Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

By the numbers

by Aaron Wherry on Monday, May 4, 2009 10:27am - 63 Comments

The Public Policy Forum report is available online as a power point presentation here.

By their count, the current Parliament is 92.2% white. (The U.S. House of Representatives is 82.7% white. The British Parliament 97.7% white.)

On education, 65.9% of Parliamentarians have a university degree (Just under 93% of Congressman claim at least one degree.)

By party, that breaks down as follows: Liberal 83.1%, NDP 64.9%, Conservative 59.4%, Bloc 59.2%.

Tags: education, house of commons, Parliament, public policy forum, race

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Anon

“Conservative 59.4%, ”

The least educated (um, I mean, elitist) caucus in Parliament, by numbers. If one examines them during QP, one should not be surprised.

That percentage might be lower still if one were to look at Harper’s Cabinet+Parl Secys.
Zamprelli

How many degrees does Goodyear have?

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

I believe he’s expected to rise 0.5 degrees by 2030, which could have a significant global impact on sea levels, aphid activity, penguin breeding, etc.

Noobie

Penguin Breeding? There’s a visual that would even put puffingate to shame.

Dot

I thought last fall that he and the Conservatives had more than 6 degrees of separation from the Bloc. Now, it seems they are “engaged”.

You can tell by Duceppe’s quickened gait. Of course, it could also be the result of new shoes…

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Wow,

Our main representative body is both whiter AND less educated than the U.S. Congress.

Impressive.

At least we’re doing (slightly) less horrifically vis a vis the representation of women than the U.K. and the U.S. Soon, one in four Parliamentarians may well be women.

(Again, impressive).

Maggie’s Farmboy

And yet despite these statistics, our UN Social Development Ranking, our fiscal health, and our general sense of well-being are all high. And I’ll even suggest that relative to other countries, there is a high level of racial and gender equality (although there is much more work to be done).

I’m not saying that we don’t need more diversity in Parliament, we do. I’m just suggesting that as a general proposition, these white men, highly educated or not, haven’t done that badly for us over the years.

Wotcher?

‘these white men, highly educated or not, haven’t done that badly for us over the years.’

We have their mothers to thank for that.

madeyoulook

Fascinating numbers. Anyone care to explain how one applies affirmative action to democratic representative government? THE VOTERS put the elected representatives in there. Whatever amount of social engineering the social engineers have planned for “fixing” these numbers is gonna get mighty distasteful mighty fast.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Well, I get what you’re saying myl, but we can lament those pretty disheartening numbers even if we think there’s not much we can do about them.

That said, I think it’s at least possible that a number as high as 92.2% white may indicate that there are still systemic barriers to the participation of visible minority citizens in our politics that could be eliminated or curtailed. I certainly agree that any kind of “affirmative action” in this regard would be unwise, but I’d bet if we looked at the number of white people placing second and third in most races we’d discover that it’s not really that citizens tend (for whatever reason) to elect white people more frequently than visible minorities. I think in many ridings in Canada, the choice before the voters is “which white person do you want representing you?”

As you imply, the democratic will of the electorate at the ballot box is sacrosanct, but still, there’s plenty of procedures leading up to election day that have little to do with “democracy” that end up determining whom we get to choose from. We shouldn’t be attempting to artificially adjust the racial or gender makeup in the House of Commons, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to eliminate the ways in which we’re CURRENTLY artificially adjusting the racial and gender makeup of the H of C (however unintentionally). I understand, and to a point agree with, your concern over “social engineering” a fix, but let’s keep in mind as well that our system of party politics and democratic representation is a socially engineered system. We didn’t just find the House of Commons and the Canada Elections Act in it’s pristine “natural” form in the woods of Ottawa one day. It’s already an artificially engineered system with built in biases and imperfections, and I’d be willing to bet there are ways we could improve it.

DR

Well, not having the urban areas where minorities actually live get 120 000 per riding whereas the white rural areas get 80 000 would help. It wasn’t set up to be racist, but the effect is real.

The old boys club of the Liberals plays a part as well. Rae-Kennedy-MHF were all handed seats where minorities make up the bulk of Liberal voters. Iggy took a seat after a black woman was “coaxed” out of it.

