Visible Minority Candidates and MPs in the 2019 Federal Election.

• Author: Black, Jerome H.
• Position: Cover story

Fifty individuals with visible minority origins won their way into Parliament in the federal election of October 31, 2019--the largest number of such MPs ever to be elected. However, the achievement is tempered somewhat by the fact that the increase from the 2015 election is fairly modest and the population-based deficit in representation is about where it had been in that previous election. On the other hand, when candidates are taken into consideration, the picture that emerges for 2019 is somewhat more positive. The evidence points to the parties, at least in their local guises, continuing to do more to champion visible minority candidacies. Indeed, it is possible that the candidate data yield a better indication of the openness of the electoral process to minorities than simply a tally of the number of visible minority MPs elected.

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There are multiple reasons to pay attention to the progress that racialized minorities or, in official government parlance, visible minorities make in getting elected to Parliament. (1) Any compact list would include the implications that their presence as MPs has for the representation of immigrant and minority communities. More visible minority legislators can potentially bring about better substantive representation as these MPs give voice to, and undertake actions regarding, policy matters that are of disproportionate concern to these population segments. But even absent such responsiveness, minority populations can find symbolic or psychological value in "feeling" more represented as they identify and relate to legislators with backgrounds that they share. In doing so, they gain a sense of being recognized as part of a multicultural and inclusive society. Symbolic representation is also relevant for the institution of Parliament itself, since the legitimacy it can claim is, at least partially, bound up with how well it captures the growing heterogeneity that characterizes Canadian society. Finally, paying attention to the electoral trajectory of visible minority MPs affords perspectives on how well minorities are integrating into Canadian political life. Just as it is important to investigate their involvement in more ordinary political activities, there is also great value in comprehending the dynamics of political engagement at the elite level. Such inquiries can have something to say about how open and accessible the political process is to categories of Canadians who have been traditionally absent and/or excluded.

So what do the numbers look like in the wake of the latest federal election, held on October 31, 2019, and how do they stack up compared to previous elections. (2) The short answer is that additional progress was made in 2019 but hardly in astonishing fashion. On the positive side, and not unimportantly, a record-setting 50 MPs (3) with visible minority origins were elected, a number that translates into 14.8 per cent of the House's membership. What is also notable about 2019 is that it is the third consecutive election to witness an increase from one election to the next. This consistency stands out as a relatively new phenomenon: elections covering the period from 1993--when visible minority MPs were first elected in detectable numbers--until as late as 2008 featured a mix of increments and decrements across election pairings.

On the other side, the increase in the number of visible minority MPs elected in 2019 relative to the last two elections is quite modest. From 2008 to 2011, their numbers bumped up considerably from 22 to 29, and then much more so to 47 in 2015 (4)--with percentage equivalents of 7.1, 9.4, and 13.9, respectively, of the House of Commons seats available. By contrast, the 50 MPs elected in 2019 constitute only a modest up-tick.

A tempered outlook on the 2019 election is also warranted when the figure of 14.8% is juxtaposed against the incidence of visible minorities in the population at large. According to the 2016 census, visible minorities comprised 22.3% of the Canadian population, which yields a "ratio of representation" of approximately two-thirds. (5) Full representation--a ratio of one--would have hypothetically occurred had 75 visible minority MPs won their way into Parliament. More to the point, the ratio of two-thirds is about the same as it was following the 2015 election, so the representation deficit measured this way has not altered very much over the four-year period. (6)

The lack of any major turnover in individual MPs elected from 2015 to 2019 might also suggest that change was limited between the two elections. Of the 50 MPs elected in 2019, fully 36 were re-elected to the House. As for personnel changes, some occurred through party wins and losses: a visible minority replacing a non-visible minority incumbent (three), and vice versa (two) and minority individuals from different parties winning in 2019 (two). Another part of the turnover can be attributed to incumbent/candidate alterations within the same party: a visible minority replacing a non-visible minority incumbent (four), and vice versa (two) and different minority individuals elected but from the same party (five).

Table 1 speaks to party connections. It presents the visible minority MP numbers broken down by party affiliation for the 2019 and the four previous elections. Plainly, the Liberals, with 37 minorities elected, continued to be the party with the largest number of such MPs. This was also true in 2015 (39 MPs). These back-to-back feats reversed a period of decline, which culminated in 2011 when the party found itself with only two minority MPs in its caucus. The Conservatives continued to be a distant second with 10 minority MPs elected in 2019, though this does represent an improvement over their 2015 tally when the party elected only six such individuals. The only other party to have any of their minority candidates elected is the NDP. Three were elected in 2019, one more than in 2015. In the 2011...