LILLEY: Jamil Jivani campaigning to end ‘Liberal racism’ in public service
2026/06/19 2 Comments
Numbers vary of course by level and occupational group but overall, the annual reporting framework (pride and shame motivators) has largely worked well to ensure a public service more representative of the overall Canadian population.
Harper government weakened annual reporting but did not change the Act. Unclear whether Carney will follow up on the Trudeau era task force recommendations or not, as they very much reflected that government’s philosophy and approach:
…The Employment Equity Act was passed in 1986 to attempt to reduce barriers to employment for some groups. It was a success, but the special treatment for these select groups continues even though they are now, for the most part, overrepresented in the federal civil service.
Women are one of the protected groups given special access to government jobs. According to Statistics Canada, women make up 47% of the overall labour force, according to the most recent jobs report from Statistics Canada, but women make up 57% of the federal workforce.
Indigenous Canadians make up 4% of the available workforce, according to federal data, and yet they account for 5.5% of the federal civil service. According to federal data, visible minorities make up 22.7% of the available workforce and hold 23.9% of all jobs in the federal government.
None of these groups are underrepresented and yet they are getting special treatment for jobs. Jivani is right: This is a form of discrimination, this is a form of racist policy and it shouldn’t be allowed.
Chances are that if you asked most Canadians if these types of practices should be allowed, they would say no. In a world where Liberals MPs
Source: LILLEY: Jamil Jivani campaigning to end ‘Liberal racism’ in public service
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
Those statistics are probably correct. There are underrepresented groups in the PS. Two that come to mind are 2SLGBTQQIA+ Canadians and Canadians with disabilities. But the article raises another question, if implicitly. Does the demographic makeup of the PS have to resemble that of Canada, thinly sliced?
There is no question that it would not be good to have a PS consisting exclusively of cishet white men. (For one thing, I’m not sure if I would even qualify, depending on whether I am counted as white). I’ve certainly noticed that discussions of policy benefit from having different views around the table, informed by different experiences.
But that does not mean that these experiences entitle one to a PS job. I see less of a rationale for diversity in a pure service job, such as creating new passports or SIN cards, than I do in a policy shop. I suspect that most Canadians want a competent PS, consisting of people with varied experiences and backgrounds. I doubt that they are sitting there with a ruler (or the advanced statistics version of it, a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test), checking whether there are enough of every minority group, however defined.
agree with your overall assessment and that diversity of perspectives more important at the policy level, rather than operational level. The “ruler” approach becomes particularly difficult when applied at the occupational level (less so for EX) and of course groups generally don’t raise questions when they are over-represented overall or in specific occupations.