The Conseil des relations interculturelles is leading the charge this time, requesting that Quebec government ads and marketing campaigns should show better representation of the cultural diversity of the province.

The Conseil feels that the government has leverage when it's time to tell advertising agencies about diversity, and that it's a way of increasing the diversity count in the advertising itself. The Conseil also wants ad agencies and media agencies to employ more visible minorities and cultural communities.

The Conseil had been asked by Immigration Minister Yolande James to prepare a report on how cultural communities are treated in advertising and media and to suggest ways to improve their presence. The report's recommendations will be released today.

Quebec's advertising agencies 30 years ago were reluctant to put representatives from diverse cultures in their ads because advertisers were, for the most part, advertising across the province but visible minorities lived mainly in the Montreal area. Today, the province has a larger number of immigrants and visible minorities and, although the largest number are still in Montreal, there are more spread out into other cities and towns.

In fact, there have also been various awards given in the past to advertisers who used representatives of diverse communities in their ads as a way of highlighting the need to increase their visibiity in advertising.

As for employing more visible minorities in advertising, this has been encouraged for years by groups, especially by the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR).

In the U.S., employing more visible minorities in ad agencies has been in the forefront since 2006 when 16 major agencies were subpoenaed to appear before hearings by the New York City Human Rights Commission because of their lacklustre doversity hiring practices. They avoided the situation by signng agreements to improve minority hiring, pledging to diversify by setting goals for the hiring, promotion and retention of minorty talenst and to report back to the Commission on the topic. However, recent reports have shown that there is still a relatively small representation in some agencies.