In-house lawyers at some of Canada’s largest companies have committed to lead efforts to give minorities, including people with disabilities, more access to jobs.
Launched May 11 in Toronto, the Legal Leaders for Diversity and Inclusiveness initiative has 40 general counsel signing a pledge to promote diversity within their own departments and consider diversity in their hiring and purchasing practices. The move will also encourage Canadian law firms to follow their clients’ example.
The initiative has gained the backing of Ontario Lt. Gov. David Onley, who has made workforce access for people with disabilities a key goal as the Queen’s representative in the province. Onley is Ontario’s first lieutenant governor with a disability. He battled polio as a child and was left partially paralyzed.
In a speech at the event, Onley told the corporate counsel in attendance the commitment to diversity needs to trickle down from the top, so he fully supports their efforts.
“Barriers to hiring people with disabilities continue to exist,” said Onley, giving a series of examples of highly qualified people with disabilities who couldn’t find a job even though their skills were in high demand. “It is a waste of talent. We have this pool of talented people who can’t get past the HR interview . . . and on the other hand we have a labour shortage.”
Onley also said many myths about people with disabilities in the workplace are simply wrong. “All of the studies . . . prove conclusively that the absentee rate is lower and the job retention rate is higher, and in many cases is much higher,” he said.
Ken Fredeen, general counsel at Deloitte & Touche LLP, whose offices served as venue for the meeting, said the idea came out of the small group of in-house counsel who wanted to make a difference. Since the initiative became public, there have been a lot of offers for support. It is a co-operative effort that will soon lead to an official structure, he added.
“This is not about just doing the right thing, but it is the business case,” Fredeen said. “It really came out of an interest where general counsel can own a diversity agenda that has a Canadian approach. I’d like to think Canadians do things differently. I’d like to think [we do them] better. We are creative thinkers as lawyers, and this should be natural for us.”
In addition to Fredeen, other signatories included heavy hitters like David Allgood of Royal Bank of Canada, Av Maharaj of Kellogg Co., Dorothy Quann of Xerox Canada Ltd., Simon Fish of BMO Financial Group, Kevin Derbyshire of DuPont Canada, and Melissa Kennedy of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Those who sign, pledge to reach out to their peers and urge them to commit to building a diversity plan, to offering diversity coaching as part of their corporation’s leadership training, and putting diversity progress on the quarterly agenda.
The commitment also extends to using law firms and suppliers that are either minority-owned or reflect a commitment to diversity. In-house lawyers, particularly those at big companies, are some of the biggest clients of legal services, so they have a lot of clout in the larger community. As a result, the initiative is likely to have a large impact on the Canadian legal industry as a whole, say organizers.
A similar initiative,
A Call to Action Canada, began three years ago building on A Call to Action, which was started by a group of corporate counsel in the United States in 2004. It is holding its third annual conference tomorrow, May 17, in Toronto. Look for more coverage on that event in this week’s
Law Times.
