Conrad Eder: Does the government prioritize hiring competent workers?

Two candidates pass each other in a corridor: one is heading into a job interview; the other has just finished. Neither will be evaluated merely by ability, education and experience. Who gets the job will also depend on skin colour, gender and other factors of group identity. This is Canada's federal public service, today.

A new study by the Aristotle Foundation reviewed 301 federal job postings across 59 departments, agencies and Crown corporations. Forty-two per cent prioritized, or potentially prioritized, applicants based on identity characteristics, while 4 per cent restricted, or potentially restricted, a candidate's eligibility on the same basis.

These figures are striking and yet likely understate the full extent of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hiring practices in the federal public service, as the review captured only what hiring managers chose to include in public job postings.

Just because a posting did not mention employment-equity targets, identity-based preferences, or group-based restrictions does not mean such practices are not in force. In fact, federal legislation gives departments considerable latitude to incorporate DEI practices into their hiring processes.

However, perhaps ironically, not all DEI measures are created equally.

A policy that offers applicants with disabilities accommodations throughout the interview process is fundamentally different from one that gives selection preference to members of a particular group. Both may be framed as upholding diversity, equity and inclusion, but while the first removes an obstacle to fair competition, the second unfairly biases the competition altogether.

That distinction matters because Canadians can support an inclusive public service while rejecting identity-based preferential and restrictive hiring practices. They can favour inclusive, diverse workplaces without believing that access to public employment should be weighed against an applicant's race, sex, disability, or other identity characteristics.

And that's exactly what public opinion reflects. A 2025 Léger survey found that a majority of Canadians disagreed that, when hiring, it is important for employers to take a candidate's cultural background into consideration. Even among segments of the population that preferential and restrictive hiring policies are purported to benefit, accounting for identity characteristics in hiring was unpopular.

Canadians share a straightforward intuition about fairness: applicants should be evaluated as individuals, based on merit.

But that does not appear to be how the federal public service sees it, particularly in departments like Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, National Defence and Fisheries and Oceans Canada where job postings regularly mentioned DEI, alongside disclosures of preferential hiring practices and references to employment-equity objectives.

And it's not just those departments. The federal government tracks the demographic composition of its entire workforce in an attempt to meet particular employment thresholds. As of March 2025, most groups met or exceeded the government's targets, helped by a substantial increase in new hires among members of visible minorities and persons with disabilities.

And there is nothing wrong with that, provided the individuals hired were selected on merit. But the government's current approach, alongside existing legislation, leaves Canadians wondering whether these results reflect a changing mix of qualified applicants, successful efforts to remove barriers, or identity-based hiring considerations.

Unfortunately, that ambiguity casts doubt, perhaps unfairly, on those employed in the public service, while weakening public confidence in the federal hiring process.

A merit-based system, on the other hand, is unlikely to bring about a contrived demographic outcome across departments and occupations. Nor should it be expected to. Its purpose is to ensure that outcomes are connected as closely as possible to qualifications, experience and demonstrated competence.

DEI practices that remove barriers to participation ensure that individuals of comparable ability have a genuinely comparable opportunity to be successful candidates. But DEI practices that advantage and disadvantage candidates based on identity, with the aim of producing prescribed outcomes, are a different matter entirely.

When individual merit is set aside in favour of identity characteristics, the process becomes less likely to identify the candidate best suited to the job. That harms applicants who deserve to be assessed on their individual capabilities. It harms government departments, which become less well-positioned to fulfil their mandates. And it harms Canadians, who rely on federal institutions to deliver services effectively.

To restore clarity and confidence in the federal public service, Ottawa must respect both equal opportunity and individual merit by drawing a clear distinction between DEI practices meant to remove barriers and those intended to engineer outcomes. It should preserve measures that remove barriers — accessible application processes, reasonable accommodations, structured assessments, and broad outreach — while ending preferences and restrictions based on identity characteristics that candidates did not choose and cannot change.

Conrad Eder is a research fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and co-author of Does the Government Hire for Competence? A survey of DEI hiring practices in the Canadian government.

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