Thank you. It is good to be back in Halifax. I was here in December meeting with Public Service Commission (PSC) employees and also the Regional Federal Council. I always enjoy having the opportunity to visit Atlantic Canada and to experience the warm hospitality for which you are so justly famous. And this time is no exception.

Permit me to say, first of all, that while I will be speaking in English today, I would be happy to respond to your questions in French as well as in English.

Today, I would like to talk about how the new Public Service Employment Act (PSEA) which came into effect just over a month ago can be used to further employment equity goals for the visible minority group across the public service. Before doing so, I would like to begin by clarifying the PSC’s role with respect to employment equity and then update you on some of our work in this area.

I will follow that with a brief outline of the key features of the new PSEA and then turn to a more detailed discussion of its potential impact on employment equity and the visible minority community.

Current Roles and Responsibilities

The PSC is an independent agency reporting to Parliament, responsible for safeguarding the integrity of the staffing system in the federal public service and the political impartiality of public servants, as well as for providing services to recruit talented Canadians from across the country.

Under the Employment Equity Act, the PSC is responsible for identifying and eliminating barriers against persons in designated groups that result from its systems, policies and practices in recruitment and staffing. The Act also requires the PSC to institute “positive measures” that go beyond removing barriers to actively promote a more representative public service and hasten progress in closing the representation gaps for the identified groups.

We have a dedicated employment equity directorate that develops policy, monitors progress and initiates programs. The PSC also performs an oversight function to achieve a representative federal public service.

We are also providing $300,000 in financial support to the National Council on Visible Minorities (NCVM) over a three-year period, conditional on them having an approved business plan and reporting on the results achieved. I am happy to say that the NCVM Business Plan for 2005-2006 has been approved by the Champion and we have transferred the funds.

Annual Report Findings

In our recent Annual Report, we found that the composition of the public service reflects the labour market availability for three of the four employment equity designated groups: women, persons with disabilities and Aboriginal peoples. However, the gap between the representation of visible minorities in the public service and their workforce availability continues to persist. In fact, general recruitment is not keeping up with the growing proportion of visible minorities. We are also concerned with the lack of progress in appointing visible minorities into the executive group. In 2004, we asked 18 departments and agencies to prepare and submit their executive staffing plans. Eleven of the 18 organizations complied. These plans included over 280 potential vacancies, of which only eight were targeted to members of visible minorities.

While the 18 departments made a total of 254 appointments during the fiscal year only six of these were appointments of members of visible minorities. We found these results disappointing.

Following our analysis of the plans, we informed the deputy heads of the seven organizations that did not submit a plan and the deputy head whose plan did not include positions targeted to members of visible minorities, that we will challenge all their executive staffing requests.

As a result of our ongoing efforts in this area, we now have 13 departments collaborating with the PSC on an open generic executive level selection process targeted to members of visible minorities. Two other departments have indicated an interest in the process. Since September 19, 195 candidates have been interviewed to staff approximately 18 positions. The final list of pre-qualified EX-1 candidates is expected to be announced early in March.

In terms of external recruitment, we have found that over the past few years about 25 per cent of the applications to competitions, across all levels, open to the public came from members of visible minority groups. However, members of visible minority groups only accounted for 10 per cent of the appointments from outside the public service. We launched a study to examine this issue in detail. Its findings will enable us to develop a more focussed approach to addressing the issue.

Some Success Stories

We do have a number of very successful initiatives. You may recall that in January 2001, an Employment Equity Program for the Accelerated Executive Development Program (AEXDP) was created under section 5.1 of the old Public Service Employment Act to meet the Embracing Change benchmark of 1 in 5.

The Program ran an external recruitment campaign and an internal campaign open only to visible minority executives within the federal public service. By March 2003, the Program had achieved 23 per cent visible minority participation, and today, the representation is at 25 per cent.

Similarly, in 2001-2002, a campaign targeted to members of visible minorities resulted in the selection of over 50 visible minorities into the Career Assignment Program (CAP), achieving the benchmark of 1 in 5 participation in the program. Today, the participation of visible minorities in CAP is at 30 per cent.

So, the above are examples of very successful corporate development programs. These programs were run by the PSC until they were transferred to the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency in April 2004 as a result of the new Public Service Employment Act.

The New PSEA – Key Features

The new Public Service Employment Act which came into effect just over a month ago should help address the current failure to meet employment equity targets for visible minorities. The Act is designed to modernize staffing in the public service. It provides the government with the opportunity to attract and hire the people it needs to serve Canadians by creating more flexibility to hire the right people.

One of the key features of the new Act is that my organization, the Public Service Commission, will delegate more appointment authorities to deputy heads. In the past, we have delegated authorities for internal staffing to departments and agencies but we have not delegated authorities for higher risk activities such as executive resourcing and external recruitment.

With the new Act, we have now delegated most executive staffing and most authorities for external recruitment. The Act provides that these various appointment authorities be delegated to deputy heads, and through them, to the lowest level possible within their organizations.

