70% of respondents claimed that they have considered leaving their jobs due to racial discrimination.
While Canada is common celebrated for its multiculturality and acceptance towards foreigners, a new study shows that the country isn’t as inclusive as it appears.
In fact, Canada is ranked as one of the most racial discriminating countries worldwide when it comes to the hiring process.
So, turns out it takes a lot more than just your qualifications to get that job.
The study, which was conducted by Northwestern University, looked at nine different countries and took data from 97 previously conducted experiments that have looked at the hiring process throughout these countries.
A variety of resumes with the same qualifications and different names were sent to a variety of employers during this study. Using this method, they were able to detect exactly how discriminatory countries were when it came to their hiring process.
The result? Canada was ranked as the fourth top countries to show a level of discrimination during the hiring process, after France, Sweden, and Great Britain.
Known as one of the most multicultural countries in the world, one-fifth of the Canadian workplace is composed of racial minorities.
However, as high as 70% of the interviewees claimed that they have considered leaving their jobs due to overwhelming stress as a result of racial-discriminatory factors.
The study also shows that non-white applicants throughout Canada are less likely to get call backs, despite their qualifications.
“Racism is alive and well in the Canadian job market,” says Sheila Block, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
“It’s not the way we like to think of ourselves or this story that we tell ourselves,” says Block, who recently did a study on inequality in Ontario and Canada’s labour markets. “But the data pretty clearly shows that there are differences in employment, in unemployment and in pay rates.”
“Very few people wake up in the morning and decide they want to be discriminatory,” she says. “What people need to do to address this is to look at their employment systems.
So the first thing that you need is you need some data and you have to look at it and say, ‘Does my workforce reflect the population around us?’ And if it doesn’t, who’s not at the table, who’s not being hired and why aren’t they being hired?”
In 2019, Canada has an estimated population of 37.41 million, which ranks 39th in the world. Canada is the world's second largest country by total area (behind Russia) and the largest North American country.
32.3% of Canadians considered their ethnic origin to be Canadian. Other major groups recorded were English (18.3%), Scottish (13.9%), French (13.6%), Irish (13.4%), German (9.6%) and Chinese (5.1%).