IRCC Anti-Racism Strategy 2.0 (2021-2024) – Engagement with employees, partners and stakeholders

Strategy 2.0 is informed by the wide-ranging input received from employees, partners and stakeholders across multiple modalities of engagement. The testimonials of IRCC employees that were gathered during live sessions and from intranet platforms include heartfelt statements reflecting their lived experiences of racism on the job, their determination to progress despite hurt, frustration, and anger, and their continued hope for achieving progress toward a workplace in the future where employee can feel free to express their unique identity without fear or anxiety. The four boxed quotes below from IRCC employees were selected to illustrate the range of these testimonials.

Quotes from IRCC employees

“In my 32 years as a black woman in the public service, I have learned to navigate the unspoken barriers and ignore slights from those in a position of power. I have experienced their micro aggressions and their indifference. Those managers and directors have not changed their beliefs or their attitudes simply because IRCC created a new mandate. They are still in power and I am still Black.”

“There has been a concerted effort from management and staff to achieve the objectives of the strategy, clearly there is a lot of buy-in at all levels of IRCC. There is dedicated people passionately challenging the status quo with courage.”

“The thing required is to continue on the path that we have forged and not step back. This is a priority to change our thinking.”

“I wish Anti-Racism topic was outdated and no longer necessary. I’m dreaming a bit but I hope one day we will not have to work harder to ensure equity and diversity.”

Some of salient stakeholders and partners of the conversations inside and outside the Department, and the range of modalities we used to gather input and suggestions include:

Engagement with IRCC employees

The unique perspectives of IRCC employees are the cornerstone of the Strategy. Employees’ insights, feedback, thoughts and concerns to address racism define the vision and the broad parameters of the Strategy. Quantitative and qualitative inputs include conversations and comments in meetings and presentations, data collected through live polls and online surveys. The engagement with employees and partners have included Let’s Talk Racism Town Halls, workshops on bias in policy development and service delivery, panels, Trust Circles, broad middle manager engagement with training and tools offered to navigate the Anti-Racism landscape, trauma coaching sessions with a subset of middle managers, working groups and committees set up within sectors, branches and regional offices. Engagement with diversity, equity and inclusion networks have included invitations to provide feedback from official Champions and chairs of Indigenous Peoples Circle (IPC), Persons with Disabilities Employee Network, Black Employees Network (BEN), Racialized Employees and Allies Network (REAN). The most detailed and comprehensive sources of quantitative data are the 2020 Public Service Employee Survey and the 2020 Anti-Racism Workforce Survey (first ever Anti-Racism survey at IRCC which had a response rate of almost 30 percent and whose analytical results were available to employees by spring 2021).^{Footnote 1}

Collaboration with inter-departmental partners

A core group of federal Anti-Racism secretariats and Anti-Racism task forces, from that of IRCC, Global Affairs Canada, the Department of Justice and the Department of National Defence are coordinating their efforts to sustain progress in advancing Anti-Racism in the public service. Through regular meetings, federal partners are identifying common challenges, sharing tools and aligning methodologies to improve data capture and the assessment of results. The Strategy is informed by these conversations to develop overarching strategic actions and frameworks in support of Anti-Racism initiatives.

External stakeholders

In this iteration of the Strategy, engagement with external stakeholders on questions related to Anti-Racism initiatives remain limited compared to the range and depth of the engagement with IRCC employees and federal partners. Data and results from the external consultations inform this iteration of the Strategy only at a high-level of analysis. However, the key result emerging from the engagement with external partners and stakeholders thus far was to highlight the need for more in-depth dialogue. The consultations held (including presentations with live Q&As and/or followed by collecting post-meeting comments) and the qualitative data analysis of responses to survey questions of direct relevance for Anti-Racism actions included: IRCC’s Youth Advisory Group, Canadian Council for Refugees, National Settlement and Integration Council, online consultation survey on immigration levels planning (all during spring/summer 2021). The pointers from these initial conversations will be leveraged for an expanded external stakeholder engagement plan to be implemented in 2023 to 2024.

Clients and newcomers

Feedback from clients and newcomers regarding their experiences of discrimination and racism has not yet been fully analyzed or incorporated into the Strategy. Both of IRCC’s regular surveys, the Annual Client Satisfaction Survey on clients’ application experience across lines of business, and the Newcomer Outcomes Survey on newcomers’ experiences for users and non-users of IRCC-funded settlement services now include questions asking the respondents to self-identify their race/ethnicity. This allows disaggregation of results by racialized groups, allowing more refined analyses of clients’ and newcomers experiences’ of discrimination and racism in the context of IRCC services or generally within their communities of residence. In addition, a new Pilot Survey on Newcomers’ experiences of racism in their communities is slated to provide results, broken down by racialized groups. Disaggregated results from these surveys will be available for the first time by fall 2022.

Footnotes

Footnote 1

In addition to extensive feedback on Anti-Racism efforts in the people management practices, the Anti-Racism Task Force and Sector Leads organized engagement sessions during the first four months of 2022, specifically focusing on employees’ feedback on sector Anti-Racism commitments and the Strategy iteration process. The Task Force facilitated live engagement sessions with Indigenous Peoples Circle, and Middle Managers, and sought input from the unions and employee resource groups. Sector Leads organized sessions with employees from all levels in different sectors including the Internal Audit and Accountability Branch and the Office of Conflict Resolution in Internal Services; the Finance, Security and Administration Sector; the Settlement and Integration Sector; and the Strategic and Program Policy Sector. Further, employee feedback was collected through the departmental intranet. Total number of participants in live engagement sessions was more than 1,200 employees. Participants were provided with opportunities to actively participate by responding to polls and providing open-text comments to structured questionnaires. The availability of active and anonymous engagement tools contributed to the diversity and frankness of the input received. The number of unique open-text responses received during and outside live sessions, and through the intranet reached more than 800 comments, ranging from a few words to over 200 words an entry. These comments were collated to identify over 100 distinct suggestions a representative selection of which, in composite form and paraphrased only for brevity, is presented in What we heard from IRCC Employees.

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Date modified:: 2022-07-18

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