Visible minority candidates in the 2004 federal election.

• Author: Black, Jerome H.

This article compares the number of visible minority candidates in the 2004 federal election with the three previous elections. It also considers some of the factors that encourage and discourage visible minority participation in electoral politics. Finally it looks at the situation in each of the political parties and suggests that, despite an increase in the number of visible minorities nominated, this has not yet translated into a major change in the number elected.

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While there has been a slowly developing literature focusing on the representational patterns of ethnoracial minorities among elected officials, particularly MPs, there has been comparatively less work undertaken on minorities as candidates. (1) This is an unfortunate state of affairs because office-seeking is itself an important dimension of engagement that is relevant for profiling minorities as elite-level political actors. More plainly, a focus on candidates provides a basis for determining whether the paucity of visible minorities in the House of Commons may be linked, in part at least, to their relative absence among those contesting the election as parliamentary candidates.

The reality of visible minority underrepresentation in Parliament, however, has been particularly well documented for the elections covering the 1993-2000 period. Section "a" of Table 1 displays the relevant figures for these recent elections and provides an update for the 2004 election. (2) Altogether, the pattern is one of a general growth in the number and percent of visible minority MPs elected, though the increases have been on the modest side and inconsistent in the case of the 2000 election, which actually witnessed fewer of them elected relative to 1997 (a drop from 19 to 17). The 2004 election re-established the upward trend and a record-breaking 22 visible minorities took their seats as parliamentarians. At the same time, these men and women comprised only 7.1% of the total membership of the House so that election continued to reflect a large representational deficit--one that is particularly evident when the growing demographic weight of visible minorities in the Canadian population is taken into account.

Using the first line of the table, which provides census-based estimates of the percentage of the visible minority population at (approximately) the time of each general election, we are able to calculate a "proportionality" ratio by taking this percentage as the denominator and dividing the corresponding MP percentage. A ratio of one would indicate that visible minorities' share of seats in the House of Commons was fully proportional to their incidence in the population, but as can be seen the fraction has typically been below .5, indicating that visible minorities have barely reached the half-way point in eliminating the gap in representation.

What is particularly striking is the lack of change over the 11 years; the two ratios bracketing the period are virtually the same--.47 for 1993, .48 for 2004. In short, while it is true that more visible minority MPs were elected in 2004, the increase in total numbers has only tracked the population increase at the same modest level.

Section "b" of Table 1 demonstrates the plausibility of a link between the incidence of visible minority candidates and MPs. Estimates are shown of the percentage of visible minority candidates who ran for the major parties in each of the four elections. The data reveal both a general and a specific pattern. The broader one is that visible minorities have been underrepresented among the candidate pool as well. Previous research for the three elections covering the 1993-2000 period has demonstrated that visible minorities comprised only about 4 or 5 percent of all those competing for a parliamentary seat. Moreover, the candidate/population ratios, based on the same census benchmarks and shown in the next line, indicate proportionality ratios generally below .40 for those three elections. The more particular data pattern is that substantially more visible minority candidates competed in 2004 than ever before; numbering 108, they constituted 8.3% of all of the candidates who ran for the larger parties, the Green Party included. With that party removed from the calculation, a stance taken in the earlier studies, the figure rises to 9.3%. Even with this increase, then, the 2004 election continued the pattern of visible minority underrepresentation among candidates. That said, the increase in the proportionality ratio to .62 should not be ignored. In short, the candidate figures do provide evidence that links the limited presence of visible minorities in the House of Commons to their relatively fewer numbers among parliamentary candidates and, as well, they also indicate a bit of a spike in their numbers for 2004.

This, in turn, suggests that a full understanding of the evolving situation of visible minorities as office-seekers requires acknowledging the continuing relevance of obstacles that they face and, as well, factors that may be mitigating or offsetting these long-standing constraints. As for explanations that help explain the traditional underrepresentation of visible minorities, a familiar one emphasizes their status as newcomers to Canada and to Canadian politics. (3) This is a perspective that points to how, unlike the earlier-arrived and more established Europeans, visible minorities have yet to complete the necessary period of adjustment and transition required for political action. The underlying assumption is that, with time, individuals...