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The federal government – the nation’s biggest employer – has a responsibility to build a public service that represents the diversity of this country. That’s the only way for our government to work for all Canadians. It’s also one of the ways we guarantee we recruit and retain the best talent. Strong equity systems mean we’re not letting talent go to waste because of systemic discrimination. Taxpayers deserve better than that. But, as CAPE emphasized in its February appearance before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, real progress on employment equity can quickly be reversed by sweeping, ideological austerity measures that don’t track its equity impacts.
We know this. And yet, as the public service is now being hit with widespread layoff threats, and tens of thousands of workers are set to lose their jobs after a decade of modest equity improvements in the federal workforce, the biggest employer in this country is ignoring very clear recommendations on employment equity. Without strong protection systems in place up front, and without sharing the data we know they have on the equity impacts of their mass layoffs, equity-deserving workers, their unions, and the Canadian public are kept in the dark on whether major discrimination in these wildly ideological layoff waves is happening.
We know that some of the departments most impacted by job cuts, including ESDC and Indigenous Services, are those that have strong records of diversity. That, in and of itself, should tell us just how much Mark Carney’s government cares about having a representative workforce. The fact that careful and deliberate steps have not been taken to ensure that equity-deserving groups are not disproportionately targeted by these austerity measures is a brazen dereliction of duty.
This is why CAPE is here today: to demand the Employment Equity Task Force recommendations be taken back off the shelf and implemented fully.
One of those recommendations was collecting disaggregated data and applying an intersectional lens to policy decisions. Historic austerity is a pretty serious policy decision. We – workers and our unions – need access to refined data that allows us to see if systemic discrimination is happening in real time – not in a year or more after thousands of federal workers have already been laid off. That’s too late and the harm will have been done.
The refusal to put into action what we know is necessary to prevent discrimination during these massive job cuts means the government is more than fine with a discriminatory outcome. But we are not.
A roadmap already exists, in the task force recommendations. That roadmap includes stronger accountability, better data, and embedding stronger mandatory equity impact assessments into all workforce adjustment decisions.
Thank you.
