Of note. Not clear from the article if any significant variations by types and sectors of employment:
A majority of Canadian workers say they view equity, diversity and inclusion favourably, according to a new report, even in the face of some backlash.
The report from the Future Skills Centre and researchers at the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University found that 54 per cent of Canadian workers view EDI favourably, while 27 per cent were neutral, and 16 per cent viewed it negatively. The survey was conducted by Environics Institute.
Workplace EDI initiatives in Canada and the U.S. have faced “intensifying scrutiny and backlash” amid policy shifts in the U.S., which have had spillover effects in Canada, the report said.
“Most Canadians do not view it (EDI) as a matter of political correctness or wokeness. They view it as an important foundation of Canadian values and culture,” said Wendy Cukier, one of the report’s authors and a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing evidence that most businesses and non-profits and government organizations recognize that it’s fundamental to their success, particularly in times of disruptions.”
In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order putting a stop to diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the U.S. government.
Some companies have scaled back equity-related efforts as well, the report said, highlighting moves by Meta, Amazon and Target in the U.S. In Canada, the authors highlighted changes Shopify Inc. made by disbanding its dedicated diversity team and law firm McCarthy Tétrault pausing a specialized hiring program for Black and Indigenous law students. …
Based on my analysis posted earlier. Comments from Sarah Kaplan and Erin Tolley decrying the lack of diversity without fully recognizing as legitimate the focus of the Order on longer term contributions rather than new and emerging talent for many arts and culture awards (the Governor General Performing Arts Awards are for lifetime contributions).
Personally, I don’t find it “completely unacceptable” that the Order doesn’t provide “full representation” given its longer term focus, nor do I find its “elite” focus unacceptable. By definition, the Order is the elite Canadian award, just as the Nobel is the world elite award, whereas others are not.
That being said, there are opportunities to encourage more nominations for women and visible minorities, learning from the efforts to increase business and Prairie representation through additional funding for promotion in 2015 under the Conservative government which had, however, limited success.
The 2022 list of appointees to the Order of Canada is far less diverse than the Canadian population and even less diverse than it was in 2021, a new analysis shows.
The Governor General made 184 appointments to the order in 2022. It’s considered one of the country’s highest civilian honours, one which recognizes “people who make extraordinary contributions to the nation,” according to Rideau Hall. Over 7,600 Canadians have joined the order’s ranks since its creation in 1967.
But analysis by retired public servant Andrew Griffith, who served as Canada’s director general of citizenship and multiculturalism, found that last year’s appointees were not representative of the Canadian population.
Women make up about 51 per cent of the population, according to 2021 census data. Griffith’s analysis reported that just 28.7 per cent of the 2022 Order of Canada appointees were women.
And while the 2021 census reported that about 26 per cent of people in Canada come from a racialized group, just 7.4 per cent of 2022 Order of Canada appointees could say the same, according to Griffith’s report.
Griffith, who has done the analysis every year for a decade, said representation of people of colour in the order has improved broadly over time — but the same can’t be said for women.
“If I look at visible minorities, it’s slow progress, but overall it has increased over the last 10 years,” he told CBC News.
“Women are the ones that seem to vary the most, depending on the year … You can’t say that women are really making progress.”
Indigenous people made up 8.5 per cent of appointees in 2022 and accounted for 5 per cent of the Canadian population in the 2021 census.
“They’re the one group — along with white men — who are basically more than represented in relation to the size of their population,” Griffith said.
The Governor General makes appointments based on recommendations from the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada. The council advises her based on nomination suggestions from the general public.
Griffith said this process makes it difficult for Rideau Hall to choose a more diverse list of inductees.
“This is a program that depends on nominations from the outside public, and so there’s less control, if any control, over who gets nominated,” he said.
Other award programs may have incentives to highlight and promote young up-and-comers, Griffith added, but the Order of Canada prizes accomplishment over the course of a lifetime — meaning its appointees are often older and less diverse than Canada’s population.
“The Order of Canada, by its very nature, it’s a slower process to effect change,” he said. “In one sense it’s more backward-looking in the sense of, what has this person done in the last 20, 30, 40 years in terms of contributing to Canada?”
In a statement sent to CBC, a spokesperson for Rideau Hall said it’s working to make Order of Canada appointments more diverse.
“Reflecting Canada’s diversity is a priority when appointments are made to the Order of Canada,” the spokesperson said.
“The Order of Canada relies on public nominations which may mirror challenges in representation that exist in Canada. As a result, the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General is working to identify and address barriers to Canadian honours experienced by equity-deserving groups, so that the Order of Canada reflects all of Canadian society.”
