Quebec quotas queried

>> Anglos, disabled, "so-called-whites" snubbed in new job law

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Since April 1, affirmative action has come to Quebec in a big way, as 700 parapublic, or Quebec Crown agencies--which currently employ half a million Quebecers--must start to fulfill hiring quotas. Police forces, municipalities, the liquor board, CLSCs and other provincially regulated employers, totalling seven times more workers than the provincial civil service, have until 2003 before the Human Rights Commission starts checking up to see if they have a proportionate number of women, natives and visible minorities. The bureaucrats would study the reports for a year and get back to them in 2004.

In Canada, affirmative action laws have long drawn heat from conservatives; in 1995 Premier Mike Harris abolished Ontario's 1991 provincial hiring rules. Federally, the Alliance/Reform Party has aggressively attacked the federal affirmative-action law passed in 1986.

But in Quebec, opponents complain that the law isn't fast or far reaching enough. Fo Niemi of the Centre for Research on Race Relations (CRARR) has suggested that target dates be advanced to one year from four. He also sees a spider web of contention waiting as labour unions are presented their employers' action plans when they're virtually on the way to the mailbox. "Unlike the federal law, the role of unions in consulting with their employers about future hiring is totally absent from the bill," says Niemi.

The losers

Among those not benefitting from the affirmative action law, are "the so-called white minorities raised in English or French, let's say a Greek Quebecer who speaks English or French. He's in a seriously underrepresented group and won't be helped by this law."

The disabled and Quebec's anglophones are also ignored. "Anglophones were told that it's because they never made any contribution at the hearings to say that they suffered systematic repression," says Niemi, who suggests that the hearings last August might have been held when nobody was looking. "Many people were away at that time, but we strongly suggested that anglophones be designated in the bill because studies and task-force reports have shown that anglophones have suffered systemic discrimination in employment, and it's the same for the disabled."

The disabled were excluded from the law because another program already exists to encourage employers to hire them. But Dominique Marsan of the Regroupement des usagers du transport adapté dislikes the current program. "The way it works now is that the disabled are hired under these four-year programs and when it ends the [disabled employee] goes back on unemployment and then on welfare. That's why many would prefer to get hired in a job without the program. The program solves nothing, it's like a band-aid on a cut as big as your leg."

Case for the defence

Although she agrees that the disabled should have been included, Nicole Desève of the Centrale des syndicats québécois defends the legislation, which she helped negotiate after having fighting hard for it since 1986. "Don't forget that the Quebec government had a knife to its throat. They passed this after legal action was aimed at them."

She explains that she too would like the process sped up, but "it will take four years, for example, to train enough minority students to become professors at French universities where minorities are seriously underrepresented now." She also acknowledges that Section 14.5 of Law 143, which upholds seniority, could slow down the hiring quotas as it forces employers to first hire from banks of part-time or laid-off employees. But Desève--while offering no statistical proof--says that such banks of prioritized employees have largely been depleted in recent years.

Others worry that the trend toward contracting out labour could undermine the law, while another union source says that many would like it to apply to the smaller Crown agencies and not just those with 100 or more employees. It's also noted that the Quebec Human Rights Commission has been criticized for not taking seriously similar employment issues like pay equity, offering mass exemptions to companies and conducting hearings in absolute secrecy.

And predictably, anglos aren't celebrating. "Policy makers are supposed to take a look at the complexion of a province and rule on that. That's the rule in liberal democracies across the world," says Larry McKenzie, executive committee member of the Equality Party. "It's good they've passed a law but in exempting the province's largest minority from the provisions of the law, it's a kind of contempt."

McKenzie points out that the Quebec civil service contains under one per cent anglophone representation and Quebec-based federal bureaucracy five per cent, far below the 8-13 per cent that anglophones represent in Quebec's population. "The governments have refined these practices over years, to appear progressive yet do what they want to do, they've done it for decades."