Employment and Social Development Canada
Letter on Implementation of the Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity and Inclusion
Summer 2021 update
Dear Ms. Charette:
We are pleased to provide you with an account of the actions that Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), including Service Canada and the Labour Program, has taken within the last year in response to the Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity and Inclusion in the Federal Public Service and to create a foundation for systemic change.
Recent news has brought the tragic legacy of Canada’s residential schools back to the forefront, reminding us of the harms Indigenous people have suffered and continue to suffer. Other tragic events over the last year in the Muslim, LGTBQ2+, Asian and Black communities, as well as the impacts of the pandemic, have had a significant impact on Canadian communities, employees of ESDC and the public service. This is a time to focus on healing and ESDC leadership is committed to take action and provide needed support to all employees from equity-seeking groups during these difficult times.
We continue to strive to create a workplace that reflects the communities we serve, where everyone feels empowered to bring their full, authentic selves to work. With that said, we acknowledge that systemic discrimination, racism, and barriers to accessibility still exist in our workplace and continue to have profound effects on employee well-being and mental health. We still have much work to do in order to be fully inclusive, fight racism and discrimination in every form and identify and eliminate barriers to full participation in our workforce.
Commitment to Change
As a large department with a national footprint, we have a unique opportunity and the capacity to impact and meaningfully contribute to the diversity and inclusion agenda of the Government of Canada.
At ESDC, we believe that everyone plays a role in developing an inclusive workplace. The Department, working in collaboration with its employee diversity networks and unions, is committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible, respectful, equitable and safe workplace for people of all races, backgrounds and sexual orientations.
In response to the Call to Action, ESDC’s initial focus has been on foundationally building organizational understanding and commitment towards needed change. As a large department, it’s not enough for senior management to deliver a strong message and expect change to come – change will only happen if we put in the time, attention, energy and effort to work with all branches and regions at all levels to establish work environments where all voices matter. Our work is focused on ensuring all Indigenous, Black and racialized employees, employees with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ2+ community feel welcome and free to share their insights and lived experiences and feel supported and capable in fulfilling their full potential.
ESDC chose to modernize its organizational strategies to extend beyond the requirements of the Employment Equity Act and to become a fully inclusive, equitable and diverse organization through extensive consultation with its diversity networks. ESDC developed its 2020-2024 Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP) by collaborating with the four ESDC diversity networks: the Employee Pride Network, the Employees with Disabilities Network, the Visible Minorities Network and the Indigenous Employees Circle. These networks sought valuable input and feedback from employees of each community on current challenges and targeted actions needed to advance systemic change. In summer 2021, an Employment Equity Committee was also established with unions to seek additional perspectives on the design and advancement of departmental diversity related initiatives.
Given the changing environment, the Department and the diversity networks have committed to checkpoints every six months to ensure accountability towards the advancement of tangible outcomes identified within the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan and to identify additional targeted actions that may be needed based on parallel work being completed by respective networks.
Diverse Voices to Combat Racism, Discrimination and Barriers
The Department has very active diversity networks that play a key role in the design and implementation of ESDC’s diversity and inclusion strategies. Our Deputy Minister team meets on a quarterly and ad-hoc basis with the Chairs of each ESDC diversity network to discuss key priorities and areas of concern in advancing recruitment, advancement and overall inclusion efforts within the Department. This provides the networks with the opportunity to bring forth action items that require senior management support to advance meaningful change, including consideration of intersectionality.
As one example, the Executive Committee of the ESDC Visible Minorities Network has proposed a multi-disciplinary action plan to tackle the three themes listed in the Call to Action. The action plan, developed in consultation with internal and external partners, targets actions to increase representation at senior levels, systemic racism resolution and visible minorities’ involvement in decision-making.
Based on consistent feedback from diversity network Chairs on the challenges of balancing time commitments of their important network roles with their regular work, ESDC has created and chosen to fund full-time Diversity Employee Network Chair roles that will be dedicated solely to advancing diversity, inclusion and anti-racism initiatives for their respective networks and the Department overall. Incumbents for full-time Chair roles will be identified following the respective networks upcoming elections, to be launched in the fall 2021.
