Justice Canada Responds to Racism Allegations

This is a follow-up to the Library Boy post of February 6, 2008 entitled Justice Canada Accused of Being 'Rife With Racism' .

In that post, I referred to "testimony in front of the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights to the effect that 'overt racism and intimidation' are driving away visible minorities at Justice Canada."

Canada's Deputy Minister of Justice John H. Sims wrote a letter to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper to respond. The letter is published in today's edition ("We do not tolerate racism at Justice"):

"The Department of Justice has a longstanding commitment to employment equity. We currently have a representative workforce that exceeds workforce availability for many areas."

"Within the department, the representation of visible minorities is at 11 per cent, which is above the current workforce availability of 10.4 per cent (...)"

"As an organization, we believe it is essential, indeed it is to our advantage, that our workforce truly reflect the diversity of the people we serve (...) "

"We continue to foster a fair and welcoming work environment and to pursue a broad array of concrete initiatives to keep us moving in the right direction."