Order of Canada must change, professor says
Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said that while the Order of Canada appointment process may limit Rideau Hall’s ability to boost representation of women and people of colour in Canada, it could change that process.
“It’s completely unacceptable to not have the full representation of Canada in the people who are appointed to the Order of Canada,” Kaplan said.
It means that we’re amplifying, through these appointments, the inequalities that already exist in society.”
Kaplan said Rideau Hall should require the advisory council to present a more balanced list of nominations.
“[The Order of Canada] opens doors for a lots of people who receive these awards,” Kaplan said.
“If those recognitions are being predominantly awarded to men, it’s going to just amplify the advantages that men have or that women and people of diverse genders do not have.”
Erin Tolley, Canada Research Chair in gender, race, and inclusive politics at Carleton University, agreed that the appointment process should change. She also said Rideau Hall should change how it promotes the honour.
“I think Rideau Hall needs to rethink how it goes about publicizing the Order of Canada, talking to a wider range of Canadians about how one becomes an Order of Canada recipient,” Tolley said.
Tolley said Rideau Hall could change its achievement criteria.
“The Order of Canada is a rather elite definition of service, and I think that understanding of what constitutes excellence or contribution may also contribute to underrepresentation in appointments and nominations,” she said.
“So I think more needs to be done about thinking through what constitutes meritorious service and maybe adopting a broader definition of excellence,”
My working deck highlights more of the findings of my analysis of the close to 1,700 appointments made over the past 9 years, looking at representation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous peoples, broken down by level, province and background. Given that most appointments reflect a long-term contribution, there is a gap between the population and visible minority appointments:
Working on a more detailed analysis but this provides the highlights:
Women, visible minorities and Indigenous people accounted for a larger share of the latest Order of Canada appointments than in recent years — a sign that Rideau Hall’s quest to diversify one of the country’s highest civilian honours is making progress.
Of the 135 people recently inducted into the Order of Canada, 40.7 per cent (55) are women, 12.6 per cent (17) are visible minority and just over eight per cent (11) are Indigenous.
The numbers are higher in all three categories than in the previous three years. Last year, most of the inductees were white men, and in 2019 well under a third were women.
Retired public servant Andrew Griffith, who served as Canada’s director general of citizenship and multiculturalism, said that while the numbers represent a “significant improvement,” it’s too soon to say whether it’s a trend.
“I’m always wary of claiming victory on the basis of one year,” he said. “So what I look at, whether I’m looking at these kind of numbers or other diversity numbers, is are you seeing a sustained change, a sustained increase.
“What I would like to see is two to three years from now comparing, let’s say, the previous three year period to the next three year period, and see if the needle has been moved.”
The Governor General makes appointments based on recommendations from the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, which advises her based on nominations suggested by members of the general public.
Griffith said this process means Rideau Hall doesn’t have as many options to diversify the Order of Canada as other institutions.
“The Order of Canada relies on public nominations. The Office of the Secretary to the Governor General encourages people to nominate individuals who are reflective of our diversity, including Indigenous peoples and persons from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds,” a spokesperson for the Office of the Governor General said in a statement to CBC.
“As of 2019, the OSGG has asked new appointees to the Order of Canada to complete a voluntary self-identification questionnaire. We look forward to identifying trends as we gather data in the coming years.”
‘Perpetually vigilant’
Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said the numbers show improvement but still don’t reflect Canada’s demographics.
“It seems to me that if your population is made up of about half women, or people of diverse genders, and you’re not representing that same proportion in the country’s most prestigious honours, then you are doing a disservice to the community,” she said.
She said she’d like to see Rideau Hall and the advisory council reach out to communities for suggestions rather than rely solely on nominations.
“Who’s going to know about that process and figure out how to navigate the nomination system?” she said. “It’s going to be people who are already in the centre of power, and that’s a pretty closed set of folks in the Canadian context.”
She also said the Office of the Governor General must keep pushing to make the Order of Canada better reflect Canadian society.
“The thing about improving representation in a society that has historically privileged just one group of people is that you have to be perpetually vigilant,” she said.
“And so one year’s progress does not mean that we have now fixed the problem, and that it will naturally trend upwards in subsequent years.”
I have been tracking Order of Canada appointments since 2013 from a diversity perspective.
