Tag Archives: EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

Majority of Canadians oppose equity hiring — more than in the U.S., new poll finds

Posted on by

Majority of Canadians oppose equity hiring — more than in the U.S., new poll finds

While only 28 per cent of Canadians support equity hiring, 36 per cent of Americans support affirmative action

Author of the article:

Tyler Dawson

Published Dec 03, 2024  •  Last updated Dec 03, 2024  •  4 minute read

290 Comments

Jobs applicants waiting in a hallway.
Diversity, equity and inclusion, also called DEI, has lately come under increased scrutiny in the business and political world. Photo by Getty Images

A majority of Canadians say that employers should not take cultural or ethnic backgrounds into consideration when hiring, according to new polling.

Fifty-seven per cent of Canadians disagree with the notion that equity should be a part of hiring, according to the poll done by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies.

“The survey results point to some pushback on the issue of minority hiring in Canada and the United States,” said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, in an email.

In fact, equity hiring is less popular in Canada than the United States. While only 28 per cent of Canadians support equity hiring, 36 per cent of Americans support affirmative action. Meanwhile, less than half (46 per cent) of Americans oppose it.

The polling comes as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), has come under increased scrutiny in the business and political world. Last month, Walmart scrapped its diversity program, making it the largest corporation to do so. (Others, such as Harley Davidson and John Deere, have also done so.) In the political realm, some political parties, including Alberta’s governing United Conservatives, have policies that explicitly endorse the elimination of DEI hiring within the public service and Crown corporations.

The Canadian federal government has specific equity targets in its hiring, a practice that has existed since the 1980s. The percentage of visible minorities hired by the federal government grew from just shy of 18 per cent to just shy of 27 per cent between 2016 and 2024. Jedwab said he decided to focus on employment equity because it’s “one of the key core elements” of what’s being talked about in the DEI conversation.

B

“It is important that our workforce reflect to the best extent it can our demographic reality,” said Jedwab in an interview.

Diversity hiring is the most unpopular among Canadians between the ages of 45 and 54, at 62 per cent, although it’s similarly unpopular across all age groups. Even among 18 to 24 year olds, 50 per cent oppose diversity hiring.

Men and women, at 57 per cent, equally oppose such policies. Typically, women hold more progressive views on social issues than do men. Some of the pushback, Jedwab said, may be coming from those who believe there is systemic racism in Canada but that diversity hiring initiatives aren’t doing enough to rectify inequalities and that the ultimate targets or objectives might be unclear.

“The risk is, if the objective is, it can’t be met, people begin to ask what’s the point in the first place? And that’s problematic, because the program is important,” Jedwab said.

There are, however, some regional differences. In Quebec, where the provincial government has attempted to stamp out religious dress and jewelry in some workplaces, the objection to equity hiring is most strongly held: Sixty-three per cent of Quebecers disagree with it. Quebec is followed by Alberta, where 58 per cent say background shouldn’t be a consideration in hiring, and British Columbia, where 57 per cent hold that view. Fifty-five per cent of Ontarians polled agree, as do 53 per cent of those in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Only in Atlantic Canada, where 50 per cent oppose diversity hiring, is there not an outright majority.

Article content

However, there are significant percentages of Canadians who say they don’t know the answer to the question. Nationally, 15 per cent of Canadians say they don’t know, a view that’s most likely in Ontario, where 19 per cent said they didn’t know the answer.

Immigrants are somewhat more likely than non-immigrants to support diversity hiring. Thirty-four per cent say it’s important to take background into consideration, compared to 26 per cent of non-immigrants. That said, a solid 50 per cent of immigrants still say that it should not be taken into consideration.

“There’s a hierarchy, a hierarchy of vulnerability, and some groups may feel that they don’t qualify,” said Jedwab. “There’s some confusion about who does and who doesn’t qualify in that hierarchy, which may also result in some support being diminished, because we’re also seeing that the support amongst minority groups themselves is not as high as we would have assumed.”

The polling did not specifically ask people why they object to equity hiring.