As a deliberate effort to address identified challenges and to begin to gain the trust of its employees, ESDC took a proactive measure to, for the first time, include the LGBTQ2+ community as part of its self-identification campaign launched in spring 2021. To do so, the Department worked closely with key stakeholders, including its Employee Pride Network and bargaining agents, who provided guidance and valuable input concerning the self-identification questions and communications. While the participation rate for this self-identification campaign was positive, more effort will be required to continue to improve employees’ trust in the process and understanding of what it means for them to self-identify.
To directly support the needs of all employees in our workplaces, on June 29, 2021, ESDC also introduced the “Guide to Support Transgender and Gender Diverse Employees who are Transitioning.” The Guide, developed by the ESDC Employee Pride Network, offers a comprehensive look at what it means to be transgender, non-binary, two spirit or gender diverse at ESDC and provides employees, co-workers and managers with practical guidance and solutions to various situations that may arise when transitioning as a federal public servant.
In 2020, the Department created a Black Engagement and Advancement Team (BEAT) whose mandate is to identify and implement potential tangible and sustainable solutions to change the existing landscape for Black employees at ESDC. Staffed with Black employees with varying domains of expertise in addition to lived experiences, this team has formalized engagement with ESDC’s Black community through multiple initiatives.
To empower employees, encourage collaboration, exchange resources and share lived experiences, the BEAT created and now manages two virtual safe spaces for both Black employees and allies. In February 2021, the team also facilitated two Design Jams, attended by the Department’s senior management land Minister Hussen, which explored Anti-Black Racism at ESDC by enabling participants to share lived experiences and perspectives on the challenges faced by Black employees and to co-develop solutions for the complex workplace-related issues that affect this community. The results of the Design Jam, which confirmed the existence of unconscious biases, micro-aggressions, and underlying systemic issues within our organization, have recently been shared with employees with the commitment that concrete action will be taken by the Department to realize a culture of inclusion. Our actions, now and in the future, to address the Design Jam results will be a key indicator of our success, or failure, to truly make the changes we have committed to.
Within ESDC, individual branches have also responded to the Call to Action. For example, the Labour Program has created a Diversity and Inclusion Committee that is lead by a Champion and Co-Champions. This committee is finalizing an action plan focused on eliminating systemic barriers by creating a more inclusive culture as well as advancing inclusion in recruitment, retention and advancement.
Beyond headquarters, work is also underway across all regions in Canada to understand and gain perspectives on the work we have to do to address needed change. As one example, the Service Canada Ontario Region established an Anti-Racism Task Team to explore and address issues of racism and discrimination in the workplace and initiate, reinforce and sustain positive change. This joint union-management task team will oversee the development, implementation and monitoring of the Ontario Region Anti-Racism Strategic Plan of Action that identify concrete opportunities to eliminate racism in the workplace through engagement, awareness and meaningful training.
Recruitment and Retention of Diverse Talent
As part of its ongoing recruitment to support the needs of Canadians during the pandemic, the Department took deliberate efforts and continued its focus on the recruitment and retention of Black people, other racialized groups, Indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities from all regions across Canada. As a result of our recruitment, overall workforce representation rates have increased during this period for these employment equity groups at both the non-executive and executive levels.
A key element in our progress to date has been ESDC’s Indigenous Outreach, Recruitment, Retention and Advancement (IRRA) plan, which focuses on building trust and working collaboratively with key Indigenous stakeholders (i.e. National Indigenous Organizations, Indigenous Skills and Employment Training Organizations, Academia and Friendship Centres) to understand systemic barriers to federal public service employment and to further advance the goals of Reconciliation. Building on the progress towards desired outcomes of the IRRA plan, the Department is in the process of implementing a similar outreach approach to support understanding and removal of barriers to employment for Persons with Disabilities, Visible Minorities and Black Canadians, which we expect to yield similar concrete results.
A tangible example of work completed towards meaningful change is underway within the Office of Indigenous Initiatives in ESDC’s Innovation, Information Technology Branch (IITB), which has made significant efforts to identify and remove barriers that hinder recruitment of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.
