The Most Exclusionary System of Hiring Imaginable

March 17, 2003

OTTAWA – In the House of Commons today, Scott Reid, Member of Parliament for Lanark-Carleton, made the following statement regarding the recent announcement of Treasury Board’s tough new bilingualism requirements for the Public Service:

“If someone sat down and tried to design, as an experiment, the most exclusionary system of Public Service hiring and promotion imaginable, it might work something like this:

• First, select some skill that most Canadians don’t have, and declare it essential for many jobs where it serves no work-related function.
• Second, keep tight limits on job training in this skill.
• And third, demote or transfer any Public Servant who doesn’t meet your arbitrary and ever-changing goals.

Quite frankly, that’s exactly what the government is doing, with the tough new bilingualism requirements announced last week.

Under these rules, 24 million Canadians will be frozen our from all the best Public Service jobs.

Which Canadians are excluded? Well,

• The 57% of Francophones who don’t speak English;
• The 91% of Anglophones who don’t speak French;
• Over 80% of immigrants; and
• 95% of aboriginal Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, the rules are unfair, and they are unworthy of a country that cares about all of its citizens-including the ones who are not bilingual.”

For more information or to speak with Mr. Reid
Please call (613) 257-8130 or (613) 947-2277.

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