The act states that "employment equity means more than treating persons the same way but also requires special measures and the accommodation of differences".
Employers are required to institute positive policies for the hiring, training, retention, and promotion of members of the designated groups.
Examples of positive policies include recruitment in Indigenous communities, job advertisements in minority-language newspapers, or an apprentice program directed toward people with disabilities.
[6] The FCP states that suppliers of goods and services to the federal government (with some specified exceptions) must have an employment equity program in place.
Some provinces use the term "employment equity" in conjunction with their enforcement of provincial-level human rights legislation (for example, British Columbia).
[10] On the other hand, proponents maintain that employment equity is necessary to amend historic wrongs and to ameliorate the economic differences among groups.
[16] Among those who argue for strictness, the act has been criticized as an example of "soft-law", meaning token penalties combined with an overly casual use of compliance statistics.
However, the equality section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly permits (but does not require) affirmative action type legislation.
In July 2010, controversy arose when a Caucasian woman, Sara Landriault, was barred from applying for employment in a federal agency because she was not in a racial minority.
This incident led Stockwell Day, then president of the Treasury Board of Canada, to announce a review of employment equity.