.

Bell CTS provides a wide range of communication products and services to consumers, businesses and government customers across Canada. In addition, this segment includes our wholesale business, which buys and sells local telephone, long distance, data and other services from or to resellers and other carriers, as well as our national consumer electronics retailer, The Source (Bell) Electronics Inc.

Bell Media provides conventional TV, specialty TV, pay TV, streaming services, digital media services, radio broadcasting services and out-of-home and advanced advertising services to customers nationally across Canada. Revenues are derived primarily from advertising and subscriber fees.

For more information on BCE’s structure and the products and services offered, please see our most recent Integrated Annual Report available on bce.ca.

2.3

Governance

The Board of Directors of BCE (the “Board”) has established clear oversight of our corporate responsibility programs and our approach to ESG practices, with primary accountability at the committee level. See section 5 (Monitoring and Compliance) of this report for more information about the Board committees involved in our efforts to identify and respond to the risks of forced and child labour in our supply chains.

3	Our supply chains and business

3.1

Supply chains

BCE procures a large number and variety of products and services as part of delivering its services. We recognize that forced and child labour risks could exist in our supply chains, mainly for tangible goods produced by direct suppliers or subsequent tiers down the supply chain. We use the U.S. Department of Labor List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor to inform our identification of related risks in our supply chains.

The largest portion of our annual procurement of tangible goods is related to electronic products that we sell or otherwise provide to our customers, and electronic products that we use internally to provide connectivity, broadcast and other network services. The vast majority of those purchases are from large well-known providers of products who also have reporting obligations under the Act. These suppliers provide us with products such as modems, SIM cards, mobile phones, routers, servers, hard drives and other electronic equipment. Products in this category are predominantly manufactured and assembled in China and other south-east Asian countries where protections for workers may not match those we practise in our North American

operations, and therefore may be at higher risk of involving forced and child labour. More than 90% (by expense dollars) of the tangible electronic products that the company purchases annually are produced by suppliers who are members of the Responsible Business Alliance (“RBA”), are members of RBA’s Responsible Labour Initiative and have signed RBA’s Code of Conduct, which prohibits the use of forced and child labour.

3.2

Business

We consider there to be a limited risk of forced and child labour occurring in the Reporting Entities’ businesses. Geographically, the Reporting Entities’ businesses are in Canada, which, according to the Global Slavery Index, has a low prevalence of forced and child labour, a low risk of vulnerability to forced and child labour, and comparatively robust governmental oversight of the issue. Moreover, the Reporting Entities’ workforces are governed by the applicable federal and provincial labour and employment standards, in addition to our policies and procedures that govern recruitment and labour sourcing, working conditions and the ethical treatment of our employees.

4	Addressing forced and child labour in our supply chains and business

The following describes the individual elements of the framework BCE has put in place with the objective of assessing and mitigating the risk of forced and child labour in our supply chains and business.

4.1

Code of business conduct

The first layer of our framework to prevent forced and child labour is our Code of Business Conduct (the “Code”). The Code applies to all Reporting Entities and explains the fundamental values and standards of behaviour that are expected in all aspects of our business. It provides employees with clear guidelines for ethical business conduct related to interactions with customers, fellow team members, partners and the public. To demonstrate our commitment to the shared values and standards described in the Code, all employees, managers, executives and members of the Board must certify annually that they have reviewed and follow the Code. All employees must also take the online course on the Code when they join the company, and every second year thereafter. In 2023, we enhanced the Human Rights section of the Code to strengthen our support for the elimination of forced and child labour in supply chains.

4.2

SRM program

The second layer of our framework is BCE’s SRM program, which includes several components such as our Supplier Code of Conduct, our Corporate Responsibility Questionnaire and team member training. All Reporting Entities are required to follow the SRM program for all new purchase agreements, as well as renewals. The purpose of this program is to determine the level of risk associated with a supplier or their product in categories across a comprehensive spectrum, such as corporate responsibility (including business ethics, and respect for labour and human rights), health and safety, environment, privacy, information security, business continuity and financial stability. This enables the company to mitigate such risks by choosing suppliers that


For the month of:			March 2024			Commission File Number:			1-8481


BCE Inc.
By:			(signed) Curtis Millen
			Curtis Millen Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer
Date:			March 8, 2024


(1) Based on total revenue and total combined customer connections.