Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2026/05/12 Leave a comment
My latest analysis. Short version in the Hill Times.
Source: Dissecting 2024-25 data on the public service, early cuts, and equity goals
Full detailed version below:
2026/05/08 Leave a comment
Will be interesting to see whether there is any impact on the diversity and political leanings of Carney appointments. Trudeau appointments: 55.2 percent women, 19.8 percent visible minorities, and 12.5 percent Indigenous:
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday he will continue to rely on the independent advisory board created by Justin Trudeau to suggest Senate appointments, but gave no timeline for filling a growing number of vacancies.
After more than a year in office Mr. Carney has yet to make a single Senate appointment. Vacancies are mounting not just among senators but also on the board tasked with selecting new members of the Senate.
There are currently nine vacancies in the 105-member Senate and another six senators are planning to retire by the end of 2026. The Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments, consisting of federal, provincial and territorial representatives, currently has just five members. It has 24 vacancies, leaving most provinces without representation on the board.
At a Montreal-area press conference, Mr. Carney gave no indication of when he would begin addressing the vacancies in the Senate. “We will be appointing senators in due course, and I will take into account the advice of the independent advisory committee that was established by my predecessor,” he said.
Source: Carney to continue using Trudeau-era advisory board to suggest Senate appointments, Carney not planning to allow senators in Liberal caucus, senior government official says
2026/05/04 2 Comments
Have forthcoming analysis of the 2024-25 EE desegregated data, representation, hirings, separations, promotions that demonstrates that no negative impact compared to the previous year. So warnings may be overstated and public service may already considering equity impact:
As the public service moves to shed thousands of jobs, unions and a newly formed national coalition say equity gains may be more fragile than they appear, and warn leaving departments to monitor representation creates a “serious gap” in tracking where the cuts fall.
The federal public service entered 2026 looking more representative than it did a decade ago, according to the government’s latest Employment Equity Annual Report. The March report showed racialized workers made up 23.9 per cent of the core public administration in 2024-25, slightly above the 22.7 per cent workforce-availability benchmark. Black employees accounted for 5.1 per cent of the public service, up from 2.8 per cent in 2016-17.
Unions and advocates say the latest report can offer a useful snapshot, but it may not fully capture if employment equity efforts have been damaged. Their concern is less about whether the public service still looks representative on paper than about which workers are most exposed as job cuts deepen.
A newly formed group, the National Employment Equity Council, is calling on the government to require mandatory equity impact assessments before any further staffing decisions. Nicholas Marcus Thompson, its co-chair, warns the government’s current approach means signs of inequities tied to job losses may arrive “too late.”
Though departments have sent workforce adjustment notices tied to 17,000 job cuts, the federal government has not publicly released data to show if equity-seeking groups will be affected….
Andrew Griffith, a former senior federal official who has analyzed Treasury Board employment equity data for years, said the latest data does not support the conclusion that racialized public servants are being disproportionately harmed.
Representation of visible minorities rose slightly in 2024–25, while hiring rates for visible minorities and Indigenous staff remained above their internal representation.
Still, advocates say the TBS response to The Hill Times suggests a worrying approach.
“This doesn’t address the concern,” Thompson said by email.
“It leaves departments to monitor themselves, with no central tracking, under a law the government has acknowledged is outdated. That’s how inequities continue, and by the time we see it, it’s too late.”…
The council’s central demand is implementation of the 2023 Employment Equity Act Task Force report, including formal recognition of Black workers and 2SLGBTQI+ people as distinct designated groups under the law.
For Thompson, one of the most urgent unresolved issues is how Black workers remain folded into the broader visible minorities category. Under that approach, the government can meet aggregate targets while leaving subgroup disparities untouched, he argued.
“When it is lumped in with everyone else, Black people almost always get left behind,” Thompson said.
Due to ongoing cuts, Thompson said Black workers contacting the council have described fear, declining trust in internal systems, and frustration with what they see as a lack of clarity and transparency in how restructuring decisions are being made….
2026/04/28 Leave a comment
A bit simplistic but the fundamental point, more public servants with experience in program delivery and client service than policy development.
And of course, previous generations of public servants reflected the attitudes of the day, whether respect to women, visible minorities, Indigenous, LGTBQ:
…Universities like to present policy training as politically neutral, but no school is neutral when its dominant assumptions are absorbed from the surrounding progressive culture in higher education.
