The OPS continues to build the necessary processes and practices to diversify senior leadership. We are committed to taking bold action to meet our goal by 2025. Closing gaps in representation will require system-level changes to address systemic employment barriers and everyday effort by our leaders to develop and advance underrepresented talent. Guided by our responsibility to improve the experience of our employees and services for people in Ontario, we are committed to achieving our goal.

The OPS will seize annual opportunities to improve our approach to diversifying senior leadership. We are analyzing our five-year leadership pathway targets and results to understand whether proposed plans will keep us on track to meet our goal by 2025, highlighting opportunities for improvement.

Ministries will have the opportunity to re-visit their targets on an annual basis, considering data available from the Employee Experience Survey and pathways to leadership, as well as updated labour market information, where available. The annual recalibration will enable ministries to dig deeper into the representation of specific groups, including the use of race-based data and data on the representation and experience of people with disabilities.

The OPS Leadership Pledge outlines priority commitments from our leaders to build an accessible, anti-racist, diverse, equitable and inclusive public service. As part of the OPS Leadership Pledge, the public service will proactively identify and remove systemic employment barriers. Data-informed, evidence-based approaches will be used to reduce inequities in employment outcomes for all OPS employees, based on Ontario Human Rights Code grounds, including a focus on anti-Indigenous racism and anti-Black racism. Interventions will be focussed on improving recruitment, promotion, career development and workplace culture and will strengthen the OPS’ capacity to diversify senior leadership.

The OPS remains committed to building an inclusive and diverse talent pool of current and emerging public service leaders. We will continue to create access within the existing framework for diversifying senior leadership and use data and new program levers to address root causes of underrepresentation and advance anti-racism across the OPS. Our path forward has built-in accountability mechanisms to drive change. We are building a public service that meets the needs of people in Ontario – representative leadership will help get us there.