Jamie Sarkonak: Identity politics baked into new Liberal ‘sustainable’ jobs plan

Liberal jobs programs, business investment pools and economic plans all have one thing in common: they are obsessed with the skin colour and sexuality of the workforce.

On Thursday, Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson tabled Bill C-50, or the Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act. The bill provides a legislative backdrop to the feds’ broader sustainable jobs plan, which (if not obvious from the name) is geared at boosting job growth in the low-carbon sector. If passed, Bill C-50 would require the Minister of Natural Resources to make five-year jobs plans, adhere to various reporting requirements and assemble an advisory council to guide the execution of the plan.

Between all the bill’s talk of net-zero nestles a hint that identity will be prioritized over merit when this thing finally gets off the ground.

Like many Liberal initiatives, this plan has to involve some identity politics. In this case, the proposed law also specifies the principles that should guide this transition to a net-zero economy. One of these principles involves placing an emphasis on “the creation of employment opportunities for groups underrepresented in the labour market, including women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, Black and other racialized individuals, 2SLGBTQI+ and other equity-seeking groups.”

Additionally, when appointing members to the advisory council for this net-zero jobs plan, the minister is supposed to consider “the importance of having members that reflect Canada’s diversity — including its regional diversity — and underrepresented groups.” It’s also supposed to consider Indigenous knowledge, the subjective cultural knowledge that the Canadian government cloaks with confidentiality and considers to be equal to science.

This jobs plan won’t be released until after the legislation passes, so it’s hard to talk about specifics. What we do know is that identity is baked into its core, and that the Minister of Natural Resources won’t be thinking about Canadians as a whole when he writes out his jobs plan — he’ll be thinking of the various identity blocs that regularly form the focus of federal policy.

Unfortunately, identity-based favoritism is the norm for Liberal job creation tactics. The Canada Summer Jobs Program, managed now by Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough, specifically awards evaluation points to employers who will employ non-white youth. Non-profits and small businesses whose leadership includes “underrepresented” identities also get funding priority. For two years starting in 2023, the program is slated to receive about $400 million from the government.

Similarly, Qualtrough also presides over the Apprenticeship Service, a wage subsidy program for apprentices in trades that doubles for apprentices that check off a diversity box. The program offers only $5,000 in wage subsidies for apprentices who aren’t diverse (read: white, straight, male and able-bodied). Anyone who identifies as a member of the following groups gets a $10,000 subsidy: women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous people, sexual and gender minorities, non-white people and new immigrants. Qualtrough, encourages employers to discriminate.

Academic jobs face a similar system. The federally-funded Canada Research Chairs program, which provides multi-year funding to top academics, is now bound by a diversity quota system. Unlike the summer jobs and apprenticeship system, the Canada Research Chairs program simply requires universities to not open certain job postings to identity groups that are over-quota. The quotas are imposed by an update to a court settlement that was specifically agreed to by the Liberals.

Business investment programs aren’t much different. Instead of creating one big program to help small businesses generally, the Liberals have opted for identity-based funding pools. These programs are relatively new — the LGBT entrepreneurship program just kicked off Thursday, getting $25 million from the feds. According to the head of the organization charged with administering the program, applicants will have to prove their sexuality or gender identity by fulfilling certain criteria and using personal references.

In 2020, the feds launched a similar program for Black entrepreneurs, which amounted to about $300 million. Another $53 million was set aside for Black-led non-profits. A similar program exists for women, which the latest government figure pins at $7 billion.

All of this is the opposite of progress. Ideally, a jobs plan would aim for increasing prosperity in the country across the board, rather than picking favourites based on immutable characteristics. If there are certain groups that are more likely to be poor, then economic programs focused on helping the poor should naturally uplift those groups and provide the “equity” that is so fervently being sought — there’s no need to pick favourites based on race, sexuality and so on, as Wilkinson and his colleagues have done.

When the Liberals talk about encouraging diversity, they tend to mean top-down measures that call for discrimination that sometimes send resumes straight to the garbage. They don’t see employees as individuals to be judged on their initiative and hard work — they see them as a walking set of identity markers, some of which are more deserving than others.

National Post