Gender-based analysis plus (GBA Plus)

Section 1: Institutional Gender-Based Analysis Plus Capacity

The Gender-Based Analysis (GBA) Plus responsibility centre provides input on policies, programs and services to achieve a representative public service. It also ensures that GBA Plus is integrated into decision-making processes, by ensuring that every Treasury Board submission assesses the potential implications of Public Service Commission of Canada (PSC) policies and programs on diverse populations of Canadians.

In 2022−23, we continued to integrate GBA Plus across key activities and business processes, ensuring that a GBA Plus lens is used, with a focus on the intersectional diversity characteristics, including gender-based differences of employees and applicants. Changes to our enabling legislation, the Public Service Employment Act, were implemented as they came into force. We developed tools to provide guidance to departments and agencies on removing barriers and biases that disadvantage equity seeking groups.

In addition, our GBA Plus Champion was engaged on and informed about GBA Plus implementation, and created opportunities to raise awareness where possible.

Section 2: Gender and Diversity Impacts, by Program

Core Responsibility: Public Service Hiring and Non-partisanship

Program Name: Oversight and Monitoring

Program Goals: Effective organizational oversight of staffing, data and information are accessible to Canadians and there is an efficient approach to oversight.

Target Population: Federal departments and/or agencies; public servants; the general public.

Distribution of benefits

Other key program impacts

The Oversight and Monitoring Program ensures the integrity of the merit-based public service hiring process. This program performs audits and investigations and conducts surveys to monitor organizational compliance with staffing legislation, regulations and policies, and to provide a system-wide view of the staffing environment of the public service. This program also monitors and analyzes hiring data and conducts research to provide departments, agencies and Canadians with an informed view of the dynamics of public service hiring. The findings of this program are used to monitor and understand organizational results, including other programs’ outcomes. As such, key impacts found in the PSC’s other programs may be derived from activities led by this program. In 2022–23, key achievements included the launch of the Employment Equity Promotion Rate Study - Three-Year Update.

GBA Plus Data Collection Plan

The PSC includes GBA Plus considerations when planning audits. In ongoing and planned audits, the PSC will seek to obtain and analyze disaggregated data, including for employment equity sub-groups and equity-seeking groups, whenever the audit methodology allows. It will include the GBA Plus lens in audit planning activities, as well as other oversight activities, where feasible.

The Oversight and Monitoring Program will seek to identify avenues for extracting and using disaggregated data on employment equity and other sociodemographic groups in its 2023–25 research plan, to support stronger policy, program and service development and implementation. When possible, variables relating to intersectionality, such as region and citizenship, will be analyzed along with employment equity information. The GBA Plus Responsibility Centre will be consulted and will have an opportunity to suggest variables of interest at the planning phases of each research project.

The PSC will also proactively integrate GBA Plus considerations into its information-gathering processes, including through the Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey. The survey includes a third gender option for respondents and collects data on key sociodemographic factors, such as employment equity group membership, level of education, region and first official language. This format allows for a detailed analysis of interactions between gender and other employment equity groups, such as intersectionality in perceptions of merit and fairness in hiring, to detect potential differences in perception.

Core Responsibility: Public Service Hiring and Non-partisanship

Program Name: Policy Direction and Support

Program Goals: Confidence in the staffing system and a diverse public service. The Canadian government that retains skilled employees with efficient public service hiring which is seen to be non-partisan.

Target Population: Federal departments and agencies; public servants; the general public.

Distribution of benefits

Key program impacts statistics:

Additional information

The PSC Employment Equity Promotion Rate Study - Three-Year Update reported the following additional key findings:

Intersectionality ^{Footnote 2}

Interaction between gender and identifying as a Black public servant.

As presented in our main result (see Table 1), women tend to have a higher relative promotion rate (2.8% for the 2008 to 2021 period). However, the results presented in Table 11a and 11b show that the compounding effect of being both a Black public servant and a woman significantly impacts the chances of promotion. More specifically:

• Black public servant women have lower relative promotion rates (-5.2%) than women who did not identify as a visible minority.
• Black public servant women have lower relative promotion rates (-7.0%) as compared to Black public servant men.

Other interactions

This study also measured interactions between other factors and employment equity status. An interesting interaction relates to gender and geographical location. Table 12 shows that the relative promotion rates of public servants in the National Capital Region were much higher than public servants outside the National Capital Region (63.1%). When considering the interaction with gender, we see that:

• the relative promotion rate for women compared to men was higher (8.3%) in the National Capital Region as compared to outside the region (-6.0%)
• the relative promotion rate of women in the National Capital Region compared to women outside the region (72.2%) was higher than the same comparison for men (49.5%).

The relative promotion rates of members of visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples, compared to their respective counterparts, were also higher in the National Capital Region than outside the region (as reported above for women). Conversely, persons with disabilities continue to have significantly lower relative promotion rates in the National Capital Region versus outside the region. (See Table 12.)

Representation of employment equity group members as applicants, in the federal public service, and as a share of promotions

Table 13 provides representation numbers of all employment equity groups, including visible minority subgroups as applicants, compared to their representation share in the federal public service for the fiscal years 2017–18 to 2020–21.

