A Black member told me earlier this month that Black History Month often feels “too short for everything we carry and everything we give.” Their words have stayed with me as I hear similar reflections from workers across the country.
As we wrap up Black History Month, we are reminded that Black workers’ contributions cannot be confined to a single page in the calendar. Across the federal public service, they lead with strength, creativity, and joy, mentoring colleagues, driving inclusion, and breaking through barriers that persist in their workplaces. Their achievements and their calls for equity deserve recognition throughout the year.
As I meet with union members across the country, I hear both pride and pain in their stories. Pride in the progress we have made through organizing, solidarity, and the creation of spaces to celebrate Black excellence. But I also hear frustration and exhaustion from members who still confront anti‑Black racism in hiring, pay, and promotion practices that limit opportunity. One member told me that each success feels hard-won, “like running twice as far for half the distance.”
We know these barriers are real. Black federal workers continue to face lower pay scales, limited promotions, and ongoing racism which has led to PSAC filing a national human rights complaint on their behalf, now referred by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for a full inquiry.
Austerity threatens progress made like the establishment of a new mental health support program for Black federal service workers and the federal Black Justice Strategy. Departments with stronger diversity records in hiring, such as Employment and Social Development Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, and Health Canada, face some of the deepest cuts.
Today’s cuts are on a similar scale to those in the 1990s and from 2012 to 2014, when austerity measures erased hard‑won gains and weakened equality programs that took years to rebuild. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that reducing departmental budgets by 15 per cent over three years could eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, with women representing nearly 60 per cent of layoffs and racialized workers about 26 per cent.
Prime Minister Carney recently acknowledged that discrimination still exists across federally regulated workplaces. At the same time, this government continues to withhold basic equity data showing who is most affected by public service job cuts. Without transparency, we cannot know whether budget decisions are equitable or whether they deepen inequality.
As law professor Adelle Blackett told Senators at a recent meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, ‘’nothing in the law prevents the government from strengthening consultation and fairness.’’ Keeping things vague is a political choice, not a legal limit.
The federal government already has a roadmap for change. Its Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, completed more than a year ago, called for Black workers to be recognized as a distinct equity group. It also recommended collecting disaggregated data, consulting directly with equity groups, and applying an intersectional lens to policy decisions. Yet those recommendations remain shelved.
Ignoring those recommendations undermines the Act’s purpose to identify and correct systemic discrimination. Having the tools to advance equity but refusing to use them makes “equity” a slogan instead of a commitment.
Our members’ joy cannot be truly celebrated if their livelihoods are being erased in silence.
This year’s Black History Month is a test of whether the government will act on its own words. You cannot claim to value Black workers, promise fairness in job cuts, and acknowledge discrimination in the federal workplace while hiding equity data on who is being affected and ignoring clear recommendations to strengthen equity.
