Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Lawyer, senator, union leader agree minorities are unwelcome

Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Justice Canada is a “very poisonous, toxic department” that drives visible minorities out the door, says a high-profile former Justice lawyer.

Mark Persaud, who left Justice in 2003, told a Senate committee the atmosphere during the decade he worked there was rife with “overt racism and intimidation of employees.”

His testimony came on the heels of charges by a senator and the Public Service Alliance of Canada that racism is blocking visible minorities from being properly represented within the federal public service. Nova Scotia Senator Donald Oliver, who is black, bluntly asserted at Monday night’s Senate committee meeting that “it is racism that is preventing visible minorities from progressing in the public service.”

And Ed Cashman, a PSAC vice-president, told senators that racism is “the elephant in the room” that nobody in government wants to talk about.

The Public Service Commission recently revealed that the recruitment rate of visible minorities fell last year despite an increase in hiring overall. Visible minorities now make up 8.6 per cent of federal employees, below their workplace representation of 10.4 per cent, based on the 2001 census.

According to the Canada Public Service Agency, the representation of visible minorities in the public service has nearly doubled over the past decade. Between 2001 and 2006, their numbers expanded by almost 6,000, the agency says, bringing the total to more than 15,000.

“We’re still not meeting targets, but we have made improvements,” Karen Ellis, the agency’s head of workforce and workplace renewal, said in December. “I think there is a lot of goodwill there,” Ms. Ellis said. “It’s a matter of getting the focus and energy going and bringing it into the planning in a deliberate way from the start.”

Justice officials say they’re doing better than most departments. Visible minorities represent 10.6 per cent of the department’s 4,500-member workforce, including 231 visible minority lawyers.

Visible minorities apply for government jobs in disproportionate numbers, and have better qualifications on average than white applicants, said Mr. Cashman. “Yet disproportionately, they don’t get their fair share of jobs.” Racism, he said, is the “primary explanation. We’re a racist nation, and it’s time we addressed that.”

Mr. Oliver and Mr. Cashman said the private sector has done a better job of recruiting visible minorities than the public service. In the banking industry, for example, visible minorities make up 22 per cent of the workforce, Mr. Cashman said.

Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, seemed flummoxed by questions about the role racism plays in holding back visible minority applicants.

But she told the committee the public service’s corporate culture remains a barrier. “Far too often we have to lead employers reluctantly along the path of employment equity,” she said. “Too often, departments see it as another burdensome requirement that has to be met.”

But Mr. Persaud, who fled his native Guyana for Canada in 1983, said many visible minority lawyers aren’t even called for an interview when they apply for Justice Canada jobs.

Mr. Persaud, now president and CEO of the Canadian International Peace Project, said visible minority lawyers he worked with left one by one in frustration. “The primary reason was we thought there were no proper opportunities as visible minorities for us to be promoted equitably and fairly,” he told the Senate committee on human rights.

Mr. Persaud, a former chairman of the Liberal party’s committee on multiculturalism who defected to the Conservatives a year ago, conceded “things may have changed” since he left Justice in 2003.

However, he said, two Justice staff members told him last week that about 10 visible minority lawyers had recently left the department. “I was told there is still a culture in there that creates a lot of unhappiness and is creating a problem in terms of retention.”

Mr. Oliver, a lifelong campaigner against racism who was appointed to the Senate by Brian Mulroney in 1990, made headlines in 2004 when he accused the public service of racism. Little has changed, he said yesterday. “For people to pretend that racism is not here and doesn’t exist, it’s ridiculous. It’s time we started to be realistic. Once we face that realism, maybe then we can begin to resolve the problem.”