Top government official says she was promoting 'diversity and inclusion' when she broke hiring rules
OTTAWA — The senior government official who was found this week to have broken federal conflict-of-interest rules by helping an unqualified person she knew get a management job in her department wrote to staff Friday to say that she did so to advance the government’s diversity goals.
Christiane Fox, the deputy minister of national defence, wrote to employees to say that her department at the time, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), had “a clear mandate to lead a large-scale cultural and organizational change.”
Fox said in the note to staff that she acknowledged this week’s findings from the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner but explained that she was trying in 2023 to advance “diversity and inclusion across the public service.” She said she was trying to bring in “outside perspectives” and strengthen the performance of underperforming groups.
Fox has been a rising star in the public service for more than two decades and was seen by some as a candidate to be a future clerk of the Privy Council, the top job in the federal bureaucracy.
Fox knew the man she helped get a job, Björn Charles, because her husband was one of his coaches while Charles played basketball at Carleton University between 2001 and 2004. According to a report released this week by Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein, Fox and her family also attended the GoodLife gym where Charles had worked as a manager before he was hired into government.
Charles told the ethics commissioner’s office that he and Fox’s husband are also distant relatives, although Fox said she was not aware of that.
“My efforts were focussed on advancing diversity and inclusion across the public service, an objective explicitly set for deputy ministers,” she explained to staff.
According to the ethics commissioner’s report, Fox “used her position as deputy minister to give Mr. Charles preferential treatment, by ensuring he met with departmental officials quickly, seeking updates about his hiring, giving him internal information and pushing for a higher job classification.”
Von Finckenstein found that Charles had no experience in government or in dealing with access to information requests, the subject matter that he was being hired to work on. Departmental officials had advised Fox that Charles was not qualified, the commissioner found.
The report also states that some IRCC officials were struggling to understand Fox’s insistence on Charles landing a job. One official texted “holy geez, tell her to lay off with this guy already,” the report said, while at least one other senior staff referred to him as “the DM’s friend.”
When Charles had “performance issues” in his job, the report found, Fox then helped him get another job in 2024 at the Privy Council Office (PCO), where she had started working as the deputy clerk.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Charles now works as an access-to-information analyst at PCO.
Fox maintained that her role in the hiring process involving Charles was appropriate, although the ethics commissioner “did not find these claims credible.”
Ian Stedman, a government ethics specialist who previously worked for Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner, said he finds it hard to believe Fox’s justification of diversity to explain her actions.
“That’s a convenient way of trying to explain away a bad choice,” said Stedman, also an associate professor at York University in Toronto. “It’s a convenient narrative.”
Fox has since been shuffled by Prime Minister Mark Carney to deputy minister at DND. The department, which has received a massive influx of new money following the sovereignty threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, has about 28,000 civilian staff and 94,000 military personnel.
Among her many accomplishments in recent years, Fox, while head of the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC), sat on a deputy ministers’ task team on values and ethics in 2023.
National Post
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