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4.4 Career Mobility and Visible Minorities
Another aspect of examining the question as to whether the official languages
policies pose specific barriers for visible minorities was that this process
inevitably opens the discourse onto the more general barriers that may exist for
visible minorities in their career aspirations. Typically, our discussions with
visible minority public servants tended to downplay the idea that such barriers
exist, or that they exist in any tangible fashion. More commonly, the
sense to emerge from our discussions from visible minorities (and occasionally
from their non-visible minority counterparts) is that such barriers exert
themselves in subtle, and more systemic than interpersonal or direct fashions.
Some of the important findings to emerge in this context are as follows:
Recent Immigrants Versus Visible Minorities
Participants are keen to suggest that the barriers that do exist are more
likely to exist for recent immigrants than for visible minorities in general.
The distinction here seeks to highlight the specific difficulties - in
integration, in adjusting, and in making one's way - that arise for public
servants who do not speak either official language as their primary language. As
such, the barriers that do exist (and these appear to be few in number and
generally weak in effect) repose on recent immigrants' greater difficulties
communicating, on one hand, and on their colleague's inability or unwillingness
to accommodate these differences. In this sense, recent immigrants may confront
more tangible barriers because they speak with a strong accent, or because they
are culturally ill at ease interfacing with typical Canadian organizational
culture. For example, we heard from some more recent immigrants that they are
ill at ease with the overt individualism and selling of oneself that is such an
integral part of an organization that promotes by way of competition and
interview. The solution, or avenues to removal of these barriers, are in the
ways in which staffing processes are handled, and more specifically, in ensuring
that the groups that handle them are ethnically and linguistically diverse,
and/or made to be sensitive to these differences in approach and communicational
style.
Otherwise, we need to stipulate that the above was the only tangible example
cited in any of the groups of systemic barriers that exist for visible minority
groups in their career aspirations. While we heard about other barriers, namely
that the "old boys network" still exists (implying that promotions are
often granted on the basis of personal connections as opposed to merit), and
that some elements of staffing manipulations still exist, the general sense was
that these barriers exist for all public servants, or at least not specifically
for any of the employment equity groups, including women. Generally, the tone
and substance of our conversations about upward mobility in the public service
in general suggest that the barriers and problems that exist centre on
transparency, accountability, and the largely predictable and familiar problems
that arise in any large organization as it endeavours to accommodate the
ambitions of its employees. Moreover, most participants of all languages and
backgrounds tend to describe the public service as an exemplary organization for
its ability to accommodate diversity and to provide a variety of opportunities
to its employees. Most concede that vertical mobility is a problem , but that
the public service remains unequalled in its capacity to promote learning
through lateral mobility. For most, there are problems in the public service,
but no more so than with any other organization.
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