Graduates with MPPs and MPAs are no different. They see the world through the values of their generation. They learn the language of inclusion and identity and bring those values to their work. When Statistics Canada asks in surveys what gender you were assigned at birth, you can be certain the department was influenced by a new generation of policy advisors. A public service staffed chiefly by people trained to think in slogans will inevitably produce a slogan-driven government.
Canada needs smart people less enamoured of theory and ideology, and more rooted in the unglamorous work of delivery. More importantly, we need to restore ministerial responsibility. MPs and ministers should be judged on what happens in their departments. And universities should stop imagining that another wave of credentialed policy analysts will repair what politics has allowed to decay.
Source: The rise of the progressive bureaucrat and the fall of the efficient state
2026/04/20 Leave a comment
Ironic timing, released at the same time as the Fox ethics scandal:
…Fairness
In 2025, more than three quarters (76%) of employees agreed that the process of selecting a person for a position is done fairly, consistent with 2023 (77%).
Employees who perceived the selection process as unfair were asked to describe how. The main reasons cited were a perception that appointments in their work unit are not transparent, that they are based on “who you know” and that some appointees have benefitted from nepotism or favoritism.
Expanding on the perceptions of fairness in staffing processes, a new question on non-advertised appointments was introduced in 2025. Overall, 71% of employees agreed that non-advertised appointments are done fairly. The main reasons cited by respondents who perceived non-advertised appointments as unfair were that non-advertised appointments depend on who you know (74%) and that they are not transparent (70%).
| Statements related to fairness | 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Process of selecting a person for a position is done fairly | 77% | 76% |
| Non-advertised appointments are done fairly | n/a | 71% |
| Reasons | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Non-advertised appointments depend on who you know | 74% |
| Non-advertised appointments are not transparent | 70% |
| Non-advertised appointments are not based on merit | 48% |
| Non-advertised appointments are never fair | 30% |
| Non-advertised appointments are not inclusive | 28% |
| Other | 12% |
Employment equity and equity-seeking groups’ perceptions on fairness
With the exception of women, all employment equity groups expressed less positive perceptions than their respective comparator groups.
Employees identifying as two-spirit and intersex had less positive perceptions of both statements related to fairness compared to all other identities
Employees identifying as another gender had the least positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process of all groups
Members of visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities had less positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process than their respective comparator groups
Members of religious communities had less positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process compared with employees who are not members of religious communities
Employees who are separated, divorced or widowed had less positive perceptions of fairness in the staffing process compared with employees who are married, living common-law or single
Employees identifying as asexual and pansexual had less positive perceptions of fairness compared with all other sexual orientations
2026/04/17 Leave a comment
Time to accept the inevitable. Hard to see how she can avoid resigning or retiring given the clear judgement, arrogance and obliviousness to MP concerns, impact on public service morale and overall credibility of deputies:
…Participants expressed that there appear to be few, if any, consequences for senior leaders who act in contravention of values and ethics, as compared to consequences imposed upon employees, particularly those who are members of racialized groups,” it found.
To remedy the problem, the task team recommended that “deputy ministers ensure that obligations under the Values and Ethics Code, and departmental codes of conduct, are clear and are upheld with consequences for violations regardless of level or position.”
That recommendation has suddenly taken on new resonance in the wake of the federal Ethics Commissioner’s finding that Christiane Fox, one of the deputy ministers who made up the task team, violated the Conflict of Interest Act by using her position to influence a departmental decision to hire an acquaintance who was unqualified for the job.
In a 35-page report released last week, Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein concluded that as deputy minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in 2023, Ms. Fox used her authority to give an “old acquaintance” from university “preferential treatment, by ensuring he met with departmental officials quickly, seeking updates about his hiring, giving him internal information, and pushing for a higher job classification.”…
Merit-based hiring remains the bedrock of a professional public service. Ms. Fox appears to have lost sight of that principle. Her bosses must not.
Source: A deputy minister’s ethics violation will further sap morale in the Canadian public service
2026/04/13 Leave a comment
Sigh… Given the breach and how it undermines trust, arguably a resignable offence to demonstrate accountability:
Deputy minister of national defence Christiane Fox says she was trying to bring in outside perspectives when she influenced her former department to hire an acquaintance.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein published an investigation on Wednesday finding that Fox pressed Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to hire Björn Charles when she was deputy minister of that department in March 2023.
Fox had known Charles since they were both athletes at university together, according to the report.
She said in a statement posted on the Defence Department’s website on Friday that she was “motivated by a genuine desire to bring in outside perspectives.”
