Carried by the GSU Executive on February 21, 2001

CONCERN: In 1986, UofT signed the Federal Contractors Program which asks that the representation of four designated groups match the corresponding market levels. These four designated groups are aboriginal people, disabled persons, visible minorities and women. In the faculty at UofT, the representation of the designated groups does not match the availability of those groups on the Canadian academic job market. More disturbing even, the representation of disabled persons and of visible minorities seems to have decreased since 1996 (see stats), while the increase of the representation of the two other groups is extremely slow. In the case of women, for example, the current rate of increase is approximately of 1% per year (1996: 25.6%; 2000: 29.5%) (1). If this same rate is kept over time, we will have to wait at least 20 years to achieve gender equity. This seems unbelievable if we consider that the proportion of women at the instructor level has already reached 59% (2).

CONCERN: In 1991, UofT approved its Employment Equity Policy. This policy says that employment equity goals must be specified for each designated group. We are concerned that at present no goals have been expressed for certain minorities. Indeed, goals have been published for women in the last two Employment Equity Reports (1998-1999 and 1999-2000, Table 13). Regarding visible minorities, Provostial Advisor on Proactive Faculty Recruitment Rona Abramovitch announced, during a forum on equity organized by the GSU, that UofT had committed to a minimum of 20% of visible minorities in future hirings. However, this figure is not published in the 1999-2000 Employment Equity Report and nothing is specified for aboriginal persons or for disabled persons.

RECOMMENDATION 1: UofT must set goals for each of the four federally designated groups, publish them and revise them regularly. UofT should also engage with invisible minorities, such as the Lesbian, Gay, Queer and Transsexual community, to formulate institutional support towards their integration in the faculty.

CONCERN: The Employment Equity Policy requires UofT to express timetables and plans in relation with the employment equity goals. We are concerned that goals expressed in percentage of future hirings say nothing about timetables or about the prospected changes in the faculty itself. Computer simulations can show that in the current context of UofT, and with a goal of 20% of visible minorities in the new hirings, it will take between 11 and 24 years for visible minorities to represent 15% of the faculty (Shah and Svoboda, 2000). This cannot be considered as a plan or as a timetable. Even more illustrative are the statistics for the last two years. 23% of the new faculty hirings for the year 1999-2000 were visible minorities . This roughly corresponds to the goal mentioned by Rona Abramovitch. However, this resulted in an increase of the percentage of visible minorities at the faculty level from 10.2% to 10.6% (see Employment Equity Reports (table 2A)). This is unreasonably little change. Thus, again, we see that a goal expressed in percentage of new hirings says nothing about what actually happens in the faculty itself.

RECOMMENDATION 2: UofT must adopt a formulation of goals in terms of representation in the faculty. To give an example, UofT could commit to an objective of 20% of visible minorities to be reached in the year 2006 at the faculty level. Objectives to be reached at a certain time point allow planning, discussion and scientific monitoring of the changes. This system has already been adopted by other institutions. For example, the Swiss parliament has recently allocated several millions of Swiss Francs to double the proportion of women professors until 2006. 

RECOMMENDATION 3: Since many of the students at UofT come from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the appropriate reference for setting equity targets should be the minority distribution in the GTA. We recognize that this would constitute a huge step from current commitments. However UofT must choose a reference for setting its goals. Therefore, we suggest that, in the short term, UofT defines equity targets for the faculty in reference to the student population.

CONCERN: UofT publishes an Employment Equity Report every year. This paper functions as a statistical overview of the changes in the university work force and as a basis for Performance Indicator calculations. We recognize that it constitutes a strong basis for discussion around equity. However, we are concerned by the conflict that can emerge from the combination of functions that this report is supposed to fulfill. Also, we are concerned that this paper is not up to the standards set by the Employment Equity Policy. In the 1999-2000 report, for example, the changes in the work force are not evaluated in reference to goals and the report does not contain data on salaries. Many members of the UofT community recall the year 1990 as a pay adjustment year. This was both a sign and a recognition that pay equity is difficult to achieve. There is no reason to believe that it has been achieved by now, or that salary data is overtly difficult to manage. Some universities publish salary data in their employment equity reports (see Queen's Employment Equity Plan).

RECOMMENDATION 4: In order to best deal with putative conflicts of interest and to set in place a scientific monitoring of changes towards equity, we suggest that the Employment Equity report be managed and authored by an independent authority. We picture the Equity Studies Department as the appropriate institution to take the lead on this.

CONCERN: In the context of a discussion on equity organized by the GSU, Status of Women's Officer Judith Globerman, President of the Faculty Association Rhonda Love, and Associate Director of the Transitional Year Program Keren Brathwaite, have mentioned that new faculty members tend to be under extreme pressure from the university community when they are members of a minority . This is a sign that our academic culture is not yet based on diversity and that systemic discrimination is still at work. This is concerning, and may well affect the ability of UofT to retain persons from minorities in its faculty.

RECOMMENDATION 5: We suggest to introduce the concept of "critical mass" into the management of equity at the faculty level. This means that affirmative action could take different faces depending on the level of representation. This also means that affirmative action should be especially strong and creative for weakly represented groups.

RECOMMENDATION 6: UofT must add an equity axis in the exit data that is collected for faculty and administrative staff. This would be a basis for the identification of the barriers to integration. Also, since integration in the academic sphere starts at the graduate student level, UofT must perform a study of the barriers to academic careers as deployed at the graduate student level.

CONCERN: Institutionalized coordination and democratic consultation on employment equity matters are not in place at UofT. We are concerned by the scarcity of bottom-up structures to complement the current top-down approach taken on employment equity. We are aware that this situation is partially a result of the removal of the provincial legislation on Employment Equity, and of the elimination of the Employment Equity Office in 1994. In the short term, we recognize that the hiring of a Provostial Advisor on Proactive Recruitment in the person of Rona Abramovitch in 1999 was a very important step. We strongly support each of the projects she is now realizing. The recent contract passed with a consultant in questions of employment equity is another important move. However, those represent very little commitment from UofT towards employment equity, and how service-providing and policy-development will be coordinated, and how democratic consultation will happen is still completely open.

RECOMMENDATION 7: We suggest to consider equity as a community project and we demand that UofT constitute an Employment Equity Council as soon as possible. We believe that a democratic approach to equity is the only path that can both raise awareness of the systemic discrimination now in place and at the same time design efficient strategies to eliminate it. On November 9, 2000, in the framework of a discussion on equity organized by the GSU, Anita Benedict announced that the First Nations House was in the process of setting an Advisory Group on Aboriginal Issues. One objective is to raise awareness about the aboriginal community and its needs. Another is to formulate recommendations on faculty hiring and on the pedagogic style that the aboriginal community expects from faculty members. In short, this group will combine raising awareness and strategy development. A similar combination should exist for all minorities. Even if its performance towards equity at the faculty level does not appear significantly better than UofT's, Queen's University is a good example in terms of a democratic approach to equity. Queen's has three complementary equity structures (see Equity structures at Queen's), one of them being the Council on Employment Equity. In this council, minorities representatives and students function as voting members.

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