Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
Letter on Implementation of the Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity and Inclusion

Summer 2021 update

Dear Ms. Charette:

Thank you for your correspondence of June 28, 2021, outlining the Clerk’s Call to Action on Anti‑Racism, Equity and Inclusion in the federal public service and the importance of removing systemic racism and discrimination from our institutions. We are pleased to provide you with an update on our work to date to build a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED).

Putting anti‑racism, equity, and inclusion at the top of the management agenda

ISED has made diversity and inclusion a top priority at the management table. We regularly hold in‑depth discussions at our senior management tables, including at the Senior Management Committee, where we have focused our attention on setting representation goals, reviewing progress against diversity and inclusion initiatives across the organization, and examining our policies, systems, and processes for bias, racism, and discrimination. The Senior Management Committee has taken part in safe space discussions, received accessibility training, adopted the practice of using land acknowledgement statements, and committed to the development of accessible documentation in all of our management forums.

We have mandated that all executives model and promote inclusive behaviours in their daily work by participating in and completing anti‑bias training, holding safe space discussions, encouraging participation in events and employee networks, and working closely with their human resources advisors to identify gaps in representation and develop strategies for recruitment, retention, promotion, and development. Every ISED executive has adopted commitments in their performance management agreements on equity, diversity, and inclusion.

To embed lasting change into ISED’s internal governance, we have re‑examined and modified our Senior Committee System to ensure that management’s attention is placed squarely on issues surrounding diversity and inclusion, and ultimately to embed the advancement of diversity and inclusion into how we operate.

Following consultations and planning, we recently appointed a Chief Equity and Diversity Officer, Mr. Ray Edwards, to provide strategic advice to the Deputy Ministers on the current state of diversity, anti‑racism, equity, inclusion, and accessibility within the Department. Among other duties, Mr. Edwards will lead the development of a new Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board composed of external experts who will provide impartial advice and guidance on departmental policies and practices to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion at ISED, and offer a challenge function on diversity and inclusion strategies, plans, and activities.

We have further strengthened internal governance by forming a new Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM)‑level committee for diversity and inclusion. Reporting to the Senior Management Committee, it will be the focal point for shaping ISED’s programs, policies, and practices through an anti‑racism, diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion lens. ISED has also appointed seven new departmental diversity and inclusion champions, for a total of 10 champions and co‑chairs. Based on the crucial role that employee networks play in advocacy and raising awareness, we have set aside dedicated funds to support them in their work. 

Taking immediate action to drive change

While we have aimed to take a deliberate approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive department, this has not come at the expense of immediate steps to drive change at ISED.

In 2020, we rapidly developed an interim action plan entitled “Building Greater Diversity at ISED,” which outlined signature commitments to make leadership more diverse and inclusive; reduce barriers to recruitment, retention, hiring, and promotion; and create an inclusive culture. In line with the principle of “nothing about us, without us,” we invested significant effort engaging our champions, networks, bargaining agents, and equity-seeking employees to understand the issues and to ensure that proposed actions were informed by lived experiences. We dedicated resources to rolling out the action plan through the creation of a Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce and Accessibility Secretariat.

We embraced learning as a key factor in fostering an environment for change and encouraged our employees to take unconscious bias, anti‑racism, and workplace violence and harassment‑prevention training. To take one signature example, we are  proud to note that ISED has become a leader in the public service when it comes to accessibility learning. We are one of the few departments to have developed and deployed training on accessibility and inclusion, including making communications accessible, and are now working with other departments and the Office of Public Service Accessibility to help roll out the training more broadly.

Thanks to the commitment and energy of our networks and employees, we offered ample opportunities for staff to take part in various grassroots and learning events on reconciliation and on anti‑Asian and anti‑Black discrimination. For example, ISED’s LGBTQ2+ Network hosted an event called “Creating LGBTQ2+ Inclusive Work Environments,” which brought together more than 600 managers and employees from ISED and across the public service to learn common terms and concepts related to LGBTQ2+ identities and inclusion.

ISED built equity, diversity, and inclusion considerations into its employee pulse surveys to both open the dialogue on how we work to advance these objectives in the organization, and to measure the progress made in supporting employees through the first months of the COVID‑19 pandemic. More recently, we launched an accessibility feedback form to identify barriers to accessibility at ISED and to seek input from employees on removing and preventing any barriers. To find ways to better communicate the value of self‑identification to our employees, we ran an experimental self‑identification campaign using behavioural science. The importance of the campaign was reinforced by the results from the employee pulse surveys, which indicated that the leading barriers to self‑identifying include not understanding its purpose, not being aware of where to self‑identify, and fear of reprisal or discrimination. Building off of these results, ISED is now rethinking the ways in which we engage employees on self‑identification.

In early 2020, we launched our Workplace Accommodations Centre to handle disability‑related accommodation requests and provide further support to employees with disabilities and their managers. With this centralized approach, the Centre is able to provide employees with disabilities and their managers with the best options in accommodation so that they can return to work, remain at work, and contribute and perform to their full potential in the workplace.

The Canadian Innovation Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace, set up in 2018, continues to be an inclusive and collaborative forum that supports the delivery of conferences and practical workshops to support the mental health and employee well‑being of all public servants across Canada. The Centre, along with ISED’s Ombudsperson for Mental Health and Employee Well‑Being, have taken the initiative to drive discussion on diversity and inclusion, thereby creating a safe space to discuss issues such as microaggressions in the workplace, and share thoughts, opinions, and ideas as they relate to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment.

Most recently, we launched a sponsorship program with a focus on ensuring equal opportunities for Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, and persons with disabilities. This pilot will focus on levelling the playing field by allowing equity‑seeking employees to receive equal consideration for developmental opportunities. Sponsors advocate for and champion these employees, opening the doors for career advancement and professional development.

