This article originally appeared in the National Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Peter MacKinnon, April 15, 2025
With race-based appointments to academic jobs in Canada now common, it should not be surprising that there are business opportunities embedded in them, and it is notable that a new search consultancy has entered and risen in the field: BIPOC Executive Search Inc., based in Toronto. The firm has a team of 15 and specializes in the recruitment of Black, Indigenous and racialized candidates. It has current job postings for 12 executive positions at three Toronto universities (York, U of T and OCAD), and no doubt the promise of many more as Canadian universities rush to make race-based appointments to their academic and administrative ranks. With a 15-member team, BIPOC Inc. needs plenty of work to meet payroll.
BIPOC Inc. cannot be faulted for taking advantage of business opportunities afforded by its institutional clients discriminating against whites and others — regardless of their qualifications — in the interests of appointing Black, Indigenous and persons of colour to job openings. It is the discriminatory behaviour of its clients that should attract our attention. As surrogates of governments in providing post-secondary education, universities are required to abide by the principle of non-discrimination that has broad roots in Canadian laws and values including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Universities claim to act in the name of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and we turn to definitions offered by one Canadian university: equity is the promotion of fairness and justice for each individual that considers social, historic, systemic and structural issues that impact experience and individual needs; diversity is a measure of representation within a community or population that includes identity, background, lived experience, culture and other aspects; Inclusion is the creation of an environment where everyone shares a sense of belonging, is treated with respect, and is able to fully participate.
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Peter MacKinnon is President Emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan and a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Aristotle Foundation.
