Good morning. It’s been five years since Canadian companies first vowed to hire more Black employees. Today, it’s undeniable that the enthusiasm employers once had for diversity projects has waned considerably. Bay Street’s diversity, equity and inclusion record is in focus today, along with a deluge of takeovers, stock sales and debt deals.
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Experts say they are seeing waning interest in DEI throughout boardrooms in much of corporate Canada and America.Illustration by Stephanie Singleton
In focus
Bay Street’s enthusiasm for DEI is waning
Hi everyone, I’m Vanmala Subramaniam, and I report on labour and workplace trends. For five years running, The Globe has tracked how some of the biggest employers in Canada have fared on diversity, evaluating the commitments they’ve made to hire more employees of colour and elevate them within the workforce.
The project started in the summer of 2020, after a white police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, in the United States. The crime sparked a global racial reckoning – highlighting systemic racism and how little organizations had done to level the playing field.
The BlackNorth Initiative was launched that July by prominent Bay Street financier Wes Hall (himself a Jamaican immigrant). He rallied almost 500 companies and non-profits to commit specifically to boosting the number of Black employees in their ranks. Through surveys, The Globe began tracking the companies’ efforts in 2021.
Each year, fewer companies responded to The Globe’s survey. In 2021, 43 per cent of BlackNorth signatories responded to The Globe. By 2025, that number had plummeted to just 16 per cent.
As a result, it became harder to definitively measure the extent to which organizations were following through on the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts they had committed to as part of the BlackNorth pledge.
What became clear, however, is that companies eager to commit to diversity initiatives when they were the “hot, new, shiny thing” – as one expert we interviewed said – became less inclined to pursue diversity agendas internally and externally as time went on.
Human resources and DEI experts we spoke to said that it was undeniable that enthusiasm for such projects has waned in corporate Canada – partly because of the ripple effects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ban on DEI programs and also because of a broader sense of fatigue toward race and equity issues in general.
Pako Tshiamala, a diversity consultant who runs the Blink Equity agency in Toronto, said he has experienced a decreased demand from employers for services such as racial equity audits. He also said he knew of multiple companies cutting budgets once allocated to DEI projects.
Raphael Tachie, a lawyer at Dentons LLP and former president of the Canadian Association for Black Lawyers, said he had noticed a marked decrease in inquiries to his association about DEI issues by 2023. “As contracts with us were coming to an end, the conversations around renewing commitments were very different compared to 2020,” he told us.
BlackNorth, however, continued its diversity push on Bay Street. While some signatories pulled out of the initiative as the environment around DEI shifted, 90 per cent remained committed, Mr. Hall said.
And The Globe found that among BlackNorth signatories who responded to our survey this year, many had made massive strides in hiring and elevating the number of Black employees. On average, the number of Black employees in companies had increased to 6 per cent in 2025, up from 3.8 per cent in 2020. Black board representation increased to 5 per cent from 0 per cent in that same time frame.
But much more work is needed to create long-lasting change, Mr. Hall acknowledged. And, it is up to companies to lead that work, instead of relying on DEI organizations such as BlackNorth to steer them, said Tanya Sinclair, founder of the Black Human Resources Professionals of Canada. “Workplaces need to find a way to embed diversity into their culture, with clear intention.”
Charted
Reaping rewards
Data and analytics from LSEG show that stock sales, corporate borrowing rates, and mergers and acquisitions activity all posted dramatic gains in the third quarter, as investors and executives appear to shrug off geopolitical risks.
“After a while, this uncertainty almost becomes a new normal and people say ‘we need to figure it out and move on, because one thing we know we cannot do is stay static,’” said Peter Castiel, chair of Stikeman Elliott LLP, which was the top legal adviser for M&A during the first nine months of the year.
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Morning update
Global stocks were higher on rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts and general lack of investor concern about the U.S. government shutdown.
Wall Street and TSX futures were up.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.41 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.63 per cent, Germany’s DAX increased 0.12 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.19 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.85 per cent higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed down 0.54 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 71.6 US cents.