Halifax Regional Councillors spent half an hour putting questions to municipal staff on Tuesday as they sought to get answers on an update to a 2016 report on racial discrimination in the municipal workplace.
The Employment Systems Review, conducted by Turner Consultant Group, was a previously confidential report before it was made public at a protest outside city hall in May.
The update was later published online after a motion was passed by council in June and found one in five recommendations made in the initial report were currently “at risk,” or unresolved.
The update found that of the 90 recommendations made in the report, 63.3 per cent are complete, 12.2 per cent are on track and 18.9 per cent are at risk.
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Many councillors raised concerns about the diversity of municipal employees as the result of a Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission decision that found a Halifax Transit mechanic had been discriminated against, resulting in a “poisoned work environment” for the mechanic.
Catherine Mullally, director of human resources for the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), fielded most of the questions from councillors.
Mullaly said the recommendations determined to be at-risk in the update were only at risk in terms of timelines that the municipality had set for themselves and were not at risk of not being achieved.
The Employment Systems Review found that municipal staff had also experienced racial discrimination.
“The overwhelming opinion of the African Nova Scotian employees with whom we spoke is that they have experienced incidents of harassment and discrimination in the workplace,” the original report read.
The update found that at least four of the “at risk” recommendations are related to reference checks during the application process that “assess the job candidate’s ability to work effectively in a diverse workforce and with a diverse client population.”
Staff say the goal of hiring from diverse groups is something that staff is pushing forward with, but says that goals are still being debated.
“For example should we be setting targets? Or are we going to hire a certain percentage of employees from under-represented groups,” said Mullally.
“So those things are all moving forward by again it comes down often to the capacity to deliver and how quickly we want to see those changes.”
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Staff said they chose to do an employee engagement survey before carrying out a self-identification survey — which they say is still in the works and is a key part of identifying where the municipality needs to improve on diversity.
“We didn’t have approval for funding for that self-identification survey in this current budget but we’re certainly able to find the money and it is our intention to do that sooner rather than later,” said Mullally.
The employee engagement survey was conducted last spring and Mullally added that a self-identification survey will cost approximately $30,000.
Coun. Lindell Smith seemed stunned that the cost was what was holding up the self-identification survey.
“To me, that is a drop in the bucket. If that’s going to help our workforce be more positive…. then we should all be emptying out our pockets to do that now,” said Smith.
“During budget season if I have to bring that forward I will. I’m hoping I don’t, I’m hoping we can just make it happen.”
A quarterly update on the Employment Systems Review is set to be brought before regional council at the meeting scheduled for next week.
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