Holy crap! Just substitute 'Black Male' for "white male" to see how racist that policy really is. Or maybe 'Christian' for 'non-Christian'.
G*d forbid they should simply hire the best qualified individual.
These guys really know how to kick a guy when he is down. Public Works says their new, extreme strategy is necessary because they haven't been able to achieve their Employment Equity objectives without them. Their goal is one in five should be a visible minority, a First Nations person, or disabled. But the data show that only 10.4 percent of the Canadian labor force fits this description. So Public Works is trying to get roughly double "the market share" as it were. This would be difficult on its own. It's darn close to impossible when other employers are trying to pull off the same trick.
Meanwhile those who are conversant in economics might want to read a Canadian Journal of Economics article by Paul Beaudry and
David Green (both of UBC) called "Cohort Patterns in Canadian Earnings". To quote from the abstract, "..for the period fromm 1971 to 1992, we show that the age-earning profiles of Canadian men have been deterioratingfor more recent cohorts...We find this pattern for both high school and university educated workers. When looking at the pattern for women, we find only minor differences in age-earnings relationships." (An age-earning profile is the salary one earns, in one's cohort, relative to age. It is the most accurate way of measuring how well a person is doing in the labor market because it holds as many other things constant as is possible.) The long and short of it is Canadian males were taking it in the teeth even before the 1990s. More recent data show that it was even worse for the decade of the 1990s.
If it is the intention of Employment Equity policies to kick white males in the teeth, Public Works can relax: the job is already being taken care of.
The complete citation for the article mentioned above is: Paul Beaudry and David A. Green (2000) "Cohort Patterns in Canadian Earnings: Assessing the Role of Skill Premia in Inequality Trends" Canadian Journal of Economics vol. 33, issue 4, pp. 907-936.
Sorry for the ommission.
Some bloggers were blogging about the GoC's flat out racist and sexist hiring policies months ago and took an insane amount of heat over it.
While it's good to see this story getting play , the fact of the matter is that the feds have had hardcore racist and sexist policies for quite some time.
I suspect the bloggers who were fighting this sorta crap months before The CanWest Corporation deemed it cool to do so are not terribly impressed with the folks who speak out about this sort of thing only after given the cue to do so by the CanWest corporation.
Yeah, way to rage with the machine, buddy.
Ignorance of the situation is neither plausible nor excusable.
On the other side of the coin, I have the utmost respect for the people who have in fact spoken out on this and similar stories - before the CanWest Corporation deemed it cool to do so.
Damian I hope that I and other bloggers who have blogging about this for months can count on your support, old chap, when people start calling us racists for speaking out about this sort of thing. We are not racists.
I know it is difficult to stand up to the forces of political correctness but I am confident you will rise to the challenge. Here is some further reading for you:
[External Link]