Freelance workers and the self employed, at 75 per cent, are most likely to oppose equity hiring, followed by full-time workers, at 58 per cent. Fifty-one per cent of part-time workers oppose equity hiring.

Article content

The polling sought responses from 1,539 people in Canada between Nov. 22 and Nov. 24 via an online panel. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes. However, a probability sample of 1,539 respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. In the United States, Leger polled 1,009 people over the same time period, and that online survey has a probabilistic margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

JUDGING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ROSALIE SILBERMAN ABELLA

Posted on by
 
 
JUDGING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ROSALIE SILBERMAN ABELLA
Attention Fellow Canadian :
 
Immigration Watch Canada sends you its latest bulletin : “Judging Canada’s Supreme Court Judge Rosalie Abella”
 
In the past month, PM Trudeau announced yet another government apology, this time to Canada’s Jews. According to Trudeau, Canada had sinned greatly in 1939 by denying entry to Canada to Jews fleeing Europe aboard the ship St. Louis. According to Trudeau, those Jews were forced to return to Europe and suffer WW2’s Holocaust.
 
Before issuing any other apologies, Trudeau should do some important research. The family of Rosalie Abella, one of the judges on Canada’s present Supreme Court, survived the Holocaust and migrated to Canada after World War 2. In the mid-1980’s, ironically, Rosalie Abella , in a campaign of arrogant and sloppy research, released an “Employment Equity” report which ignited a virtual Holocaust within Canada. That Holocaust has destroyed the job-hopes and entire lives of at least hundreds of thousands of Canadians. In fact, the number of victims may well exceed the 6 million figure of Jews killed in Europe. If Canadians are to hear another apology, it should be coming from Canada’s Supreme Court Judge Rosalie Abella and the herd of “Diversity-hiring” promoters she unleashed in Canada’s public and private sectors. If Trudeau is remotely interested in performing his duty to Canadian-born, he should be demanding an apology from Abella and her herd of boot-lickers and should be ending the so-called “Employment Equity” (really “Employment Inequity”) program she started. After that, how about some Canadian-style Nurenberg Trials to deal with Abella and all those who have carried out the alleged “solution”.
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 ROSALIE SILBERMAN ABELLA
 
Dr. Martin Loney’s book, “The Pursuit of Division : Race, Gender and Preferential Hiring” documents in great detail the origins and results of Rosalie Abella’s work. In the following article, he summarizes the origins.
 
Dan Murray,
Immigration Watch Canada
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
Judging Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella
By Dr. Martin Loney
Written in 2004, following Rosalie Abella’s appointment to Canada’s Supreme Court
 
The appointment of Rosalie Abella to the Supreme Court has precipitated much celebration among the progressive chattering classes. Globe and Mail correspondent, Michael Valpy, enthused that Abella would bring ‘an unassailable and much needed expertise and vision on equality law’ to the court.
 
Well, not quite “unassailable”. I have spent many years researching and writing on employment equity, the subject of Abella’s 1984 Royal Commission Report. What stands out is how much Abella’s work is driven by feminist ideology and how little it is concerned with evidence.
 
Abella’s 1984 report made sweeping claims about labour market discrimination but found it unnecessary to back them with hard data. According to her report, women’s progress in the labour force was ‘chimerical’; ‘dramatic changes’ were needed to allow women to participate in a full range of educational opportunities.
 
This was a curious conclusion since by 1982 women were already the majority of university graduates and no less than 58 per cent of community college graduates. Today women are 40 per cent more likely to obtain an undergraduate degree than their male counterparts.
 
Much of the report reflects nothing more than the search for any evidence that will support the preconceived conclusion that women and other so-called designated groups experience disadvantage.
 
Feminists see any earnings differentials or disparity in employment as prima facie proof of injustice. What is required in contrast is the careful comparison of those with similar profiles. Comparing the earnings of men and women is meaningless unless we take into account such factors as age, hours worked, qualifications, length of service and type of employment. The Royal Commission preferred instead to make more sweeping comparisons.
 