The main results are:

• The representation of women applicants to job advertisements and their share of promotions continue to surpass their representation in the federal public service.
• Members of visible minorities’ representation as applicants continues to be larger than both their representation in the general population and their share of promotions. Among visible minority subgroups, this was also notable for public servants who identified as Black, South Asian/ East Indians and Non-White West Asian, North African or Arabs.
• Indigenous Peoples had a lower representation as applicants than their representation in the general population over the 4 fiscal years. However, their representation in promotions continues to be higher than their representation as applicants.
• Over the 4 years, persons with disabilities had equivalent or higher representation as applicants compared to their share in promotions. However, both were lower than their representation in the federal public service.

The results of the PSC report on  Citizenship of Applicants and External Appointments ^{Footnote 3} show the following:
In line with our previous findings, there is an overall increase in non-citizens applying for jobs advertised in the public domain. Non-citizens, however, remain less likely to be appointed than Canadian citizens, and their appointment share has remained about the same since 2018−19 (2.5%).

• There has been an ongoing increase in the number and share of permanent resident applicants.
• Despite increases in their recruitment, permanent residents make up a smaller share of hires than applicants.
• Applicants who identify themselves as visible minorities are more likely to be non-citizens than their non-visible minorities counterparts. Further, non-citizens are less likely to be hired than citizens.
• As a result, there are fewer non-citizen visible minority applicants that are appointed.
• Most non-citizen applicants and hires are permanent residents.
• The percentage of non-citizen applicants for all employment equity designated groups is higher for men than for women.

Intersectionality with gender

Non-citizen men make up a higher percentage of applicants in all three employment equity groups than women (Annex 2, Table A2-12).

Other Key Program impacts

The Policy Direction and Support Program exists to support departments and agencies in experimenting and innovating with their staffing approaches and supporting strategies, to help them both meet their business needs and achieve their diversity and employment equity objectives. Through this program, the PSC provides guidance to organizations to enable legislative, regulatory and policy compliance. This includes providing expert advice to build understanding and help ensure that public service appointments are merit-based and reflective of Canada’s diversity. Key achievements for this program in 2022–23 included:

• establishing and approving a modernized framework to transform the Priority Entitlements Program
• modifying the appointment framework and developing guidance to prepare for the coming into force of the amendments to the Public Service Employment Act

GBA Plus Data Collection Plan

In partnership with the Recruitment and Assessment Services Program, as part of its recruitment activities, the Policy Direction and Support Program will continue to collect information on representation rates in hiring and staffing processes, based on self-declaration as a member of one or more designated employment equity group(s). This information is collected at the sub-group level for 3 of the designated groups (Indigenous persons, persons with disabilities and visible minority group members). This data-gathering process will be coupled with the PSC’s ongoing communications plan, focused on encouraging persons to self-declare.

Core Responsibility: Public Service Hiring and Non-partisanship
Program Name: Recruitment and Assessment Services
Program Goals: The strategic recruitment priorities of the Government of Canada and the renewal of the public service are achieved. This is done while reducing barriers for Canadians to have access to public service jobs and by hiring qualified individuals to deliver results for Canadians.
Target Population: Federal departments and/or agencies; public servants; the general public.

Distribution of benefits

Key Program Impacts Statistics:

Other Key Program Impacts

The Recruitment and Assessment Services Program exists to support departments and agencies in the hiring of qualified individuals into and within the public service, helping to shape a workforce reflecting Canada’s diversity. Through inclusive outreach and the use of modern tools, it reduces barriers for all Canadians seeking to access public service jobs. This program also collaborates with departments and agencies to create and implement innovative staffing and assessment approaches to meet the strategic recruitment priorities of the Government of Canada and support the renewal of the public service. Key achievements for this program in 2022–23 include:

• implementing WalkMe (Digital Adoption Platform), a new digital tool in the Public Service Resourcing System to guide users and make the system more intuitive
• reviewing recruitment programs, initiatives and inventories to mitigate potential assessment biases and barriers that disadvantage equity seeking groups
• beginning to review assessment tools to identify and mitigate the impact of potential biases or barriers that disadvantage equity seeking groups
• developing a guide, tools and a workshop to support federal departments and agencies in conducting evaluations of their assessment methods
• implementing services to help departments meet new Public Service Employment Act obligations related to accessible and inclusive assessments, as they come into force
• conducting “reach” solutions and proof-of-concept testing with online professional networking and job-matching sites

We continued to oversee the priority entitlements program, which aims to help people cope with career transitions due to various life and employment events. Through the priority entitlement program, the PSC supports the continuous employment of qualified employees, maintaining corporate knowledge and talent. This includes, but is not limited to, support to people who may be more likely to be marginalized, such as individuals who develop a disability.

GBA Plus Data Collection Plan

As it administers personnel assessment and development tests, the PSC will continue to monitor aggregated data on the performance of members of all employment equity groups (women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, members of visible minorities), ensuring that the tools do not pose non-job-related barriers that disadvantage equity seeking groups. The new oral language assessment test will allow for detailed data collection, including input from candidates on their experience taking the test, to assess ease of use and possible barriers.

In addition, the new GC Jobs platform is expected to allow for advanced monitoring capabilities, tracking drop-off rates and representation rates of various groups at different stages of the application process, thus allowing for the collection of detailed data on potentially differentiated friction points for specific groups.