Brief to the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights on the hiring practices and employment equity in the federal public service
Published by Patrick June 9th, 2009 in Human Rights, National Issues Tags: Human Rights, human-rights-committee.presented by Patty Ducharme, National Executive Vice-President, Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC)
Thank you for once again inviting us to appear before this Committee to testify regarding hiring practices and employment equity in the federal public service. Today, we would like to provide our views on recent events impacting on employment equity, including some of the information that has recently been provided to this Committee by other witnesses.
On March 23, 2009, the Office of the Chief Human Resource Officer of Treasury Board, or OCHRO, released its report on Employment Equity in the Public Service of Canada covering the last two fiscal years. That report shows that the federal public service is still lagging far behind in achieving a representative workforce, especially when it comes to racialized workers. Unfortunately, the Report did not receive very much attention, since it was released on the same day that Maria Barrados, President of the Public Service Commission, testified before this Committee, indicating that PSC has re-calculated its figures on hiring and has now determined that the number of racialized new recruits is twice as high as they had previously reported. The release of those new figures took us by surprise, to say the least.