She was passed over for a promotion again in Quebec. Now, she’s alleging systemic racism

In 1989, Wanda Kagan began her career as an administrative officer for the CIUSSS du Centre-Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal — a regional health authority in Quebec’s biggest city. 

Thirty-six years later, Kagan — a 60-year-old Black woman — remains one of the few racialized employees in her department. 

Now on the cusp of retirement, the high school friend of former U.S. vice-president Kamala Harris says she has nothing to lose by going public with allegations of systemic racism at her workplace and her struggle with Quebec’s human rights complaint process.

In her complaint with Quebec’s Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission (CDPDJ), filed in 2022, she claims that despite her seniority and qualifications, her employer refused to adjust her salary and position for years. 

“Over the course of the 10 years that I was trying to advance my career, my white colleagues were getting ‘team lead’ [roles],” Kagan said, noting that she made several unsuccessful attempts to get written performance reviews of her work from managers. 

“I started to feel like I was being abused,” she said.

While Kagan awaits a decision from the CDPDJ on whether it will accept her case, she is calling on the body to produce clear, public guidelines on how it investigates allegations of systemic racism in employment.

She says that sharing those standards are key to ensuring systemic discrimination cases are assessed fairly and consistently.

Pay and status discrepancy

Kagan says her promotion was stalled by what her employer called a “clerical error.” For years, she alleges her managers considered her a temporary full-time employee — a status rendering her ineligible for promotion — instead of permanent full time, while failing to check her personnel file. 

“I wasn’t even a human being enough for somebody to have looked in my file to see what my qualifications were for advancement,” she said.

Kagan filed two complaints against her employer alleging discrimination at work: one in April 2022 with Quebec’s workplace safety board, the CNESST, and another with the CDPDJ, in October 2022.

Her allegations about systemic racism have not been proven in court. 

The CDPDJ is currently reviewing her complaint to determine whether it can go before the Human Rights Tribunal. 

In the commission’s statement of facts, the CIUSSS maintains that only permanent staff who meet specific role requirements are eligible for promotion and that Kagan had a temporary full-time employee status from 2014 to 2021.

It also says that evaluations are not mandatory, although it is recommended that managers conduct them every two or three years. 

However, according to a certificate of employment obtained by CBC News, Kagan has been a permanent full-time employee at the CIUSSS since 1989.

Kagan said the CIUSSS also acknowledged the “error” verbally days after she filed her complaint with the CNESST. 

Meanwhile, following Kagan’s CNESST complaint, she says a representative of the workplace safety board told her over the phone in April 2023 that a computer coding error had put her on a lower pay scale for years, causing a pay discrepancy.

The CNESST representative said the board could only compel Kagan’s employer to compensate her for the past two years. She received compensation in November 2023, leading to the CNESST closing her file for good in December of that year, despite Kagan formally requesting further investigation into the unfair treatment she alleged. 

A spokesperson for the CNESST declined to comment on the allegations, saying in an email that complaints and investigations with the board are handled confidentially to protect workers from reprisals and to avoid compromising the process.

CBC News contacted the CIUSSS about Kagan’s situation, but its spokesperson declined to comment on her case, citing employee confidentiality.

When asked whether the CIUSSS collects data on the demographic makeup of its workforce, the spokesperson responded that employees can voluntarily provide that information, adding that fewer than half have chosen to do so.

Investigation guidelines needed

Fo Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations who is assisting Kagan with her human rights complaint, said the CDPDJ’s documentation of the case reveals a fundamental blind spot.

The statement of facts omits Kagan’s race, age and demographic makeup of her workplace, something Niemi argues strips the case of its context and ignores data that shows how systemic racism manifests.

“That’s the result of [the CDPDJ] not having guidelines and not having the competencies to handle these complaints properly,” Niemi said, noting that unlike Quebec, Ontario’s Human Rights Commission has a policy on identifying systemic discrimination that considers numerical data, decision-making processes in institutions and organizational culture. 

A CDPDJ spokesperson told CBC News that the commission has a toolkit available on its website (in French only), which lists some indicators of a “potential systemic discrimination situation.” It also outlines three essential elements to systemic discrimination that the commission must demonstrate.    

“The systemic nature of racial discrimination does not change the normal course of processing an investigation file at the Commission,” the spokesperson for the CDPDJ said in an email. “The investigative process follows the same procedural rules and obligations.”

Niemi noted that unlike for racial profiling, the CDPDJ lacks a detailed public guide explaining how to prove systemic racism in employment before the courts. 

Data from the CDPDJ shows that representation within its ranks is thinning. In 2024 and 2025, “visible minorities” made up roughly 32 per cent of the commission’s investigation and legal staff. While that accounts for 63 employees, it marks a slight drop from the 70 workers employed by the departments in 2023. In the last three years, one employee in the departments is reportedly Indigenous. 

Racism isn’t always ‘spectacular,’ worker says

A former racialized employee of a cultural organization in Montreal whose complaint the Quebec Human Rights Commission dismissed echoed Kagan’s calls for transparency.  

CBC News has agreed to withhold her name since she is not authorized to discuss the investigation into her workplace publicly. 

Her complaint alleged a hostile work environment where a “corporate family” culture was used to discourage staff from reporting discrimination, while menial tasks were only assigned to people of colour and a manager allegedly made racist gestures and comments toward employees. 

“There was always an excuse or an explanation to say that it wasn’t something personal or that they weren’t targeting someone in particular. It was just how things work,” she said, adding that leadership and the top earners were white.

It took four years from the time the employee filed her complaint before the commission said her case alleging systemic racism at her workplace had insufficient evidence and that it would not go to the Human Rights Tribunal.

The outcome was a blow, and the employee said the decision left her convinced that investigators did not grasp what she described as the systemic factors at the heart of her case. 

Racism is “not necessarily spectacular,” the employee said; it is often an accumulation of oversights in everyday life. 

Document everything, even when it’s hard to do: lawyer

Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and associate professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy, said the evidentiary burden in race-based discrimination cases is often placed on plaintiffs who might feel that they can’t meet its “very high” bar. 

“A lot of [systemic racism] is soft interactions that you can’t necessarily put your finger on,” Eliadis said.

While documenting mistreatment is an intensive task, Eliadis said workers who find themselves experiencing discrimination should seek legal advice early and meticulously record the discriminatory behaviour and policies they face daily. 

“When evidence like that is put forward and is documented in real time, courts do give it a lot of weight because it was contemporaneously recorded,” she said. 

For example, workers could screenshot digital meeting invites to prove that an interaction took place — a safeguard in case the HR department “magically loses” part of a plaintiff’s file, Eliadis said. 

“You’re the one who controls your own record,” Eliadis added.

Kagan, who experienced depression while fighting for her rights, warns that the complaints process “can break you.”

Still, she is urging workers to take stock of their career development and muster the courage to advocate for themselves. 

“As you try to battle a whole system, you have to be strong and believe in yourself,” Kagan said. 

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here