Another important feature of the new regime is that it provides deputies with the flexibility to establish appointment processes and programs tailored to their own organizational needs – a direction that we’ve been moving towards for some time now. When establishing these processes and programs, deputies are expected to establish policies that respect the values of merit, non-partisanship, transparency, fairness and access – a value which also contributes to a workforce that is representative of Canada’s diversity.
While the regime continues to be values-based, it is no longer rules-driven. The new PSEA and the appointment framework are less prescriptive and eliminate most of the procedural aspects of the previous legislation. This means that deputies have much more flexibility to develop the types of processes that best meet their organization’s human resources plans and business plans.

A key factor in promoting flexibility is the new definition of merit set out in the Act. In the previous system, merit was generally taken to mean the best qualified person based on a ranking derived from the assessment process.

Under the new legislation, merit has two components. The first is that the person meets the essential qualifications of the position, including official language proficiency. The second component allows hiring managers to take into account asset qualifications such as:

qualifications that are considered an asset for the work, currently or in the future
any current or future operational requirements and organizational needs and
the current and future needs of the public service.
The goal of this new definition of merit is to ensure that the person who is appointed is the right fit for the job. This is one of the ways the new PSEA will enable the government to hire the right people, when and where they are needed.

Hiring managers now have increased responsibility for individual staffing actions and they are accountable for their decisions. The staffing values – merit, non-partisanship, transparency, fairness and access which includes representativeness – remain at the core of the appointment process, and we at the Public Service Commission are assuming a stronger oversight responsibility for maintaining these values.

We will hold deputy heads accountable through accountability reports, investigations, audits, and other tools. In turn, the PSC remains accountable to Parliament for maintaining the integrity of appointments in the public service.

The New PSEA and Employment Equity

I would now like to turn to what the new PSEA means for employment equity in general and the representation of visible minorities in particular. The new Act does not change the employer’s accountability for achieving representativeness in the public service. Nor does it change the PSC’s accountability for making continued progress towards a bias-free and barrier-free staffing regime.

In fact, the Act identifies representativeness and diversity as being integral to the composition of the public service. In its preamble, it refers to Canada gaining from a public service that is representative of Canada’s diversity, whose members are drawn from across the country and that reflects a myriad of backgrounds, skills and professions.

The PSEA provides deputy heads with new flexibilities to promote employment equity. It enables the establishment of areas of selection that are open only to members of one or more designated groups under the Employment Equity Act. This is an improvement on the old system which required a deputy head to create an employment equity program approved by the PSC in order to limit an area of selection.

The legislation also enables members of an employment equity group to be added to an area of selection. This means that geographic, organizational or occupational criteria can be expanded to provide for greater participation of employment equity group members.

The PSEA also provides new opportunities to promote employment equity through the definition of merit. As I mentioned earlier, the first component of merit is that the person meets the essential qualifications of the work. The second component allows the deputy head or sub-delegated hiring manager to establish and apply any asset qualification, operational requirement or organizational need, currently or in the future in order to find the right fit for the organization.

The deputy or sub-delegated manager may also apply the current and future needs of the public service as a whole as identified by the employer. What this means is that deputy heads will be able to identify employment equity objectives as an organizational need. Having established employment equity objectives in their employment equity plan or human resources plan, deputy heads can then apply this organizational need at any stage of the hiring process.

The PSC has also developed and published a Policy on Employment Equity in the Appointment Process and a Guide to Implementing the Policy as part of the PSC Appointment Framework to guide departments and agencies in building their own staffing systems. You can find these and other tools on our website.

In addition, the PSC has just completed consultations with stakeholders, including the NCVM, on a draft guidance document entitled Integrating Employment Equity into the Appointment Process which presents more detailed and practical information to help departments and agencies integrate employment equity into the design of the appointment systems and business plans so that they can take full advantage of the new flexibilities available to them.

The final way the legislation promotes employment equity is by strengthening the oversight role of the PSC. We build employment equity issues and questions into our audit plan as we assess the effectiveness of approaches and activities in staffing that could impact on the representativeness of the public service.

Last, but not least, to ensure that those who are in leadership roles have a good understanding of the employment equity flexibilities under the new PSEA, the PSC is sponsoring a 1-day Employment Equity Conference in Ottawa on March 20. There will be more information available on our website. We would like to hear from you and the Regional Federal Councils on whether we should organize similar events in the regions in the next fiscal year.

Conclusion

I have said on more than one occasion that employment equity cannot be treated as an add-on or an afterthought. It must be integrated into our everyday business, starting with our plans and priorities. The new PSEA provides the tools to departments and agencies to meet the government’s targets for the employment of visible minorities. The PSC, in overseeing the staffing system, will monitor departments and agencies to ensure that this is achieved.

We all need to work together – the PSC, central agencies, deputy heads, managers, human resources specialists and employment equity groups – to turn this opportunity into a reality. Thank you.

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	Updated: 2006-04-11	Important Notices