The Privy Council Office (PCO) has planed a nationwide video conference for all federal public service employees this fall “to reaffirm values and ethics.”It follows a damning PCO internal report detailing crude bigotry by managers, including use of the n-word, per Blacklock's Reporter. “A public service-wide values and ethics symposium is being organized for fall 2024,” said a PCO report. It said federal executives identified a “deep appetite” for talks about ethics. “The symposium is meant to provide an opportunity for all public servants across Canada and abroad to reaffirm values and ethics,” wrote the PCO.“All public servants will be able to participate virtually.”“It will be complemented by satellite events in other locations to provide an opportunity for public servants outside the national capital region to participate in-person.”“Conversations about values and ethics must continue and need to be more deliberate.”“There needs to be a deeper understanding of the role of the public service as an institution and how it contributes to Canada’s democracy. Greater effort is needed to clarify expected behaviours and foster consequential accountability by responding effectively when those behaviours are not demonstrated.”The report was completed on an unspecified date in August. It made no mention of a July 29 Access To Information report obtained by the advocacy group Coalition Against Workplace Discrimination detailing abusive practices by Privy Council managers.“Black employees have intervened with managers who have used the word ‘n—er’ comfortably in their presence, have made Islamophobic remarks, have feigned innocence when white employees have unfairly advanced at their expense and expressed surprise at ‘not knowing’ that ‘n—er’ was a greatly pejorative term for Black people,” said the report.Findings were based on interviews with Privy Council employees in 2021 and 2022. “Employees noticed increasing numbers and rotations of Black and racialized employees within the Privy Council Office after George Floyd’s death but little change at the executive and systemic levels,” said the report.“Putdowns and indignities are a daily reality,” Sharon DeSousa, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, earlier told reporters. “Racialized employees experience a very, very different public service without the same opportunities for career advancement, trapped in a revolving door of tokenism, brought into temporary positions to give the appearance of racial equity then moving out without meaningful opportunity for advancement.”