By redesigning job posters to remove unnecessary jargon and embracing the remote working environment long before circumstances made it necessary, the team has become an industry leader. Since 2018, the team has helped to hire more than 80 First Nations, Inuit and Métis people to work in IITB. Last year, they launched an innovative two-year apprenticeship program to open doors for employment-ready individuals who are passionate about technology. The team’s success with Indigenous recruitment is now a model for not only our department but also the wider Government of Canada community. To date, 19 other departments and agencies have begun working collaboratively with the team to expand on their blueprint to help strengthen diversity across the Public Service. Additionally, the team is receiving interest from the private sector, opening even more employment opportunities for Indigenous communities.
More branch-led, grassroots initiatives such as this are needed throughout our large department if we want to effect long term lasting change. We need to do more to ensure branches and regions across our organization show leadership and develop similar innovative initiatives to build a better and more diverse workforce of the future and so that our employees see tangible progress.
ESDC is also working on initiatives to support increased Indigenous recruitment with benefits beyond just our department. Working with Indigenous Skills and Employment Training partners, as well as National Indigenous Organizations, ESDC’s Indigenous Outreach, Recruitment, Retention and Advancement team developed an AS-01 to AS-04 competition poster that was culturally-appropriate and plain language. This selection process produced a partially assessed pool of 218 Indigenous candidates that is already being used at ESDC and has been shared with several other departments.
ESDC continues to focus its efforts on student recruitment to ensure that we have a healthy pipeline of diverse talent to support longer-term workforce renewal. In fiscal year 2020-2021, the Department provided a total of 1856 employment opportunities to students (new hires and rehires). Of these, 107 were from the Indigenous Student Employment Opportunity inventory, and 81 were from the Employment Opportunity for Students with Disabilities inventory.
While the Department continues its work with students to ensure that they have all the tools and resources at their disposal to make their work experience as beneficial as possible, we need to do more deliberate student recruitment from equity-seeking groups. To this point, the Department’s Western Canada and Territories Region has worked directly with Indigenous communities to identify and recruit talent. In February 2021, a partnership with the Community Futures Treaty Seven enabled the Department to participate in a career fair held by the community and resulted in the recruitment of new Indigenous students to the Department.
The Department’s Black Engagement and Advancement Team has engaged the Public Service Commission (PSC) on behalf of ESDC to explore the development of a Black Student Employment Opportunity inventory that could provide a tangible opportunity to support future generations of the Black community who have been disproportionally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and have positive and sustainable impacts, building generational wealth for those from the community. The Department has also worked with the PSC to create an enhanced communications plan that provides details on the flexibilities to hire visible minority students from its current Federal Student Work Experience Program inventory. These initiatives provide the Government of Canada with the ability to support longer-term diverse renewal within its workforce.
Support for Career Progression and Leadership Development
We know employees need to see themselves in their leadership in order to feel inspired and empowered to become leaders and foster change. We also know that currently, many employees do not see themselves in their leadership at ESDC. From April 1, 2020 to April 1, 2021, ESDC has increased workforce representation of visible minorities, Indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities in the Executive category. While progress has been made more work remains to be done, in particular to address long-standing gaps in representation of Indigenous peoples at the executive level.
The Department acknowledges that it has more work to do in moving the needle to increase diversity of its workforce with a needed focus at the middle and senior management levels.
ESDC is currently conducting a deep-dive analysis of hiring, promotion and retention rates of equity-seeking groups, in collaboration with its diversity networks and unions, to identify where specific interventions are required to address and remove systemic barriers from both a recruitment and career progression perspective and to work quickly to alter our course.
Based on feedback from its diversity networks, a particular focus needs to be on career progression and identifying roadblocks to enable the Department’s diverse workforce to become leaders of the future. To begin the work of improving representation of racialized employees at middle management levels, the Department will be advancing a middle management development program specifically targeted for its racialized employees as a result of direct feedback from its diversity networks.
