Has Ottawa enforced its diversity rules?
Government to be forced to reveal if contractors have hit mandated targets
The Liberal government will soon be forced to publicly reveal whether hundreds of major private companies that win federal contracts have met diversity hiring targets, and one expert says it won’t be pretty. New Democratic MP Matthew Green introduced a motion Friday that won the unanimous support of all 10 Liberal, Conservative, Bloc Québécois and NDP members of Parliament’s government operations committee.
It will pull back the curtain on whether Ottawa has done anything to enforce rules requiring companies to diversify their workforces, Green said.
The motion requires the federal government to disclose by the end of August the track records of large employers doing business with Ottawa in recruiting women, Indigenous people, visible minorities and disabled Canadians, and what steps Ottawa has taken to ensure they do.
Green suspects that federal authorities have done little. “Systemic racism occurs when we don’t have enforcement of these types of things,” he said in an interview.
The committee also ordered the federal government to reveal to what extent businesses owned by Black Canadians and others in those under-represented groups have received COVID-19-related contracts.
“When you have billions going out the door,” Green said, “and a government that professes to be progressive and professes to support calls for equity, diversity and inclusion, the question is, where does the buck stop and who does it stop with?”
Under existing federal procurement law, any company that bids on a contract worth more than $1 million and employs more than 100 people must agree to set targets, and report to Ottawa what progress they make in hiring a diverse workforce.
The obligation is an ongoing one even after the contract is done. It effectively brings private companies that are provincially regulated under the federal Employment Equity
Act in exchange for being allowed to bid on and receive federal contracts.
According to a 2017 list obtained by University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, about 300 major companies have signed what are called “equity agreements” with the department of Employment and Social Development.
The list includes Bombardier, Neilsen, Airbus, Alcatel-Lucent, BlackBerry, General Dynamics, Honeywell, IBM, Lockheed Martin and a number of universities.
The federal government is supposed to conduct compliance assessments one year after a company enters a contract and every three years after that.
If a company fails to meet its obligation, sanctions can be applied, including barring the company from further eligibility to bid on contracts.
But a federal webpage dated February 2018 indicates there are currently no names on the “limited eligibility to bid list.”
“That’s what most telling for me — this was last dated 2018,” said Green, who doubts there has been any change since.
“I think it speaks to the fauxgressive nature of Liberal commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion. It’s all symbols and words and not enough actions and deeds.”
“Enforcing it would be a big deal,” Attaran told the Star. “Except they are not enforcing it, and government pretends several hundred employers are all perfectly compliant, which is bull.”
Attaran said former prime minister Stephen Harper eliminated federal audits of the companies, and they were not restored under Trudeau.
Earlier this week the all-party Parliamentary Black Caucus and allies released an open letter listing actions that the federal government should take to combat racism in policing, the justice system and more broadly in the public and private sectors.
It stressed the importance of hiring and promoting Black workers, both at entry and senior levels of the public sector, and of strengthening and enforcing labour laws to “ensure diverse and equitable hiring within the federal public service and in federally regulated industries.”
“What is clear from the letter from the Parliamentary Black Caucus is we’re done with studies and reports,” Green said. “We want direct action. We want accountability. We want disaggregated data because if you can’t measure it, it never gets done.”
In a written statement, Labour Minister Filomena Tassi’s office highlighted the government’s commitment to employment equity.
“We welcome the committee’s request through the motion passed today,” it said. “Our department will be working to respond to the request.”