Employment Equity for Whom? Deconstructing the Canadian Paradigm

Abstract

Canada boasts a picture-perfect employment equity apparatus—a federal law supplemented by provincial legislations and programs, a multitude of policies, statements, strategic plans, offices and officers, advisory committees, census data and annual reports, projects, funds, events, awards, and diversity days—a vast deployment that excels in managing and marketing diversity which guarantees its own survival and expansion. Indeed, every major Canadian college campus hosts some form of inclusion, diversity, or human rights office, guided by employment equity policy and often under the supervision of senior administration, which would make most of our foreign counterparts envious. Several are even named as Canada’s Best Diversity Employers, “reap[ing] the benefits, becoming stronger and more innovative through the addition of fresh voices.”