When it revised the Employment Equity Act in 1995, Parliament reaffirmed the goal of the original legislation, adopted almost ten years earlier: to ensure that members of four designated groups -- women, Aboriginal people, persons with disabilities, and visible minorities -- are fairly represented in the workforce. Like the original Act, the law requires employers to undertake certain measures to promote workplace equity. Specifically, they must analyze their workforces, review their employment systems, identify barriers, and take corrective action to address those barriers. Parliament also made several important changes to the law. It made the Canadian Human Rights Commission the monitoring agency with authority to conduct audits of employers in the federal jurisdiction and take the necessary steps to make sure they are complying with the Act's requirements. And, for the first time, obligations under the Act were extended to the federal public service.

The Commission's compliance work began in October 1997. Since then, it has completed 196 initial and follow-up audits to determine if employers are taking the steps called for in the legislation. Employers that have surveyed their workforces and have completed analyses that demonstrate full representation will be found in compliance as long as they maintain the measures required by the Act. Employers whose workforces are not representative can nonetheless be found to comply with the Act if:

• they have completed work under each of the twelve statutory requirements; and
• the Commission is confident that their employment equity plans will result in reasonable progress toward equitable representation.

Once an employer is in compliance, but has not reached full representation levels, the Commission will continue to monitor it for reasonable progress, based on information contained in annual reports on its workforce. Private sector employers submit such annual reports to Human Resources Development Canada, while most public service departments and agencies submit them to the Treasury Board. Separate agencies, for which the Treasury Board is not the employer, table their reports to Parliament with the Board. Lack of reasonable progress toward full representation may result in a new audit and further action.

Next Page   Table of Contents