Summary of the Evaluation of the Workplace Equity Program, 2026

About the program

The Employment Equity Act (EEA), introduced in 1986, aims to achieve workplace equality by correcting disadvantages faced by designated groups—women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and visible minorities—in federally regulated workplaces.

The Workplace Equity Program, administered by the Labour Program, consists of three initiatives: (1) the Legislated Employment Equity Program (LEEP); (2) the Federal Contractors Program (FCP); and (3) a grants and contributions program called Workplace Opportunities: Removing Barriers to Equity (WORBE), designed to support employers in understanding and fulfilling their obligations under the EEA.

Key findings

• The Program remains relevant and it continues to provide a structured framework to support federally regulated employers.
• The Program provides a useful range of tools and training to support employer compliance with the Employment Equity Act. However, systems-related issues and volume pressures during the annual peak reporting period reduce their effectiveness.
• Consistent with previous reporting trends, federally regulated employers (LEEP) showed progress for visible minorities, while reported outcomes for women, Indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities remain below labour market availability benchmarks and point to the presence of pay gaps.
• Since the last evaluation, the program has strengthened its performance measurement and data collection methods with regulated employers. However, for WORBE-funded projects, more could be done to improve the Program's ability to track progress and demonstrate results.

Recommendations and observation

The evaluation is recommending that the Program:

• leverage its administrative data to support employers in addressing representation and pay gaps in a targeted manner by developing and implementing sector, region, and occupation-specific resources and activities, tailoring supports for smaller employers.
• continue to invest in optimizing the reporting process and enhancing user experience, especially for small- to medium-sized employers. This may involve modernizing or replacing the Workplace Equity Information Management System to simplify the reporting process and a continued effort to develop tools and resources to enhance employers' internal reporting capabilities.
• strengthen the reach and measurement framework of WORBE projects by encouraging cross-pollination among funding recipients and standardizing reporting via common performance indicators across funded projects.

The evaluation also made 1 observation:

• The Program has been exploring complementary approaches to engage with employers and foster awareness of employment equity practices related to the four designated groups. These practices provide opportunities to further strengthen engagement and increase support to employers.