A federal judge has dismissed a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit alleging anti-black hiring practices in the public service spanning decades.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the court cited a lack of evidence that thousands of individual hiring decisions over the past 55 years were the result of a colour-bar.
“There is a French proverb that says ‘qui trop embrasse, mal étreint,’ he who grasps at too much holds little,” wrote Justice Jocelyn Gagné.
“No specific practice or policy is identified to substantiate this claim,” she added.
Plaintiffs in the case Thompson v. Canada sought to certify a class action for $2.5 billion in compensation for 45,000 people representing “all black individuals who at any time from 1970 to this day applied for work or worked for the federal government as part of the public service and were denied hiring or promotional opportunities by virtue of their race,” wrote Gagné.
A total 99 federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations were targeted. The Court struck the claim as unwieldy, saying it required step-by-step analysis of tens of thousands of hiring decisions over generations.
“Incidents upon which this action is founded, the individual decisions not to hire or promote individuals, do not constitute manifestations of any single or top-down course of conduct across all 99 entities,” wrote Gagné.
“The court would need to break its analysis down into thousands of separate inquiries into each of the individual staffing decisions.”
“Evidence that racial discrimination tainted one staffing decision will not prove anything for any other.”
There was no evidence of any “black employee exclusion” policy, said the decision.
Federal employees who pursued the claim pointed to statistics indicating black people were numerically under-represented on the federal payroll. Gagné said statistics were not evidence, noting the figures were drawn from employees’ voluntary self-identification in staff questionnaires.
“Employees did not have to fill the form and they did not have to self-identify in any subgroup,” wrote Gagné.
“As such it is impossible to measure the true response rate or true representation of the designated group in the workforce particularly when looking at historical periods.”
The court in striking the claim acknowledged “the existence and pervasiveness both historically and presently of racism in this country” against black citizens.
“Black people have a unique history, they face unique and distinct kinds of discrimination and they have had markedly different experiences than other visible minority subgroups,” it said.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada, largest federal union of its kind, had endorsed the litigation. Chris Aylward, then-president of the Alliance, testified at 2023 hearings of the Senate human rights committee that anti-black discrimination by federal managers “runs deep.”
Black employees “told us first hand that systemic discrimination has existed in Canada’s public service for decades,” he said.