Focused efforts are also underway across the country to support career progression of racialized employees. As on example, the Atlantic Region is leading work to support increased representation of Black public servants at the decision-making table through the Building Black Leaders (BBL) program. The BBL, sponsored by the Atlantic Federal Council and Championed by the ADM of the Service Canada Atlantic Region, is a collaborative initiative between federal organizations to sponsor highly skilled Black public servants to create networks, and support targeted training and development opportunities. The program is guided by a steering committee that has worked to build the resources and supports that consider the nuances of the Black lived experience.
The Department is also taking the deliberate step through focused talent management discussions to establish a talent pool of racialized employees, Indigenous employees and employees with disabilities who are identified as high potential candidates for management and executive roles, and of executives from equity-seeking groups with the potential to advance to the ADM level.
As a first step, ESDC’s senior leadership team has begun providing mentoring and sponsorship opportunities to its diverse executive cadre to provide insight and guidance on career development. In support of this, the Department has incorporated components of the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer’s (OCHRO) Mentoring Plus Initiative.
An initial focus has been to support the unique needs of Black executives with work being led by the Senior Associate Deputy Minister and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada. The Department intends to expand the model, through a phased approach, to executives in other diversity groups and eventually to its executive feeder groups.
Improving Accessibility for ESDC Employees
The effects of the global pandemic have underscored more deeply than ever the need to prioritize and support accessibility and inclusivity for our employees and our clients and have provided lessons learned as we work to develop our workplace of the future. ESDC is committed to ensuring that employees and clients with disabilities have every opportunity to participate fully and equally in an inclusive, barrier-free environment where they can realize their potential and feel they belong.
Over the past year, the Department’s first accessibility plan, known as the ESDC Accessibility Roadmap, has continued to evolve. The Roadmap includes a Strategic Framework, which sets out where we want to get to, and a comprehensive, multi-year Operational Plan, which outlines how we will get there.
Hearing the voices of ESDC employees (and clients) with disabilities from across the country has been integral to advancing the wide range of work that has been undertaken and is planned. In developing the Strategic Framework, 14 virtual engagement sessions were held with more than 100 employees with disabilities across Canada. In addition, the co-chairs of, and the champion for, the ESDC Employees with Disabilities Network sit on the working group of Directors General that is supporting the Roadmap development and implementation.
The Western Canada and Territories Region is piloting a fully accessible Employee Wellness Passport with a holistic approach to enable employees to be successful. The key components of the Passport are accessibility requirements (including for recruitment processes); workplace employee enablement elements; mental health supports and family status. The Passport demonstrates the Department’s commitment in using innovation and technology to ensure all employees are in an enabling environment, with a particular focus on expanding and strengthening supports for employees with disabilities.
Looking forward, one of ESDC’s priorities for 2021-2022 is developing a framework to measure progress on the Roadmap. The measurement framework will draw on quantitative as well as qualitative data. Several new data sources are being developed, including on client feedback on the accessibility of ESDC programs and services and on the state of accessibility at ESDC.
On the latter, the first-ever, all-employee “Survey on Accessibility at ESDC” was launched in March 2021. Almost 7,000 employees – or about one in four – responded. The results of the survey are currently being analyzed and will be available this fall. A few of the preliminary findings suggest there is generally a positive environment for change across the Department when it comes to accessibility:
- 97% of respondents agreed that making the ESDC work environment accessible and barrier-free is worth the effort;
- Just under 90% of respondents agreed that eliminating and preventing barriers to accessibility should be a high or very high priority for ESDC;
- Over 80% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that ESDC can be a leader in eliminating and preventing barriers to accessibility within five years.
Sustained, multi-dimensional change is essential for ESDC to be a barrier- free environment for people with disabilities. Recognizing this, the upcoming Operational Plan will include a number of measures to continue to drive, reinforce and institutionalize the significant change that is required and to ensure everyone at ESDC sees accessibility as their responsibility.
Finally, realizing the vision of a barrier-free ESDC requires action within our own sphere of control, but also influencing others to take action. Our employees want to see not only action from across the Department but true and lasting results for the Government of Canada overall.
ESDC is committed to continuing to work with other federal departments and agencies to address these situations for the benefit of ESDC employees and the federal public service as a whole – and for the benefit of people across Canada.
