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Views from the Experts
Interview excerpt: Ekuwa Smith
Senior research associate
Canadian Council on Social Development
Q Why do you think it's important to rate companies on how they recruit, keep and advance, visible minorities aboriginals and new immigrants?
A I think it's important to rate them because I don't know that that it has ever been done before and any way that you can get people to pay attention to the issue of immigrant, visible minorities and aboriginals is a good thing.
Q Do you think that this study will help companies realize the importance of this issue?
A The labour market is going to rely very heavily from these communities …so ranking them is important. The study is a good start but limited, in the sense that the HRSDC data cover just 9 % of the entire labour force. Specifically only federally regulated companies and that is just a small portion of the labour force. It also depends on the kind of dialogue that comes out of this, and what the recommendations are going to be, definitely one of them is that employment equity needs to be expanded every one needs to be included.
Q How have the companies that were on this list tapped into visible minorities and turned diversity into a business asset that improves the bottom line?
A I'm sure that there are some companies who have successfully recruited and have taken very good care of them in the work place we hope that some of their best practices will be shared with others.
Q What are some of the hurdles and obstacles that visible minorities and aboriginal people still have to overcome in the workforce?
A The employment equity policy doesn't go far enough and also, as someone told me, it doesn't have any teeth. The companies have to report, but once they report, what happens, who monitors what going on? We need to expand policy and we need policy that has teeth with very good monitoring system evaluation and also to be able to go back and make sure necessary changes are being made.
Q In your opinion what are some of the biggest barriers that visible minorities and aboriginal people face in the work force?
A I think that definitely one of the problems is actually getting into the workplace, I think that there is a huge barrier about getting the ability of getting into the workplace, because once people are there definitely there are challenges, people have tried to find ways of dealing with those challenges, but I think that the most important challenge is getting into the workplace because it's very difficult to break into the work place. I see 3 out 4 recent immigrants that come into Canada belong to visible minority communities and it's very difficult being integrated in work force successfully getting into employment that are in the fields they gave been trained for that actually match their skills because majority unemployed or underemployed.
For more information, pick up the March 29th issue of Canadian Business or visit the Minority Report section on OMNITV.ca.
