At this point in time I have to admit I used to be a swivel servant employed by the Government of Canada. While serving my time, I had the opportunity to apply for many jobs within the Public Service.
I can attest that as late as 2007, the application process involved either a paper or on-line application form. At the very end of the form, the applicant was afforded the opportunity to voluntarily self-identify if they belonged to an an underrepresented group in the Public Service. At the time the underrepresented groups included women; first nations' persons; visible minorities; and persons with a disability. The explanation for the collection of that data was that the information could be used as a tie-breaker in screening applicants. Should two persons score equally, if one fell into an underrepresented group, they could be chosen ahead of the other person, only if the competition's initial posting specified that criteria could be used.
There is the possibility that use of the self-disclosed information may have benefited me, as I was, and still am a member of one of the underrepresented groups identified by the Public Service of Canada. But my co-workers and I knew that I had to be equal to them in terms of skills and ability, otherwise I could not have gotten the jobs based solely on my membership in one of the underrepresented groups.
What this meant was that affirmative action was applied at the end of the hiring process, and not at the beginning. You could not and would not be screened out at the application filing stage for being a white woman, as was the case for Sara Landriault.
I do not know when the usage of affirmative action became a mandatory, primary screening tool, but it does raise the possibility that lower qualified persons could be hired just because they fit into the particular pigeon hole of underrepresented group the writers of the job posting desired. The current method does not look like affirmative action, it looks like favouritism. The hiring practises monitored by the Public Service Commission of Canada are to insure there is no bias in hiring within Government of Canada Departments and Agencies, but this upfront screening of applicants under the guise of affirmative action is bias gone bad in my opinion.
I first came across so called affirmative action during a spell on lay off whilst Bob Rae and his free spenders were running the asylum. Whilst signing onto the U.I. there was a column that asked me if I were of the pet variety that they were seeking to smooth their self loathing white guilt complexes. They were, as you mentioned, such select individuals as natives, minorities and so on. It also asked me of what ethnic background I was from, I was just about to write "mind your own business" when I paused and thought NO, I think I will fill that one in. My ethnic background read as follows: Angle, Saxon, Celt, Dane, Jute, Roman, Viking, Norman and then in brackets "not sure which one". You see I am English.
ReplyDeleteI read the new today, oh boy!
ReplyDeleteSeems like the Government has turned back the clock and gone back to the previous screening system:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2010/11/04/15966656.html