Finally, the general lack of intra-party challenges in the Liberal party. Peel region (Missisauga-Brampton) has an ethnic diversity that is reflected in it’s MP’s because half of those ridings weren’t there 15 years ago. In Toronto’s core, Jimmy the K doesn’t have to worry about what would be called a primary challenge in the US.

Sean Stokholm

DR – I’m a bit confused as to how this is a Liberal problem, in particular, so much as one for the country in general.

Your point about the distribution of seats is well taken. Even if the seats more directly represented absolute population distributions, though, there’s no guarantee that folks will tend to support candidates of their own ethnic/racial background (and I’m not even sure that would be a healthy trend if it did emerge – we’ve been far too mired in the compulsion to have representatives “just like us”, IMHO).

http://deleted Sandi

Liberal problem? Only in your mind because you want to make a partisan attack. I checked out the NDP caucus. One Chinese woman (Chow) and one native woman. The rest – white women/men. Also, most, nearly all were activists, union members and/or both.
DR

Sandi, I think it’s a Liberal problem because they have their base of support is in Toronto & Montreal and their top down power structure is a part of the problem in my view. They essentially take non-white votes for granted when they use the safe Toronto seats that have had their MP’s retire to hand positions to carpetbaggers and leadership losers. They’re not even giving normal people (like that muslim woman who won a seat last election) a chance.

Patrick

when did this turn into – it’s all the liberals fault – commentary?

madeyoulook

But here’s the thing, LKO: You want to ENSURE minority representation, you put minorities in the safest of riding(s) for the given party. Then you deal with the “she’s in there for free because she’s black / native / Tamil” instead of the “this star candidate got in for free” in that riding. The ugly and inevitable side of affirmative action.

I am aware of no legislation that prevents Canadian citizens of non-white background from running for elected office. I have many friends and colleagues, many of them non-white (ugh, as if that should even matter), who I would eagerly vote for over the choices I have sometimes had at the municipal, provincial and federal level. You want to accuse inequality of access? Take it up with your favourite and not-so-favourite parties.

But for the love of Canada, do NOT vote for any candidate just on the basis of skin colour.

But, then, I am replying to LKO, who has, IIRC, admitted to having voted in the last federal election on the basis of which party should get $1.95 from taxpayers per annum on his say-so (I apologize if I am misremembering, but I have you down on that wacko list of democracy-perverters). So maybe the above vote for the non-white candidate might actually sound reasonable.

Sean Stokholm

Dear god, he’s got a list…
Lord Kitchener’s Own

I am aware of no legislation that prevents Canadian citizens of non-white background from running for elected office

No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t systems in place whose design discourages minority candidates from running for elected office. There can be discrimination, even discrimination that we should attempt to counter, without the necessity that it be LEGISLATED discrimination. Heck, up until the point at which the parties have chosen their candidates, I’m not sure much of our democratic process is legislated in any way (that’s not a call for legislation, just an observation of fact).

I think you may be overestimating my desire to immediately intervene in some fashion to change the make-up of Parliament, or to change anything at all. I merely hope we’d recognize that it’s POSSIBLE that our system of selecting representatives to Parliament (and I think if there’s problems, they’re probably at the Party level with the selection of candidates more so than the election level) MIGHT discourage the participation of all Canadians. That there COULD be biases in the system that SYSTEMATICALLY (whether intentionally or not) make it less likely for minority candidates to succeed.

Or maybe not.

I just think it’s worth investigating rather than just accepting that it couldn’t POSSIBLY be so.

I understand your aversion to social engineering, my point is simply that our system is ALREADY a socially engineered system. We’re ALREADY dealing with a system that was designed by human beings, and all I’m suggesting is that it might be useful for us to take a look at that design, and see if it’s really well designed or not.