While my initial interest was sparked by the Harper government’s effort to increase the number of appointments from Western Canada and the business community (limited success), I increasingly viewed this a an integration indicator and one that likely reflected other award and recognition program (my 2017 detailed review can be found here: The Order of Canada and diversity):
Less than a third of Canadians appointed to the Order of Canada last year were women — a figure that represents the widest gender imbalance in appointments to the order in years.
Analysis by diversity researcher Andrew Griffith, a former senior government official, shows that 71.4 per cent of appointees in 2019 were men. The low number of women among the 2019 appointees — just 28.6 per cent of the total — and the low number of visible minorities — just 5.4 per cent — show the Order of Canada falling short of representing Canada’s diverse population.
Griffith said there may be a lag effect because the Order of Canada tends to be given in recognition of a lifetime’s body of work — and high-profile women were scarce in many fields until relatively recently. But he said he expected to see progress toward gender parity among Order of Canada recipients mirror the advances experienced by women in the public service.
“It indicates where the country has been because these are previous contributions that are being recognized, and yet it says how far we have to go to ensure that, at the honours level where we recognize Canadians, that we’re actually recognizing a broad, diverse spectrum of Canadians,” he said.
A lack of balance
Griffith looked into Order of Canada appointments since 2013. He said he found that, on average, the gender balance on appointments over the seven-year period was 65.6 per cent male and 34.4 per cent female. The appointments came closest to gender balance in 2015, when 54.4 per cent were men and 45.6 per cent were women.
Over the seven-year period Griffith studied, members of visible minorities made up an average of 4.8 per cent of Order of Canada appointments — well below the 22.3 per cent of the population who identified as visible minority in the 2016 census.
In that same period, Indigenous nominees comprised 4.7 per cent of the appointments — very close to the 4.9 per cent identified as Indigenous in the last census.
More than 7,000 people have been invested in the Order of Canada since it was launched in 1967 as one of the country’s highest civilian honours. Appointments are made by the governor general based on recommendations by an independent advisory council, which reviews nominations and holds confidential discussions before voting on each nominee.
Natalie Babin Dufresne, spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General, said there has been some progress toward gender balance in the Order of Canada in recent years. She noted that just 21 per cent of the appointees in 2000 were women.
Although the number of women nominated to the Order of Canada has remained steady at about 200 a year, out of roughly 500 to 800 total nominations, Babin Dufresne said the success rate for nominations is higher for women — 72 per cent, compared to 58 per cent for men.
“Progress remains slow, and new initiatives continue to be developed to improve this situation so that we can achieve results with the Order of Canada that are comparable to other programs, such as the Sovereign Medal for volunteers, where close to 48 per cent of the recipients are women,” she said in an email.
“Data collection to get a better understanding of historical trending for other diversity groups began during the current mandate, and will offer us some important insights in the coming years to better target our initiatives and efforts to increase representation for all groups, including gender, visible minority and Indigenous representation.”
Babin Dufresne said modernizing the broader Canadian honours system is one of Gov. Gen. Julie Payette’s top priorities.
While there is no mention of diversity representation in the Order of Canada’s constitution and regulations, Babin Dufresne said steps have been taken to boost its diversity, such as new data collection on gender identity, disabilities, visible minority and Indigenous status, and a new, more user-friendly nomination platform.
She also pointed out that all Order of Canada ceremonies are now livestreamed to boost visibility and accessibility.
Babin Dufresne said the best way to improve diversity in a merit-based public program like the Order of Canada is to get more Canadians to nominate more people — which is why her office is working to increase the public profile of all of Canada’s honours programs and to make the nomination process user-friendly.
Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto, said more must be done to make the Order of Canada reflect the country.
‘Not acceptable’
“It’s not acceptable, in the Canadian context — a country that considers itself to be a land of opportunity, a land of equal opportunity, a land that pays attention to the diverse communities that exist within Canada — that we would see the awards going mainly to men,” she said.
Kaplan rejected the notion that bringing in quotas could erode the merit-based selection process, arguing that there are plenty of Canadians from all backgrounds who have made extraordinary contributions to Canadian society who aren’t recognized because they don’t fit the “historical template.”
“Our definition of merit is one that is self-reinforcing, about giving the same elite people the same awards. And so, when people say it should be based on merit, they’re not recognizing the fact that the idea of merit itself has been designed by the people in positions of privilege to reinforce their privilege and keep others out,” she said.
Rideau Hall said the Order of Canada advisory council makes appointment recommendations based on merit, but also takes factors like diversity into account.
The spring meeting of the advisory council was postponed due to the pandemic so the July appointments were not named. A new group of appointees is to be announced later this year.
Multicultural Meanderings 