Focusing on improving the representation of our workforce

By putting anti‑racism, equity, and inclusion at the top of the management agenda, establishing the right governance structures to achieve our goals, and developing comprehensive plans and resourcing them accordingly, we are setting the foundation to enable a true culture change at ISED. This will ensure that we are not only recruiting diverse people, but retaining and promoting them. We can be confident that our actions to make progress on representation will be enduring and will ultimately result in an ISED that truly reflects the Canadian population it serves.

To that point, ISED has set representation goals for its entire population, including specific goals for executives and the executive feeder population. We have committed to meeting or exceeding our EX representation goals for all four employment equity (EE) groups by March 31, 2022. We have set targets to close remaining non‑EX representation gaps for women, Indigenous peoples, and racialized employees over the next four years, in line with expected hiring and attrition, and we are systematically measuring our progress against those goals. We are taking a similar approach to increasing representation of employees with disabilities—where ISED faces its largest deficit—with a goal to bridge half the gap in the next 18 months.

ISED is changing how it identifies and develops leaders. We have created internal inventories of employees from EE groups who are ready for promotion, and we have successfully placed two‑thirds of these employees since March 2021. For the EX feeder group, we have run a collective “aspiring EX” process with a focus on identifying a pool of EE candidates ready for advancement. Through this process, we have placed 15 new executives as of today, six being from underrepresented groups. ISED has systematically taken advantage of the processes and tools available across the public service to recruit EX candidates who are Indigenous, Black, racialized, or persons with disabilities. To bring aboard candidates at more senior levels, we have worked with the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Privy Council Office to access specialized inventories and tools for recruitment, and we will continue to do so as Director General and ADM vacancies arise.

Looking at our data, we know a key priority is to make progress in increasing the representation of persons with disabilities. We are doing this through targeted recruitment and development, establishing successful recruitment partnerships with ACT to Employ at Carleton University, the Employment Accessibility Resource Network, and March of Dimes Canada. Through these partnerships, we have been able to recruit students, leverage their expertise to improve our recruitment process, and share our job opportunities with their networks. We have formalized a relationship with LiveWorkPlay to place employees with intellectual disabilities into permanent roles in ISED. To date, we have onboarded six employees with intellectual disabilities.

ISED has similarly engaged in focused recruitment efforts to bring aboard Indigenous employees. We have run targeted staffing processes, worked with the Public Service Commission to develop inventories of students, and worked with Canadian universities with large Indigenous student bodies—including the University of Manitoba, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of Regina—to pilot new student recruitment approaches and to leverage their expertise.

Results to date suggest that the above strategies are beginning to have an impact. Year‑over‑year representation rates from 2019–2020 to 2020–2021 increased for EXs across all EE categories. Representation rates also increased among non‑executives for persons with disabilities and for racialized persons, and held steady for women (where representation is currently at 50.9%).

Building new policies, programs, and services that are free from barriers and biases

Notwithstanding the early movement noted above, it is too early to congratulate ourselves on progress. We recognize that to dismantle racism, discrimination, oppression, and barriers to inclusion in the workplace, it is not enough to stop at the initial actions we have taken. We need to take a profound look at the Department to better understand our current state so that we can continue to challenge the status quo and plan for a better future.

To this end, through our recently launched departmental Employment Systems Review, ISED has begun a process of examining all of its people‑management policies, practices, programs, and processes to identify and eliminate systemic and attitudinal barriers and biases that are prohibiting EE members and equity‑seeking members from achieving success. This will involve taking a deep dive into ISED’s workforce data, from both formal and informal sources, as well as its formal and informal internal services policies, procedures, and guidelines. Consultations through interviews and surveys will be held with management, employees, and internal services providers across the organization.

For us, the goal of the Employment Systems Review goes beyond being a requirement under the Employment Equity Act. It is an opportunity for the Department to identify and provide the needed explanations for gaps in representation for EE designated and equity‑seeking groups, which will allow us to refine our strategies to remove barriers to hiring, retention, and career development, and, ultimately, improve employees’ lived experiences throughout the employment process. Notably, the Review will help us move away from the traditional one‑dimensionality of diversity and inclusion work by also providing the information we need to consider the intersectionality of employees’ identities and experiences across and within EE designated and equity‑seeking groups to more accurately understand the complexities of employee experiences.

We are also conscious that our efforts to build a more diverse and inclusive department cannot be focused exclusively inwardly—that our efforts to be truly representative of the public we serve and to include all employees fully and fairly in the life of our department will fall short if those actions do not ultimately translate into more inclusive and effective policies and programs. While our elected representatives set policy, they turn to the public service to ensure effective implementation that is free of biases and discrimination. In recent years, ISED has been given carriage of important programming to support equity, diversity, and inclusion, such as the 50 – 30 Challenge, the Black Entrepreneurship Program, and the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy. We want to ensure that we capitalize on the benefits of building a more inclusive and diverse organization to deliver policies and programs that are more effective and responsive to the needs of Canadians.

Conclusion

Meaningful change requires perseverance, dedication, and commitment. ISED’s plan is supported by a strong change management framework that includes involvement and commitment across all levels. Fostering inclusion is a shared responsibility at ISED, for everyone, and is being built into our corporate culture. We recognize that there will always be room to learn and we welcome the opportunity to improve our efforts through continuous evaluation and holding ourselves accountable for getting it right. We are excited by the changes under way and the promise of building an ISED that is more dynamic, inclusive, and diverse.

If you have further questions, we would be happy to provide more information. We look forward to continuing our work together to build the Department—and the broader public service of Canada—that Canadians want and deserve.

Yours sincerely,

Annex A

Overview of ISED’s Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Metrics: Representation Rates from 2018 to 2021