I really don’t think it’s a radical notion.

cwe

Hmmm…at first, I thought maybe it would provide some interesting work for the Human Rights Commissions, whereby any woman or visible minority candidate for MP who does not win could appeal their loss and have the wrong righted in that fashion.
The problem with that solution is that voters are always so convinced that they’re right to vote in the way that they choose that they might feel a litte put out about not getting their way. So, it seems that a more appropriate way to handle the situation is to reeducate voters about how to make the correct decisions in the first place. Reeducation camps, maybe?
But, even with as few people casting votes as they do nowadays, the sheer numbers involved are still likely to present some logistical problems. It’s a little ham-handed, I’ll admit, but probably we can just ban white men from running for political office for awhile until the numbers straighten themselves out. There you go.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Look, absolutely we should not be tampering in any way with the voters’ choice at the ballot box, but there’s a whole maze of events that happen before I’m presented with 3 white guys and one white woman to choose from on my ballot, most of which have pretty little to do with “democracy” in any sense (and some, even many of which are quite literally antithetical to democracy). This naive notion that somehow our current system of party politics leads to some benign and unimpeachable representation of the unvarnished democratic will of the people is patently ridiculous.

Now, it would be equally naive of me to suggest that improving the system would be easy, and not fraught with potential “solutions” that would be worse than the problem they seek to fix; but pretending that our system of electing representatives is somehow pure and sacrosanct and that any attempts to adjust it would be nothing short of an affront to democracy is ludicrous.

There’s no magic wand, and an easy “cure” would, quite probably, be worse than the disease. However, pretending that the Parliament we get in the 21st century, using our current system of representative democracy and (importantly) party politics is somehow the divinely inspired unvarnished representation of the democratic will of the people is every bit as much an insult to the spirit of democracy as some of the “solutions” you facetiously suggest would be.

Again, there are worthy notes of caution here in the comments, but also a seeming notion that our system of party politics and representative democracy was passed to us unmodified directly from the Gods, to the Greeks to John A. It’s just silly.

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

I don’t see what the problem is. According to Iggy, Canada’s moral obligation is “to teach tolerance and diversity and citizenship to a tormented world” so our system of governance must be perfect and used as template for the tormented world beyond our borders.

It is astonishing that the two major sectors who are pushing ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’, pols and msm, are two of the whitest professions in Canada.

Physician, heal yourself.

http://deleted Sandi

Huh? This doesn’t even make sense – another venue here for Con partisan attacks.

cwe

I was just having a little bit of fun, Lord KO, which I think you picked up on before you went on to state the case that maybe I should have just gone ahead and done in the first place. Nice work, sir.

Jenn

Huh. And so now that I’ve chided you, I see you’ve already mended your ways. Must remember to read all the way down before replying to something. Sorry ’bout that.

Jenn

That was rather uncalled for, cwe. Nobody here is suggesting voters don’t have the free will to vote for whomever they choose, nor is anyone suggesting white men need not apply. In fact, I’d say all commenters thus far have ruled out that kind of affirmative action, as do I.

It is interesting however, to note that “safe” ridings may often be more diverse ridings in terms of minorities, and if those are the ridings where the *star* white men go, maybe we could challenge the *stars* a little more, to take not-quite-so-safe ridings.

It is also interesting to think that, perhaps, minority community members are handicapped by the larger numbers in their communities. Where two could possibly be elected in more rural ridings (by the numbers) the larger, more diverse ridings can only elect one. Obviously, that smacks of discrimination, even though I’m quite sure its unintended.

There’s nothing wrong with having a thoughtful exchange, you know, instead of always partisan or idealogical sniping.

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Personally, I am always fascinated by university graduates who believe they are better than everyone else, think they have the answers to all life’s problems and have a desire to control the hoi polloi because they don’t measure up to their lofty standards. I think Liberal MPs and 83.1% explains quite a lot, actually.

Don’t tread on me!

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Personally, I don’t think it’s any more fair to characterize university graduates as believing “they are better than everyone else, think they have the answers to all life’s problems and have a desire to control the hoi polloi because they don’t measure up to their lofty standards” than it is to imply that there’s something wrong with a lower level of university graduates in Parliament than in Congress.

It’s possible that that fact that 83.1% of Liberal MPs have some from of university degree “explains a lot” about the Liberals; but no more than you thinking that it does explains a lot about you, imho.

Anti-intellectualism is not a cure to elitism, it’s just another disease with highly similar symptoms that happens to attack different carriers.

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

I graduated from university and remember perfectly well how up our own arses students were. Many of us grow out of it but many do not and it appears that those who have not grown out of it migrate to Lib party.

If anyone is anti-intellectual, it is Libs/libs who have come to believe they are smarter, and prettier, than anyone else at the party. How many times have I read a commentator on Macleans website write something like ‘I am a Lib/lib which means I am smarter than anyone not a Lib so instead of engaging in debate, because there is no need to because I am cleverer, I am just going to say Cons are stupid, ignorant and racist and leave it at that’.

