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One city politician says tracking the diversity of city hall’s workforce suggests the corporation is “sliding away” from proper hiring procedures, a claim that one of his colleagues deemed “an attack” on Londoners from minority groups.

At a Tuesday committee meeting, Coun. Paul Van Meerbergen took aim at a report outlining city hall efforts to be a more inclusive and welcoming workplace, including data to show how new hires represent the Londoners they serve.

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“The inclination and the feeling I’m getting from this report is we are sliding away from merit-based hiring. I wanted to . . . make it absolutely clear that we hire people based on their merit and their qualifications,” Van Meerbergen told The Free Press after the meeting.

“It’s the whole aspect that we’ve got to get our minority numbers up . . . All these machinations that are taking place in the name of quote, unquote minorities is not the way we should be proceeding. We should be proceeding with trying to find the best.”