“My efforts were focused on advancing diversity and inclusion across the public service, an objective explicitly set for deputy ministers,” she said.
“I approached that mandate with care and intent, including a focus on bringing in outside perspectives and voices that could help drive meaningful change. This included removing barriers that limited how talent was recognized both inside and outside government.”
Explanation not credible, report says
Von Finckenstein’s report noted that IRCC — which has reported problems with racism in the past — was ” focused on anti-racism, diversity and inclusion” while Fox was the deputy minister. But he didn’t find Fox’s explanation credible.
Source: Deputy minister found breaching ethics rules says she was following diversity mandate
2026/04/07 2 Comments
My assessment:
The most recent report on diversity in the public service says hiring dipped by 40 per cent last year as the bureaucracy began reversing course on a decade of significant growth. But this appears to have had limited impact on equity efforts.
New data on employment equity in the federal public service shows initial attempts to shrink the population had a limited effect on the proportions of equity-seeking groups. But one expert on public policy and governance says coming job cuts are “agnostic” to these efforts, and a large public-sector union says the government isn’t doing enough to ensure diversity is maintained amid sweeping job cuts.
“I can’t see evidence that minority groups are being penalized compared to majority groups,” said Andrew Griffith, a former public servant who was a director general of citizenship and multiculturalism at then-Citizenship and Immigration Canada….
Griffith noted concerns about job cuts in the public service hampering progress in employment equity, but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“Now, it might change in the current year, given the cutbacks are more significant this year,” said Griffith, referring to the approximately 24,000 public servants who have already received notice that their jobs might be at risk, and the some 9,000 jobs expected to be cut….
“The numbers don’t tell the whole story”: Turnbull
Lori Turnbull is a political science professor at Dalhousie University, a senior adviser at the Institute on Governance, and worked in the Privy Council Office from 2015 until 2017.
Speaking to The Hill Times, she said the high percentage of women “really makes it look like the public service is doing well,” in terms of equity among its ranks, but “that doesn’t really speak to what’s going on for other groups,” she said.
“I don’t think anybody would come away from that and think, ‘Oh, we better be worried because the share of women [being hired] decreased by three points,” Turnbull said, noting the high number of women in executive positions as well as the broader public service.
However, she noted the current spending review that is expected to shed thousands of jobs from the public service is “agnostic” to employment equity considerations.
“It just doesn’t really sound like there’s much co-ordination in that,” she said.
“The way they’re measuring [it] is by the numbers, by the money, and not by the function and the specific people,” she said.
“You get the numbers, and it doesn’t tell the whole story.”
Sean O’Reilly, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, one of the largest federal public service unions, said the government isn’t doing enough to protect equity-seeking groups from cuts.
“There are big concerns,” he said. “Some of the correlation we’ve seen in the past with cuts, and we fear that, we do fear that these groups will be unjustly affected by all these cuts.”
Source: Treasury Board report shows employment equity not affected by early phases of public service job losses in 2024-25 Paywall
2026/04/02 Leave a comment
Usual excellent diagnostique as well as usual weak analysis of the how. Lynch was clerk when Service Canada’s more ambitious approach of service driving policy rather than the usual policy driven service was killed:
…The key operational culprit is complexity — the dense web of rules, reporting requirements and oversight mechanisms originally meant to safeguard the integrity of government operations but whose cumulative effect has been to make operational delivery slower, more cautious and less effective — at the cost of public confidence.
What is needed is a focus on operational simplification and end-to-end results. When there is too much oversight, or too little, results suffer. When the process itself becomes the benchmark, results become secondary. When accountability for delivery is opaque, results decline. When there are too many priorities at one time, results become a casualty. When there is too much centralization and second guessing, results deteriorate. It is tangible delivery results that the public wants to see.
These are incredibly challenging times. They require an urgent transformation of state capacity. To preserve our economic, political and territorial sovereignty, Canadians need a federal government operating at its very best.
Kevin Lynch is a former clerk of the Privy Council. Jim Mitchell is a former senior public servant in the Privy Council Office and Treasury Board.
Source: The government must change in these three key ways to meet challenges of the moment | Opinion
2026/04/01 Leave a comment
In preparation for being interviewed, I developed some tables to highlight the impact, based upon this open data table: Population of the federal public service by executive level:
EX-1 and EX-4 impacted more than other levels. The other striking change is of course in the higher increase rates over the past 10 years of EX-2, EX-3 and EX-5.
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Multicultural Meanderings 