GBA Plus Supplementary Information Table

In 2024 to 2025, the Public Service Commission of Canada (PSC) aims to provide strategic direction on integrating Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus) throughout the organization.

The GBA Plus Responsibility Centre plans to provide applied knowledge and guidance to help integrate GBA Plus concretely, including:

• guidance to support consideration of GBA Plus measures at the early stages of initiatives, and practical examples of how to do so 
• leveraging GBA Plus interdepartmental meetings for best practices and tools

It will also develop a consistent internal results framework based on lessons learned from other departments and agencies. The framework will include quantitative and qualitative targets to document the integration of GBA Plus into PSC policies, programs, operations, and services.

The GBA Plus Champion will continue to support awareness and systematic implementation within the organization.

The Recruitment and Assessment Services Program will collect disaggregated data, allowing the Public Service Commission of Canada (PSC) to monitor the program’s impact on diversity. 

By focusing on inclusive recruitment, and through ongoing work to increase employment equity group hiring, the PSC has embedded consideration of Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus) impacts into the planning and design of our programs, services, advice, guidance, and products.   

The employment equity data, research and analysis provided by the PSC’s Data Services and Analysis Directorate informs our recruitment and assessment functions. The program includes candidates who belong to an employment equity group in all of the PSC’s candidate pools and inventories. It will continue to offer focused inventories and specialized initiatives for diverse candidates, including: 

• the Employment Opportunity for Students with Disability and the Indigenous Student Employment Opportunity (links available only a Government of Canada network), as well as 2 Federal Student Work Experience Program initiatives featuring an onboarding process, training, a mentorship program and activities for students and managers/supervisors
• the Virtual Door to Talent with Disabilities, a one-stop-shop for access to all PSC hiring inventories and pools for people with disabilities
• a careers in biology pool and a policy and data analyst inventory, both for persons with disabilities (accessible only on the Government of Canada network)

The PSC’s Diversity and Inclusion Centre of Expertise, Indigenous Centre of Expertise and Assessment Centre of Expertise will continue to provide evidence-based guidance and advice on inclusive recruitment and ways to remove or mitigate barriers in PSC recruitment products and services. 

In running high-volume personnel assessment tools, the program will: 

• monitor data on the performance of members of all employment equity groups, to help proactively identify and remove barriers 
• fully review assessment tools to enhance inclusiveness and accessibility beyond employment equity objectives  
• offer assessment accommodation services to departments for candidates applying to federal public service jobs  
• monitor assessment accommodation services using a GBA Plus lens to ensure equitable and accessible assessments 

Through its Oversight and Investigations program, the PSC will continue to conduct surveys that provide a diversity-driven and intersectional perspective of the staffing environment. The program will analyze results of the 2023 Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey, which included new questions for equity-seeking groups related to sexual orientation and religion and interactions between gender and other employment equity groups.

The program will share relevant staffing-related data for each department and agency on the Open Government portal, while respecting privacy standards. This will allow departments to conduct their own analyses and draw their own conclusions from the data, facilitating empirically based decision making across the public service.

The program will continue to conduct research on public service hiring and will monitor government-wide staffing systems such as the Public Service Resourcing System. It will analyze recruitment trends from a diversity lens, considering employment equity group membership, educational level, language of use, area of residence and other diversity factors where it is possible to collect them.

The program will also:

• conduct investigations into errors, omissions or improper conduct arising from biases and barriers that disadvantage members of equity-seeking groups during public service appointment processes
• report on the nature and findings of these investigations to other areas of the PSC, allowing them to better support departments
• post anonymous summaries of these investigations on the PSC website for departments and the public to consult  

As part of the Policy Direction and Support program, the PSC will continue to oversee and monitor data linked to the priority information management system, including population demographics such as employment equity status. The PSC is currently looking at expanding data collection of equity-seeking groups (beyond the Employment Equity Act designated groups), which will support GBA Plus analysis across the PSC. 

The program will also continue to apply a GBA Plus lens in regulatory work, including the modernization of the Public Service Employment Regulations. The regulatory proposals will consider barriers to the full participation of members of employment equity and equity-seeking groups.

The PSC will also apply a GBA Plus lens in implementing amendments to the Public Service Employment Act, with impacts across policy, programs, operations, services and oversight.