Between us and the Treasury Board Secretariat, we certainly work very closely on employment equity objectives. We implement the Employment Equity Act.
I want to correct the record a little bit. We have an overrepresentation of women in the public service. Among the candidates for our programs, we have an overrepresentation of women candidates. We are an attractive offer to women—again, notwithstanding the fact that in certain categories it's more difficult, but generally they are overrepresented.
We also find that in all of our processes, whether it's post-secondary recruitment or of students, we typically get about twice as many candidates as are currently represented among visible minorities. We get 30% to 35% of our candidates for our programs who apply. This is one of the reasons we want to see more external recruitment. If we open up externally, we know the candidates are there. We know that we offer them quality opportunities. It's just a matter of opening the doors a little bit more. When we create inventories, the last thing we want is to see those inventories being underutilized.
There are challenges associated with persons with disabilities and indigenous people. We get lower rates of application or lower rates of self-identification through our programs. This is an area we're specifically working on. We've identified two targeted programs, for example, that we've developed over the last number of years to increase the number of persons with disabilities and indigenous people applying and being successfully employed in the federal government. I would remind you that we are also currently overrepresented in both of those categories compared with the labour force.