Going Forward
Moving forward, we are committed to several foundational initiatives that will enable a more inclusive organizational culture within the Department, and that will support our ability to measure progress towards ongoing improvement. Our employees have been working for too long under the challenging and often discriminatory systemic practices of our organization, some of which we are still learning about, or might not even be aware of. While we have made some progress, we still have a lot of work to do to get to a place where all our employees feel inclusive acceptance.
ESDC has developed its first dedicated Inclusion Survey, in collaboration with diversity networks and bargaining agents, which will be launched in September 2021. The Inclusion Survey will provide an opportunity for all employees to share their feelings about workplace inclusion and belonging, as well as lived experiences and accounts of witnessed behaviours such as micro-aggressions, harassment, bullying and discrimination. This survey will be key for the Department to have a baseline against which to measure the effectiveness of its established diversity and inclusion initiatives and take actions in response to results.
This fall, the Department has also committed to conducting an Employment Systems Review. The goal of this review will be to determine systemic barriers and discriminatory practices that exist in order to implement measures to eliminate them and improve the health of the workplace.
The Department has also put a deliberate focus on training and awareness to equip employees, managers and executives in addressing the behaviours and language of racism and discrimination and in becoming active allies to those whose day-to-day experiences are different from their own. In consultation with key internal and external stakeholders, including ESDC’s diversity networks and unions, the Department has developed and launched a responsive and targeted diversity and inclusion strategy. ESDC’s new diversity and inclusion mandatory training, Richness of Diversity and Inclusion was launched in April 2021 and addresses behaviours related to one of ESDC’s learning priorities, Intercultural Competence, and includes a case study on valuing individuality, the concept of privilege and intersectionality.
As a result of direct feedback provided by diversity networks and unions, as of April 1, 2021, unconscious bias training also became mandatory for employees with supervisory responsibilities (for example team leaders, supervisors, managers, directors) who conduct or participate in staffing activities.
ESDC is also piloting a holistic learning program for beginner-level First Nations, Inuit and Métis Indigenous employee learners to reach BBB levels of proficiency in French. This program is based on a model that emphasizes the oral tradition. The program will have a holistic approach that emphasizes connections and the human experience and will be based on three methodologies (neurolinguistics, communicative, and action- based). Elders were consulted on the design of the learning activities and they will be present during key moments of the training.
To support inclusivity in the ESDC response to advance Reconciliation, an ESDC National Indigenous Awareness Working Group was developed, co-lead by the College@ESDC and the ESDC Indigenous Employees Circle. Through this committee, Indigenous Awareness learning options are planned and supported. Through ongoing discussions, an updated Indigenous Awareness learning path was co-developed as “Essential Training” by the College @ESDC and the IEC to support the evolving learning and to support the continued advancement of Reconciliation across the Department.
While we are prioritizing our efforts to combat all forms of racism, discrimination and other barriers to inclusion in the workplace, we know that our employees have faced and continue to face disrespect, discrimination, barriers and pain as a result of the practices and procedures historically and currently in our organization. We need to do more – learning, listening and taking action that can be measured. Discrimination of any kind has no place in our organization and we will continue to work to create a more inclusive workplace. We look forward to continued collaboration on this collective obligation and the opportunity to help ESDC and the public service create permanent systemic change.
