Ottawa – Federal Auditor General is planning to study recruitment, retention and publicity of people with disabilities in federal public service.
Information through access to documents obtained by Canadian Press indicates that the audit will be introduced in the spring.
Claire Baudri, a spokesman at Canadian Auditor General’s office, said in an email that Auditor General Karen Hogan is expected to report a report in Parliament in 2026, the audit planning is in the stage and now any comment on its scope or deadline will be “before time”.
On March 7, Hogan’s office sent a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Board Bill Mathews, in which he was informed about the upcoming study.
The most recent employment equity report for public service says that since March 2020, the number of people with disabilities has steadily increased – the federal government departments and agencies that fall under the Treasury Board.
But this number remains below the rate of “workforce availability” – to measure the share of the metric national workforce used by the government which is eligible for federal public service work.
By 2024, 21,089 disabled people were working in federal public service, 17,410 in 2023, 14,573 in 2022 and 12,893 in 2021.
The report also found that the representation of people with government officials was above the rate of availability of the workforce. By March 2024, 9.7 percent of federal officers were disabled people, who were above 4.6 percent in March 2019.
The Employment Equity Report also saw promotion in the Core Public Service. It was found that 2,517 federal public servants were promoted in 2024 along with the disabled.
The report also tracked 1,642 publicity of indigenous public servants, 1,788 publicity of black employees, 8,115 publicity of visible minorities and 19,578 promotions of women in the core public service.
Nathan Priyar, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, said that he hopes that the report would take into account the impact of the government’s return-to-office mandate on the reported people.
The government should gradually be in the office after the end of the epidemic. As a final decline, most public servants are expected to work at least three days per week, while authorities need to be at least four days per week.
“We hope to see how many workers disabled are leaving the federal public sector and taking their expertise with them after the forced return to the office before and after a snapshot in the report, while other workers struggle with extending the charge and now – when we had an easy and working solution in front of us when we had an easy and working solution in front of us this throughout this time.
“During the epidemic we saw a large scale how the television did a good job for so many workers with the disabled, and we have been disappointed to see it, because since the forced and unraveling return in the office, the same people are not getting accommodation or are designed to jump through hops in a long, drawn process,” he said.
Rola Salem, a spokesman at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, said in an email that the Canadian government has committed to create an accessible and inclusive public service and in 2024, crossed its target to hire 5,000 people with the disabled.
Salem said that the Secretariat welcomes the opportunity to work with the Auditor General’s office on the planned audit.
Employment Equity Act defines “persons with disabilities” People who have a long -term or recurring physical, mental, sensory, psychiatry or loss of learning and who consider themselves deprived of employment or believe that an employer is likely to be deprived of them.
The definition also includes people whose boundaries have been accommodated in the workplace.
