Transat’s Vice-President, Communications and Corporate Affairs and Chief Brand Officer, Michel Lemay, is the recipient of one of the Green Living Awards handed out yesterday in Toronto by Green Living magazine. The awards recognize efforts and contributions by Canadians who are at the heart of transformations to business practices that propel durable social and environmental changes within their companies.

Mr. Lemay played a central role in the implementation of a corporate responsibility program at Transat. “The organization quickly bought in to the program and, thanks to excellent teamwork, several corporate responsibility projects have been implemented over the past five years,” he said.

For a tour operator, corporate responsibility broadly consists in incorporating social, environmental and economic concerns into the organization’s operations with a view to promoting mass tourism that is progressively more sustainable. This involves not only heritage protection and environmental stewardship, but also efforts to thwart poverty through economic activity that shows respect for host communities, and initiatives to counter some undesirable impacts of tourism, for example child sex tourism.

The criteria for selecting winners of the Green Living Awards were developed in partnership with the Pembina Institute, The Natural Step Canada and other leading sustainability experts, based on an internationally recognized framework for strategic sustainable development.

Transat A.T. Inc. is an integrated international tour operator with more than 60 destination countries and that distributes products in over 50 countries. A holiday travel specialist, Transat operates mainly in Canada and Europe, as well as in the Caribbean, Mexico and the Mediterranean Basin. Montreal-based Transat is also active in air transportation, accommodation, destination services and distribution. (TSX: TRZ.B, TRZ.A)