Governance and Diversity within the Public Service in Canada: Towards a Viable and Sustainable Representation of Designated Groups (Employment Equity)

The Canadian Government is constantly seeking to set up thorough-going, responsible administrative practices. Representation is one of the main bases on which the mandate of the federal public service stands. Without this operating principle, a government agency cannot fully and faithfully reflect the concerns of the people it is called to serve. In order to be fair and inclusive, political action must manage diversity on a vast scale, embracing such differences as race, gender, age, language, ethnic origin, religion and disability. Canada’s population is one of the most diversified in the world. Aboriginal peoples and highly varied sustained immigration are just two factors contributing to its diversity and attributes.

The political authorities have been totally committed to the question of diversity for several decades. As a consequence, a vast legislative framework has been set up including the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The aim of this article is to introduce the Canadian example with reference to the management of diversity in the public service and, more particularly, the efforts made to achieve fairness in matters of employment. The approach consists first of reviewing the development of the issues of diversity from a general historical and political viewpoint, with special focus on employment equity (ee), and, second, of describing and examining the latest results obtained in terms of representation and its characteristics within the Canadian federal machine. Finally, the importance of identifying challenges for the public service, with a view to responsible governance, is examined within a global discussion of the obstacles identified, the programmes in place and the new approach to be developed.