'Bullshit': Canadian minister blasts lack of diversity in corporate top jobs

The Canadian minister responsible for science and economic development has described attempts to justify the lack of diversity in the country’s corporate leadership as “bullshit”.

Navdeep Bains, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and economic development, made the comments during a meeting with law students at the University of Windsor.

“One of the issues I hear from people is, ‘Well, we just don’t have the people. We don’t have the talent. We don’t have the women. We don’t have the diversity in our corporation. We would love to promote diversity but we just can’t find the people,’” said Bains. “That’s a bunch of bullshit.”

Bains said there were many “successful women – entrepreneurs, business leaders, community leaders – who want to sit on corporate boards, who are very talented and looking for the opportunity.

“The problem is they aren’t part of the golf network; they’re not part of the club network, the social networks that a lot of these boards exist and operate under.”

The minister’s comments came as the federal Liberal government seeks to pass legislation that would force the country’s publicly traded companies to regularly disclose information on diversity among their directors and senior management to shareholders. The government has said the legislation is aimed at encouraging the recruitment of women and other under-represented groups for corporate boards and senior management.

In recent years, prominent voices within corporate Canada have spoken out about the country’s business culture, noting that it consistently fails to reflect the richness of the country’s population.

“Our dominant business culture is not reflective of Canadians’ values,” entrepreneur Anthony Lacavera noted in a 2017 book titled How We Can Win. “We value our diversity and openness to newcomers but our business culture is inward-looking and xenophobic.”

Statistics back his view: women make up 12% of the directors at companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange while visible minorities make up 4.5% of company directors in the country’s top 500 companies, according to Toronto’s Women in Capital Markets. A report published last year by Deloitte Canada noted that women occupy just 35% of managerial positions across the country.