Libs/libs, as a group, are Little Lord Fauntleroys and they chafe my ass with their superior attitude and controlling nature.

This is not directed at you Lord KO, you seem to be one of a few willing to debate things.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Well, I should say my charge of “anti-intellectualism” wasn’t really directed at you personally either, but you have to admit it’s out there in our political discourse (as is an “over-intellectualism” to be sure).

It’s certainly true that there’s no shortage of people in our politics who can be intellectually elitist (and I won’t associate that with any particular party, because of what my next point is) however, the other side of that coin is that simultaneously, sometimes people get called stupid, ignorant or racist because they do or say something stupid, ignorant or racist.

It’s worth calling a spade a spade is my point I guess, but that cuts both ways. Sometimes the spade is an anti-democratic communist egghead, and sometimes the spade is a rabble-rousing fascist ignoramus (tried hard to make those equivalent, though I realize fascist might not quite equate to communist on the “evil” scale in the popular imagination….).

Anyway, on the education front, I certainly wouldn’t hold that a university degree (or even post-secondary education) is a necessary qualification for elected office. My big beef is mostly with those who see it as a DISqualification for office (or, at the least, as a point against a candidate, or something to be derided).

As an over-educated elitist, I can certainly see my way clear to stating that the fact that the Liberals have a much higher proportion of university graduates than their rivals in their ranks in the House doesn’t make them any more qualified or better suited to lead our nation. I just hope others could concede that it doesn’t make them any LESS qualified or WORSE suited either.

(If they can’t though, what can I say? I’m a progressive which means I am smarter than anyone who’s not a progressive, so because it’d be a waste of time debating with people who are clearly intellectually inferior to me, I am just going to remind everyone that conservatives are stupid, ignorant and racist and leave it at that).

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Liked your last paragraph, gave me a good laugh.

“I just hope others could concede that it doesn’t make them any LESS qualified or WORSE suited either.”

Individually, a university degree does not mean someone is less qualified or worse suited but, as a group, I think having so many uni graduates is a problem because you lose touch with the average person. I think the mix of uni grads that Cons and BQ have is much better because it will keep caucus grounded in reality.

I also have no problem with smart people but when the terms ‘smart’ or ‘intellectual’ are given to a certain pol, I am immediately suspicious. Far too often, this ‘smart’ person will have come up with some theory on why 2+2 = 5 or somesuch while explaining why the rest of us are idjits for thinking it was 4.

Dion was classic example of this. There dozens of stories on how ‘smart’ he was, that he had a colossus intellect while the rest of us who questioned how smart he was were pygmies, but I haven’t read anything about how smart he is since he was thrown under the bus by his party for leading them to their worst election result in who knows how long.

cwe

I graduated from university, too, and I won’t dispute that during my days there, I spent quite some time “up my own arse.”
One valuable thing I learned there, however, is that when a person makes a statement along the lines of, “it appears that those who have not grown out of it migrate to … party,” if they are to avoid the “up their own arse” charge that they level at others, some sort of proof is required, apart from the assertion itself, in order to substantiate it. Have you got any?

“Libs/libs, as a group, are Little Lord Fauntleroys and they chafe my ass with their superior attitude and controlling nature.” Sorry if I seem a little thick, but can you explain to me how this is anything but a variation on the theme in your second paragraph that Libs/libs claim to be smarter than everyone else, leading to the hurling of juvenile epithets in place of engagement in substantive debate?
Zeph

It really takes a conservatives to think it’s a virtue to have MPs with the second lowest level of university degrees. Repeat after me: war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

‘I graduated from university and remember perfectly well how up our own arses students were. Many of us grow out of it but many do not and it appears that those who have not grown out of it migrate to Lib party.”

Did you see the stats on which party had more academics in Parliament?

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Huh, interesting. Substantially less (as a percentage) MPs with university degrees, yet more MPs coming from academia.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

“Did you see the stats on which party had more academics in Parliament?”

