B.C. library boasts of program to explicitly reject white applicants

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TOP STORY

In one of the more unabashed examples of race-based hiring in the Canadian public service, B.C.’s Burnaby Public Library boasted in a recent report that by explicitly rejecting white applicants, they’ve been able to hire exclusively non-white managers and executives since 2021.

Known as the Special Hiring Program, the policy has been overseen by Chief Librarian Beth Davies, a self-described “settler on Indigenous land” who also happens to occupy the only top-level job in the library system explicitly shielded from preferential hiring under the program.

In a recent report tabled before the library’s board of directors, Davies praised the Special Hiring Program, but noted that it applies to top leadership positions “except that of Chief Librarian.”

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Since 2021, Burnaby Public Library has required that in hiring for select top-level positions (what they called an “exempt staff group”), managers “only look at résumés from white candidates if there isn’t a sufficient pool of qualified racialized candidates,” wrote Davies in her report.

In the interim three years, the library has advertised for five leadership positions, and for each they have only considered applicants who “self-identify as Indigenous, Black or a person of colour.”

“We strongly encourage applicants of all genders, ages, ethnicities, cultures, abilities, sexual orientations, and life experiences to apply,” reads the description for one such posting, a manager of community development.

But as per policy, any ethnicity or culture not meeting the guidelines had no chance. As per Davies’ report, a total of 84 white candidates applied for the five positions, only to have their applications rejected outright. In each instance, only non-white candidates advanced to the interview phase.

The B.C. Human Rights Code prohibits discriminatory hiring based on race or ancestry, but the Burnaby Public Library is one of several dozen organizations that have been granted a special exemption by the B.C. Human Rights Commissioner to openly deny employment to select demographic groups.

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In an official description of the program, the Human Rights Commissioner writes that equal treatment is itself a form of discrimination, as “treating everyone the same can sometimes lead to discrimination against disadvantaged individuals or groups.”

The current holders of Special Program exemptions include Lululemon Athletica, which obtained a five-year exemption to practice “preferential hiring of members of racialized groups until representation targets have been met.”

Many of the exemptions are for schools and public bodies looking to hire an Indigenous liaison who has Indigenous status. Belle Construction, an all-female construction firm, is on the list as it needed an exemption to deny positions to men.

The holder of the most exemptions is the University of British Columbia, which has been granted 12 separate Special Program licences to practice discriminatory hiring. This includes limiting a research fellowship to “equity deserving groups,” and advertising positions for the Department of Biochemistry limited “to those who self-identify as disabled, racialized, and/or Indigenous.”

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Davies’ report to the board had praise for their efforts to build an “exempt staff group” free of white staff members.

She quoted one member of the group who said it allows library staff to make an improved connection to ethnic patrons in their own language. “More than just, like, white people working. I think it feels better,” they reported.

Affirmative action has been written into Canadian law since at least the 1982 patriation of the Constitution. Section 15 of the Constitution states that every individual in Canada is “equal before and under the law.” But it carries an explicit caveat stating that this principle doesn’t apply when it comes to “any law, program or activity” designed to prioritize “disadvantaged individuals.

However, the practice of race-based hiring in government has expanded immensely in recent years as a direct result of federal antiracism mandates.

The federally funded Canada Research Chair program, for one, is now subject to strict diversity quotas, to the extent that advertised positions now explicitly forbid applications from white males. One open position at the University of New Brunswick, for instance, is open only to those “who self-identify as members of gender equity deserving groups … and/or as racialized individuals.”

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IN OTHER NEWS

It’s a rule of thumb in political journalism that by-elections generally don’t have any wider lessons. But a Monday by-election in Toronto-St. Paul’s promised to be different if only for the fact that a Liberal loss in the riding would have been jaw-droppingly unexpected. It’s been a safe Liberal seat since 1993, and in the 2021 election went 49.22 per cent for the Liberals, with the Conservatives in second place at 25.3 per cent. But after some polls showed that the riding could go for the Tories, the Liberal Party threw absolutely everything they could at a race that should have been a cake walk. Rumours of a Justin Trudeau resignation are nothing new, but the word Monday night was is that if the Liberals somehow lost Toronto-St. Paul’s, a panicked caucus might find the backbone to try and force him out. According to early results, the Liberals did hold onto the riding, but by a much slimmer margin than before. 

After Canada declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist entity, Iran is apparently planning to retaliate by assigning terrorist status to the Canadian Armed Forces. Which would make it the world’s only terror group with both an anti-racism strategy and a dress code that permits green hair and face tattoos.

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