According to the report, women, in 1982, made a mere 64 per cent of male earnings. However, the report does not say that the rapid change in female labour force participation saw large numbers of young women enter the labour force. To compare their earnings with a group which contains a large number of older men or to claim that their relative absence in senior positions is evidence of discrimination is simply polemics.
 
The inclusion of visible minorities in the Royal Commission’s mandate owed much to the American experience though the marked difference in the history of the two countries should have suggested more careful reflection.
 
In the U.S., affirmative action programs have been driven by the desire to redress the legacy of slavery. Canada, in contrast, had few slaves and largely abolished the institution of slavery by the end of the eighteenth century. The overwhelming majority of visible minorities in Canada are free migrants. It is inconceivable that the U.S would have instituted a costly and divisive preferential hiring program to address the temporary adjustment difficulties of new immigrants, but that is precisely what the Abella report ushered in.
 
 
The Royal Commission might have urged caution; after all as one of its researchers warned, the absence of any definition of ‘visible minority’ and of related data prevented any assessment of the ‘social indicators of discrimination’.
 
Abella was not to be deterred. Racism, she reported, ‘though sometimes inadvertent, is nevertheless pervasive’. The inadvertent racism was no doubt a fashionable reference to that mysterious virus ‘systemic discrimination’ which remains as widespread as it is ill defined. Pervasive racism must, however, have demonstrable consequences. It must result in visible minorities, with similar characteristics to other Canadians, earning markedly less. If those who have the same educational background, the same years of experience and the same language capacities as other Canadians fare just as well, what need is there for a costly and divisive preferential hiring program?
 
Subsequent analysis of 1986 census data by demographer Monica Boyd, an avowed feminist, found little difference in earnings of Canadian-born visible minorities and other Canadian-born workers. The famously “doubly-disadvantaged visible minority women” earned a little more than their singly-disadvantaged sisters; visible minority men earned an insignificant amount less.
 
A later analysis of Statistics Canada data by University of Manitoba economists Hum and Simpson also found little difference in the earnings of Canadian-born visible minorities.
 
Such findings have been ignored. The Abella report fuelled a growing industry of diversity trainers, preferential hirers, anti-harassment officers and others whose occupational success means the endless search for yet more evidence of discrimination. Canadian universities were hijacked by radical feminists who used federal employment equity legislation to hire others who shared their biology and ideology.
 
Today, qualified women are twice as likely to secure academic appointment as their male competitors.
 
Abella will bring to the Supreme Court a vision of equality rights rooted not in careful analysis, but radical feminism. To Abella, as she made clear in a later essay, equality does not mean being ‘chained to the civil libertarian pedestal of equal treatment of every individual’. Those with a prior claim of victim status (however dubious) are entitled to be treated differently and advantageously. This is the philosophy that Abella will bring to her new job, one that offers little chance of justice to those with no claim on the feminist conscience.
 
Martin Loney is the Author of The Pursuit of Division : Race, Gender and Preferential Hiring”

 
Dr. Martin Loney’s book, “The Pursuit of Division : Race, Gender and Preferential Hiring” documents in great detail the origins and results of Rosalie Abella’s work. In the following article, he summarizes the origins.
 
Dan Murray,
Immigration Watch Canada
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
Judging Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella
By Dr. Martin Loney
Written in 2004, following Rosalie Abella’s appointment to Canada’s Supreme Court
 
The appointment of Rosalie Abella to the Supreme Court has precipitated much celebration among the progressive chattering classes. Globe and Mail correspondent, Michael Valpy, enthused that Abella would bring ‘an unassailable and much needed expertise and vision on equality law’ to the court.
 
Well, not quite “unassailable”. I have spent many years researching and writing on employment equity, the subject of Abella’s 1984 Royal Commission Report. What stands out is how much Abella’s work is driven by feminist ideology and how little it is concerned with evidence.
 
