Controversy
Employment equity is surrounded with controversy, as has occurred with similar programs in the US and other countries. Opponents of employment equity argue that it violates common-sense notions of fairness and equality. University of Saskatchewan economists Cristina Echavarria and Mobinul Huq argue that employment equity should be redesigned so that employers are required to remove barriers to men applying for female-dominated jobs, as well as barriers to women applying for male-dominated jobs. On the other hand, proponents argue that employment equity is necessary to amend historic wrongs and to ameliorate the economic differences among groups. A particular point of contention has been the category visible minorities, which lumps together numerous ethnic groups, some of which are affluent and some of which are severely disadvantaged.
In July 2010, controversy arose when a Caucasian woman, Sara Landriault, was barred from applying for employment in a federal agency because she was not in a racial minority. This incident led Stockwell Day, president of the Treasury Board of Canada, which oversees federal government employment policies, to announce a review of employment equity and how it is applied in federal hiring procedures.
As of October 2010, there has been no sign of Employment Equality reviewed. Sara Landriault was barred from entering government Canada buildings and was never allowed to re-apply for the position in Immigration Canada.
Read more about this topic: Employment Equity (Canada)
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“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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