Sandra Hassan
Sous-ministre du Travail et sous-ministre déléguée de l’Emploi et du Développement social
Deputy Minister of Labour and Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development
Annette Gibbons
Sous-ministre déléguée de l’Emploi et du Développement social Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development
Tina Namiesniowski
Sous-ministre déléguée principale de l’Emploi et du Développement social Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development
Lori MacDonald
Sous-ministre déléguée principale de l’Emploi et du Développement social et chef de l’exploitation pour Service Canada
Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada
Graham Flack
Sous-ministre de l’Emploi et du Développement social Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development
Annex A – ESDC Overall Workforce Representation (WFR) and Workforce Availability (WFA) by Employment Equity Designated Group (April 1, 2020 to April 1, 2021)
Employment Equity Designated Group |
April 1 2020 |
April 1 2020 |
April 1 2020 |
April 1 2021 |
April 1 2021 |
April 1 2021 Gaps |
April 1 2020 to |
Women |
67.7% |
61.7% |
+6.0% |
67.6% |
61.8% |
+5.8% |
-0.1% |
Visible Minorities |
22.7% |
19.7% |
+3.0% |
23.9% |
19.5% |
+4.4% |
+1.2% |
Persons with Disabilities |
5.9% |
9.6% |
-3.7% |
6.0% |
9.6% |
-3.6% |
+0.1% |
Indigenous Peoples |
4.0% |
3.6% |
+0.4% |
4.1% |
3.6% |
+0.5% |
+0.1% |
Note: Indeterminate, term 3 months or more and seasonal employees only. Casual and term employees of less than 3 months are excluded, as are employees on leave without pay, students, exempt staff of minister's offices, and Governor in Council appointees.
Annex B – ESDC Executive Category Workforce Representation (WFR) and Workforce Availability (WFA) by Employment Equity Designated Group (April 1, 2020 to April 1, 2021)
Employment Equity Designated Group |
April 1 2020 WFR |
April 1 2020 WFA |
April 1 2020 |
April 1 2021 |
April 1 2021 |
April 1 2021 Gaps |
April 1 2020 to |
Women |
57.0% |
55.6% |
+1.4% |
57.7% |
55.8% |
+1.9% |
+0.7% |
Visible Minorities |
10.3% |
11.5% |
-1.2% |
12.6% |
11.4% |
+1.2% |
+2.3% |
Persons with Disabilities |
5.3% |
5.3% |
0% |
6.5% |
5.3% |
+1.2% |
+1.2% |
Indigenous Peoples |
4.1% |
5.1% |
-1.0% |
4.2% |
5.1% |
-0.9% |
+0.1% |
Note: Indeterminate, term 3 months or more and seasonal employees only. Casual and term employees of less than 3 months are excluded, as are employees on leave without pay, students, exempt staff of minister's offices, and Governor in Council appointees.
Annex C - ESDC Population, Hires and Departures - Employees Other than the Executive Group (Non-EX)
Demographic Group |
ESDC |
Indigenous Employees |
Visible Minorities (Including Black Employees) |
Black Employees |
Persons with Disabilities |
||||
Number of Employees |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
|
Overall Population |
30,261 |
1,192 |
4% |
6,560 |
22% |
1,537 |
5% |
1,192 |
4% |
Overall Population |
35,678 |
1,409 |
4% |
8,144 |
23% |
2,005 |
6% |
2,115 |
6% |
New Hires FY 2019-2020 |
5,551 |
149 |
3% |
1,048 |
19% |
265 |
5% |
216 |
4% |
New Hires FY 2020-2021 |
7,404 |
236 |
3% |
1,461 |
20% |
441 |
6% |
331 |
4% |
Departures FY 2019-2020 |
1,067 |
30 |
3% |
167 |
16% |
46 |
4% |
49 |
5% |
Departures FY 2020-2021 |
648 |
Denotes less than 6 |
Denotes less than 6 |
80 |
12% |
15 |
2% |
31 |
5% |
Annex D - ESDC Population and Appointments - Executive Group (EX)
Demographic Group |
ESDC |
Indigenous Employees |
Visible Minorities (Including Black Employees) |
Black Employees |
Persons with Disabilities |
||||
Number of Employees |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
Number of Employees |
Percentage |
|
EX Population 2020-04-01 |
552 |
23 |
4% |
57 |
10% |
14 |
3% |
30 |
5% |
EX Population 2021-04-01 |
602 |
25 |
4% |
75 |
12% |
14 |
2% |
39 |
6% |
EX Appointments 2019-2020 |
98 |
Denotes less than 6 |
Not Applicable |
15 |
Not Applicable |
Denotes less than 6 |
Not Applicable |
Denotes less than 6 |
Not Applicable |
EX Appointments 2020-2021 |
104 |
10 |
Not Applicable |
20 |
Not Applicable |
Denotes less than 6 |
Not Applicable |
Denotes less than 6 |
Not Applicable |
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