Treasury Board president announces initiatives to support Black public servants

The initial offerings announced by Anita Anand included almost $14 million in funding to three federal organizations.

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Published Feb 21, 2024 • Last updated 10 hours ago • 4 minute read

Treasury Board president Anita Anand. Photo by Jean Levac /Postmedia

Treasury Board President Anita Anand announced the first initiatives of the government’s “Action Plan” for Black public servants on Wednesday, including almost $14 million in funding to three federal organizations.

The federal government committed $49.6 million to create career development programs and a mental health fund for Black public servants through its 2022 and 2023 budgets.

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At a downtown news conference, Anand announced that nearly $6 million would be provided to Health Canada to introduce “Black-centric enhancements” to the Employee Assistance Program supporting more than 90 federal organizations.

A Treasury Board news release said the funding would help recruit 19 Black counsellors to provide “trauma-informed” mental health support to public servants and their families.

Another $6.9 million would go to the Canada School of Public Service to support career advancement of Black employees through an executive leadership program, with four cohorts of up to 25 Black executives to access the program over two years, beginning this summer.

The Public Service Commission would also get $1.1 million over three years to provide assessment, counselling and coaching services to Black employees.

At the media conference, Anand said the government still had work to do.

“For several years, we’ve heard from Black public servants about the need for targeted supports,” Anand said. “We haven’t done enough and we haven’t done it fast enough.

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“I know that there have been challenges in our path to reconcile and that, for many of us, we see that trust in our institutions from the Black community has been broken.”

The announcement comes as the federal government continues to fight a class-action lawsuit filed by Black public service workers in 2020, alleging decades of systemic racism and discrimination.

When asked whether the government had plans to settle the lawsuit, Anand said she was aware that there was “a process in place” and that the certification hearing for the class action was expected in the coming months. She said the decision to certify the lawsuit rested in the hands of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.

Anand acknowledged that Amnesty International Canada had recently been granted intervenor status in the case and said the government would not challenge that court decision.

“What I want to make sure we do is to bring forward supports for Black public servants so, as we look prospectively, systemic racism that is at the foundation of the Thompson class action lawsuit does not exist,” Anand said.

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In a news release Wednesday afternoon, the Black Class Action Secretariat said it urged the government to settle the lawsuit. The group also raised concerns that the funding allocated to the Employee Assistance Program was insufficient, calling for the establishment of a Black Equity Branch, for the task force’s leadership to be reassessed and for the group to “meaningfully consult” with Black employee networks and labour unions.

Anand said the implementation of the Action Plan would be led by an internal task force primarily made up of Black employees.

Of the almost $50 million in funding, $24.9 million is expected to go to support mental health programs and $19.4 million is planned to go into career and leadership development projects, with $1.1 having already been spent in the 2022-23 fiscal year. The government also plans to spend $4.2 million to operate task force engagements, research and pay members for their work.

The feds are “layering on” new initiatives on top of existing efforts to support equity-seeking groups, like the Mentorship Plus Program and the Mosaic Leadership Development Program.

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“Our efforts will not stop here,” Anand said, noting that the rest of the funding was with the task force to introduce new programming in subsequent months once the group determined what was working and what more needed to be done. “These are early investments which will continue to be guided by the lived experience of Black public servants.”

In 2022, a group of Black federal public servants accused the government of racism while working to develop a mental health action plan for Black workers. When asked how she could ensure a similar situation didn’t happen again, Anand said the current task force was working “very well together” and was on “a very positive track and footing” with the action plan.

The task force is set to run “check-ins” with employee networks, surveys and discussions with Black public servants to “further engage on the implementation of current and future initiatives” of the plan.

“There are continuous needs,” Anand said, adding that the 2022 Public Service Employee Survey found that 11 per cent of Black public servants had reported experiencing discrimination on the job. “We need to ensure that we’re listening to what they suggest are the reforms that should be implemented.”

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