Adelle Blackett is Professor of Law and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Transnational Labour Law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. Professor Blackett was appointed by the federal Minister of Labour to chair Canada’s new Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, whose report was made public in December 2023.
What is employment equity?
Employment equity is a proactive approach that acknowledges systemic discrimination and the under-representation of historically marginalized groups in Canada’s labour market. It seeks to identify and remove the barriers that create these problems.
It focuses on the hiring, retention and promotion of qualified candidates from historically marginalized groups. It seeks to ensure that processes are running throughout the employment lifecycle to create an environment where everyone belongs in the workplace.
Barriers in the workplace include the absence of accessible and genderinclusive facilities. These barriers prevent someone in a wheelchair, someone with childcare responsibilities who might be bringing a child into the workplace with them, or someone who is transitioning gender from performing their jobs.
Barriers are not necessarily physical. For example, harassment is a concern for many in the workplace. Unless there are procedures, mechanisms and policies created to address the problem, several categories of workers are subject to toxic workplace cultures.
How has employment equity evolved over the past decades?
Employment equity is a concept Judge Rosalie Silberman Abella introduced in 1984 through the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment report, which led to the creation of the Employment Equity Act in 1986. The Abella report had an outsized influence on employment and human rights law.
After significant revisions in the 90s, the Employment Equity Act was adopted and covers four designated groups: women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities.
The definition of employment equity has thinned out since the 80s and 90s because the prescribed regular five-year reviews by the government have not taken place. Employment equity is now simply a number-crunching exercise to determine who is available for hiring in the labour market.
The distinctly Canadian concept of employment equity has become confused with the United States’ affirmative action, even though Judge Abella chose a different term to move away from a rigid understanding of quotas and the assumption that implementing equity is reverse discrimination.
What are your thoughts on the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force report?
The first Canadian employment equity program aimed to ensure francophones have equitable access to all positions in the federal public service. There were qualified francophones available in the labour market, but they were under-represented in the public service due to systemic barriers. We cannot therefore approach employment equity from a deficit model perspective. It would be absurd to suggest otherwise. It is the systems and structures that are preventing full inclusion.
We have forgotten the history that emerges from Black communities who were racially segregated out of jobs across the country, most poignantly in the rail sector. Professor Cecil Foster’s work on this specific issue has helped show that legislation is not enough. We also need proactive mechanisms to change our understanding of workplaces and who belongs.
The pandemic has brought a palpable understanding of how much we take for granted. People started acknowledging essential workers for the first time. They asked tough questions about who belongs where in our labour market. For example, why is there such an over-representation of Black and racialized people in essential, low-paid, high stress and highrisk jobs? Why do you have so few Black and racialized people as doctors?
Statistical information shows that highly qualified people from the designated groups are available in the labour market. The Task Force report has therefore sought to refocus Canadian discourse about employment equity on barrier removal.
What key recommendation will help achieve employment equity in postsecondary education, if implemented?
CAUT made representations to the Task Force on research grants, which are mostly federally funded but are not in any way part of the employment equity framework.
Specifically, researchers are not part of the Federal Contractors Program because universities and colleges are provincially regulated even though they receive significant amounts of money from the federal government through research grants.
Many academics fall outside of the program because it excludes research grants and contributions of that nature. The funding level required for contractors to be covered under the legislation was also raised from $200,000 to a million.
There should be a return to the original funding level threshold and an expansion of the definition of federal contracts under the program to capture federal research grants. Universities and colleges should commit to being covered by the federal employment equity framework.
How can academic staff associations help to advance employment equity?
There is an accountability that flows through adopting a “nothing about us without us” principle of participation. This is why, in reviewing the Employment Equity Act, the Task Force emphasized meaningful consultations with those concerned, which led us to issue a total of 187 recommendations.
In the academic context, it is particularly important for members of faculty associations to meaningfully engage with the government and employers to ensure the requirements of the legislation are being fulfilled.
Academic staff associations must bargain for equity, and some of Linda Briskin’s scholarly work is pivotal in this regard. We need to stop ceding employment equity as purely a managerial matter.