Abella’s 1984 report made sweeping claims about labour market discrimination but found it unnecessary to back them with hard data. According to her report, women’s progress in the labour force was ‘chimerical’; ‘dramatic changes’ were needed to allow women to participate in a full range of educational opportunities.
 
This was a curious conclusion since by 1982 women were already the majority of university graduates and no less than 58 per cent of community college graduates. Today women are 40 per cent more likely to obtain an undergraduate degree than their male counterparts.
 
Much of the report reflects nothing more than the search for any evidence that will support the preconceived conclusion that women and other so-called designated groups experience disadvantage.
 
Feminists see any earnings differentials or disparity in employment as prima facie proof of injustice. What is required in contrast is the careful comparison of those with similar profiles. Comparing the earnings of men and women is meaningless unless we take into account such factors as age, hours worked, qualifications, length of service and type of employment. The Royal Commission preferred instead to make more sweeping comparisons.
 
According to the report, women, in 1982, made a mere 64 per cent of male earnings. However, the report does not say that the rapid change in female labour force participation saw large numbers of young women enter the labour force. To compare their earnings with a group which contains a large number of older men or to claim that their relative absence in senior positions is evidence of discrimination is simply polemics.
 
The inclusion of visible minorities in the Royal Commission’s mandate owed much to the American experience though the marked difference in the history of the two countries should have suggested more careful reflection.
 
In the U.S., affirmative action programs have been driven by the desire to redress the legacy of slavery. Canada, in contrast, had few slaves and largely abolished the institution of slavery by the end of the eighteenth century. The overwhelming majority of visible minorities in Canada are free migrants. It is inconceivable that the U.S would have instituted a costly and divisive preferential hiring program to address the temporary adjustment difficulties of new immigrants, but that is precisely what the Abella report ushered in.
 
 
The Royal Commission might have urged caution; after all as one of its researchers warned, the absence of any definition of ‘visible minority’ and of related data prevented any assessment of the ‘social indicators of discrimination’.
 
Abella was not to be deterred. Racism, she reported, ‘though sometimes inadvertent, is nevertheless pervasive’. The inadvertent racism was no doubt a fashionable reference to that mysterious virus ‘systemic discrimination’ which remains as widespread as it is ill defined. Pervasive racism must, however, have demonstrable consequences. It must result in visible minorities, with similar characteristics to other Canadians, earning markedly less. If those who have the same educational background, the same years of experience and the same language capacities as other Canadians fare just as well, what need is there for a costly and divisive preferential hiring program?
ROSALIE SILBERMAN ABELLA
 
Subsequent analysis of 1986 census data by demographer Monica Boyd, an avowed feminist, found little difference in earnings of Canadian-born visible minorities and other Canadian-born workers. The famously “doubly-disadvantaged visible minority women” earned a little more than their singly-disadvantaged sisters; visible minority men earned an insignificant amount less.
 
A later analysis of Statistics Canada data by University of Manitoba economists Hum and Simpson also found little difference in the earnings of Canadian-born visible minorities.
 
Such findings have been ignored. The Abella report fuelled a growing industry of diversity trainers, preferential hirers, anti-harassment officers and others whose occupational success means the endless search for yet more evidence of discrimination. Canadian universities were hijacked by radical feminists who used federal employment equity legislation to hire others who shared their biology and ideology.
 
Today, qualified women are twice as likely to secure academic appointment as their male competitors.
 
Abella will bring to the Supreme Court a vision of equality rights rooted not in careful analysis, but radical feminism. To Abella, as she made clear in a later essay, equality does not mean being ‘chained to the civil libertarian pedestal of equal treatment of every individual’. Those with a prior claim of victim status (however dubious) are entitled to be treated differently and advantageously. This is the philosophy that Abella will bring to her new job, one that offers little chance of justice to those with no claim on the feminist conscience.
 
Martin Loney is the Author of “The Pursuit of Division: Race, Gender and Preferential Hiring in Canada” (McGill-Queen’s University Press-1998).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For additional comment on significant deficiencies in Abella’s work, see