Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

PS to probe why minorities don’t get jobs : Despite one-in-five benchmark, only 10% of applicants land posts

The watchdog of Canada’s non-partisan public service is launching an investigation into why visible minorities aren’t landing jobs in the public service in anywhere near the large numbers that apply.

But Maria Barrados, president of the Public Service Commission, said the one-in-five hiring targets for visible minorities that have been promoted since 2000 may be too high, and the study will help determine what the rate should be to ensure their numbers within the bureaucracy reflect the Canadian workforce.

“My preoccupation is how long will it take us to get a more representative public service,” she said in an interview.
“Those benchmarks were set in a very different environment and we have a much higher turnover now, and with that higher turnover, what kind of target should we be setting? … I am not sure 20 per cent is the right number.”

Getting more racial minorities into the public service has supposedly been a government priority since the Chretien government launched its Embracing Change initiatives in 2000, calling for one in five new hires into the public service to be a visible minority by 2003. It also called for one in five promotions into the executive ranks to be a visible minority by 2005.

The government failed to reach those targets and the Harper government has shown little enthusiasm in pursuing them. Lewis Perinbam, who led the Embracing Change task force, said he never expected the government to hit those one-in-five hiring targets, but argued such aggressive goals were necessary to create “momentum,” which he said has since fizzled.

Visible minorities have typically had a keen interest in working in government and apply in droves. They represented more than a quarter of all applicants between 2000 and 2005, but only one in 10 ends up landing a job. This gap between the rate of applications and appointments, which is known as the “dropoff” rate, is at the centre of Ms. Barrados’s probe.

The proportion of visible minority applicants increased steadily, from about 22 per cent to a peak of 28 per cent in 2003-2004, but the dropoff rate remained relatively constant at more than 60 per cent. The dropoffs are the biggest in the national capital region, where 40 per cent of the jobs are located. They are also highest among jobs for clerks, program managers, administrative services, computer services, economists and engineering and scientific support staff.

Ms. Barrados said she wants to find out the causes of the dropoff and where in the hiring process it happens. The commission considers the dropoff a critical indicator, because visible minorities applicants could be facing “systemic barriers” in the system that has nothing to do with their competency or ability to do the jobs. The dropoff is also happening at a time when racial minorities in Canada are steadily increasing.

Ms. Barrados said the problem could be a bias among the hiring managers or a problem in the screening technology that electronically sorts out visible minority candidates long before they get a chance at job interviews.

Mr. Perinbam said some of the dropoff was because it took the government so long to fill a job that most applicants gave up. The new Public Service Employment Act was supposed to speed up hiring and give managers more flexibility in hiring. Under the new act, managers can publicly advertise jobs and give preference to visible minorities.

What’s troubling for the commission is this dropoff doesn’t exist for any of the other three employment equity groups — women, the disabled and aboriginals — who actually get hired at rates similar or higher than they apply.

For example, during the same period, aboriginals sent in 5.1 per cent of the applications and got nearly four per cent of the jobs. The disabled had a zero dropoff because the same proportion who applied for jobs got them. Women, on the other head, actually got a higher share of jobs compared with their applications. Last year, for example, women applied for 52 per cent of the jobs and snagged 61 per cent of them.

On the upside, Ms Barrados said departments are recruiting visible minorities at a two-per-cent rate higher than their overall availability in the workforce of about 8.4 per cent. She said the study will help determine how many years it will take to “catch up” to those numbers.

But that catchup will be affected by other factors. The public service is facing an unprecedented turnover with the exodus of baby boomers over the next decade. About three-quarters of executives and 35 per cent of scientific and professional staff will be eligible for retirement. At the same time, all of Canada’s labour growth will come from immigration and the most will be visible minorities. Statistics Canada recently projected racial minorities will make up 20 per cent of the population by 2017.

Errol Mendes, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who formerly worked as the Privy Council Office’s adviser on diversity, said managers typically pay little attention to recruiting visible minorities.

He worries the government risks alienating racial minorities if they aren’t reflected in the public service. The older generation could turn inward to their own community for help and support, which weakens the nurturing of common values and citizenship. That kind of insulation could lead to anger and frustration among the younger generations who will feel like they don’t fit in.

Mr. Mendes said he’s heard many complaints among visible minorities who feel they lose out on career opportunities because managers, who now have more flexibility in hiring, pick qualified candidates they feel are the better “fits” for the organization.

“You hear so many stories that someone isn’t a fit and what that usually means is that person isn’t like me, and people want someone like themselves,” said Mr. Mendes.

He argued any change depends on leadership — with the cues coming from the top. Previous Privy Council Office clerks tied a portion of deputy ministers’ salaries to reaching the one-in-five hiring targets that never materialized.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007