Visible minority candidates and MPs: an update based on the 2008 federal election.

• Author: Black, Jerome H.
• Position: Report

While there is an ongoing need to learn more about the position and experience of visible minorities among the federal legislative elite, one reality is very well understood: they remain underrepresented--both as candidates and, more importantly, as MPs. This paper considers the 2008 federal election as an additional observation and testing point. Its specific aim is to determine whether characterizations about the incidence of visible minority MPs based on studies of elections from 1993 to 2006 still apply when this election is taken into account. The article also discusses visible minorities as candidates in that election. This is in keeping with the focus of previous scholarship on candidacy as a necessary condition for entry into the Commons. This entails not only "counting" them but as well examining which parties they ran for and the competitive status of the constituencies that they contested--all of this in an effort to shed some light on the parties' depth of commitment to visible minorities as serious contenders for winning Parliamentary seats.

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Visible minorities were first elected to the House of Commons in noticeable numbers in the federal election of 1993 and several studies have tracked their subsequent experiences through to the 2006 election. (1) In the broadest terms, the research reveals that, with the exception of the 2000 election, more visible minorities were able to win seats with each passing election. At the same time, the election-to-election increments have been decidedly on the modest side and, more tellingly, have only kept pace with the growth of visible minorities in the Canadian population at large. Strikingly, for 2006, the ratio of the percentage of visible minority MPs to the percentage of visible minorities in the general population was virtually identical to the ratio for 1993. Put differently, the level of "descriptive representation" has not improved over time.

Table 1 reproduces data from various studies that have covered the five elections over the 1993-2006 period and, as well, offers up the new information for 2008. The first row provides census-based estimates of the visible minority population in Canada for all six elections and section "a" displays the numbers and percentages of visible minority MPs elected, along with ratios of the MP-to-population percentages. To be clear, the latter comparisons allow for statements about the degree to which visible minorities are present in Parliament relative to their population share (with greater underrepresentation signaled by smaller ratios). The two, already-noted generalities covering the elections from 1993 to 2006 are quite apparent in the first section. To begin with, save for the 1997-2000 pairing, visible minority MPs augmented both their absolute numbers and percentage share of seats from one election to the next, though, again, mostly in small additions. Secondly, the MP-population ratios indicate that the representation deficit has persisted over time; for 1993, it was .47 and for 2006, it was .48. In both years, it would have taken the election of about twice as many visible minorities as those who did win to close the gap.

For its part, the 2008 election did not produce a further improvement in the status of visible minorities in the House of Commons and, in fact, it constituted another case of decline. Twenty-four visible minority MPs had been elected in 2006, but only 21 in 2008, a change that corresponds to a drop from 7.8% to 6.8% of the 308 seats available. On the other side of the ledger, the visible minority component of the Canadian population increased from 16.2% to 17.3%. (2) With fewer MPs and a greater population count, a drop in the representation ratio for the 2008 election is to be expected. Even so, the fact that it tumbled down to .39 is striking since it is noticeably lower than the ratio for 1993. Plainly put, five elections on, visible minorities were actually worse off in terms of their representation in Parliament.

Section "b" sets out equivalent information about the incidence of visible minorities as federal candidates. Included in the calculations are only the main political parties, taken here to signify those political formations that were able to win seats in Parliament over the 1993-2008 time...