We have the Employment Equity Act, so the employers within the federal public service, all the departments, have to have employment equity plans that look at their workforce and look at the external labour market, and take measures to improve those areas in which there is a gap in representation, an under-representation of women or other equity groups. They should sit down at the table with the unions, in preparing that employment equity plan, and come up with ways, solutions, positive measures to improve that representation. It could be training programs, it could be mentoring, it could be recruitment specifically targeted at different groups, specific outreach to different communities and so on. Unfortunately, what we're finding is oftentimes the unions aren't consulted fully.
We do have employment equity committees in a lot of the workplaces, and PSAC has representatives on those committees. I've been working with some of those representatives, and I think more of that committee work needs to be done. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of teeth. Unions aren't able to make complaints, for example, under the Employment Equity Act, when an employer isn't either consulting with the unions or with the equity groups or representatives of employees, or when they're not meeting their employment equity goals or plans, or coming up with plans. That's one of the areas where we'd like to see an improvement to the act, to have more enforcement and accountability, certainly with respect to consultation with unions.