Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are widely embraced by Canadian corporations, with 96 percent of firms implementing DEI training and 88 percent establishing demographic hiring goals, a new study suggests.
The study by public policy think tank Aristotle Foundation also found that most of the top 25 TSX-listed Canadian firms it examined heavily engage in “social engineering.”
The term social engineering refers to the strategic use of intentional, top-down policies and interventions aimed at transforming cultural attitudes in a bid to address perceived historical injustices.
Such training appears to function less as an impartial method of fostering workplace civility at many of the companies and more as a tool for instilling a preferred moral vocabulary and a specific set of social assumptions, the authors wrote. This sends a signal to employees that only certain attitudes and beliefs are endorsed by the company, they said.
Lead author Leigh Revers said DEI training modules are just one way social engineering is occurring.
“One of the most interesting findings we uncovered is the extent to which Canada’s largest companies fund organizations that advocate for controversial issues,” Revers said in a June 24 press release.
The report said that 22 of the top 25 Canadian companies it examined showed a tendency to support charities and non-profit organizations engaged in advocacy on what it deemed “controversial issues,” such as youth gender transition.
The analysis also indicated an ongoing emphasis on ideological quotas rather than merit-based hiring, with 80 percent of the top 25 TSX-listed Canadian firms integrating DEI into their job advertisements. That figure rose to almost 90 percent when technology and telecommunications companies were omitted.
The Aristotle report found that, while DEI culture remains widespread, inclusion of such language in job postings varies widely by sector and is not universal.
The tech and communications sector is often split, with some high-profile firms leaning heavily into DEI language and others, like Shopify and Toronto-based firm Constellation Software, focusing purely on technical requirements.
Other firms that have stepped away from DEI-related job postings include the Bank of Montreal, Brookfield, Dollarama, and Enbridge.
Sixty percent of firms asked job-seekers for demographic information that had no bearing on their employability, the report noted. White-collar sectors such as banking, finance, and insurance were especially prone to requesting this information from applicants, and were roughly two to three times more likely to do so than companies in the agriculture and food sector.
The study also highlights what the authors refer to as a “DEI Paradox” among Canadian corporations.
The DEI paradox describes the gap between companies publicly supporting DEI policies while still mostly hiring based on merit in practice. The report notes that although firms often promote DEI, they generally avoid implementing policies that would explicitly exclude candidates based on unchangeable characteristics like ethnicity.
“In other words, top firms promote DEI—very extensively—but it is almost entirely performative,” the report said.
It noted that among the 500 job postings analyzed by researchers, jobs providing preferential consideration to candidates belonging to particular groups were rare, and none of the firms said candidates’ contributions to DEI were an asset for clinching a job.