I didn’t, no. Could not download report but read the press release and all it said was that 61% come to Parliament from private sector and the other 39% are Education/Academia, public service and non-profit sector. Who has the most academics?
Lord Kitchener’s Own

jwl

Academics:

BQ 13
Cons 12
Libs 9
NDP 8

Still a much smaller percentage of academics for the Tories, given their higher overall number of MPs, but a bit surprising nonetheless given the total percentage of people with degrees.

Then again (and this is also a bit interesting) the Tories also lead the Libs in all university education numbers (in terms of the raw total) except PhDs (again, not totally shocking given the number of MPs each party has in total).

Bachelors Degrees: Cons 34, Libs 25
Masters Degrees: Cons 17, Libs 9
PhDs: Cons 3, Libs 11

By percentage of caucus, for the Tories: 24% have undergraduate degrees, 12% have Masters degress, and 2% have PhDs while for the Liberals 32% have Bachelors degrees, 12% have Masters degrees and 14% have PhDs.

Looked at that way, I’d bet there’s usually not as much difference between the Tories and Libs in terms of percentage of university graduates, except that the Libs are so low right now (is their current caucus their smallest caucus ever?) and that most of their successful MPs are from the urban ridings where one’s just more likely to have candidates with post-secondary degrees. If the Liberals had more rural ridings and the Tories had more urban ridings, I’d bet the numbers of post-secondary degrees for both parties would probably be in the low to mid seventies somewhere and not nearly as far apart.

TJ Cook

I just shot coffee out my nose. jwl, you’re hysterical.

“Many of us grow out of it but many do not and it appears that those who have not grown out of it migrate to Lib party.”

Lemme shorten that for you: “Libs SUCK! Conservatives Rool!”

“How many times have I read a commentator on Macleans website write something like ‘I am a Lib/lib which means I am smarter than anyone not a Lib…”

I dunno jwl, how many times? I read this site about as often as you and I’m pretty sure the answer is zero.

I just love the way you rail against the liberals that exist in your head. As for those of us in the Reality-Based Community, you’re pure entertainment gold. Keep it up!

Oh, and while we’re being all anti-book learnin’: Palin 2012! Gary Goodyear for PM! No More Smartypants!

Lord Kitchener’s Own

For all my “it’s silly to just ignore this” arguments, it’s worth pointing out one thing. While a Parliament that’s 92% white sounds pretty bad, we do need to keep in mind that the COUNTRY is something like 83% white, so there’s that.

Which also calls into question somewhat our credentials vis a vis tolerance and diversity. I mean, it’s pretty easy to be tolerant of “racial diversity” when 8 out of 10 people look like you do (or, if you live anywhere East of Ontario or between Ontario and Alberta, 9 out of 10!). And, of course, there’s a connection to the urban/rural divide here as well. I mean 92% of Parliament is white, 83% of the country is white, even B.C., the least white province is 77% white. Toronto and Vancouver meanwhile are each less than 60% white, and Toronto will drop below 50% in the near future (Montreals not that low, but it’s WAY low compared to the rest of Quebec).

So while to many people, a Parliament that’s over 90% white seems exceedingly strange, to others, it seems quite normal. After all, 7 of our 10 provinces are over 90% white.

http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

“I mean 92% of Parliament is white, 83% of the country is white, even B.C., the least white province is 77% white. Toronto and Vancouver meanwhile are each less than 60% white, and Toronto will drop below 50% in the near future (Montreals not that low, but it’s WAY low compared to the rest of Quebec).”

Also keep in mind that the way ridings are set up, ridings with high minority populations (Toronto and Vancouver) are underrepresented by a rep-by-pop basis and ridings with low minority populations (rural ridings, PEI, etc.) are overrepresented.

So *of course* minorities are underrepresented in Parliament. The whole system is designed to ensure they are!
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

As a complete aside, I once gave a presentation in a Charter Law class arguing that our electoral system discriminates based on race and how it shouldn’t survive a challenge based on 15(1) of the Charter.

My prof for that class? Ian Brodie. I don’t think he bought the argument. :)
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Also, bear in mind that there tends to be a lag of a generation before immigrants are represented in the political system, white or non-white. Italian Canadian politicians, for instance, like Joe Volpe and Tony Ianno, are either second generation or immigrated when very young (Volpe was 7); their parents may have noticed politics, but they would likely have been represented by British-backgrounded Canadians a generation or two ago. I’ve met several second generation non-white Canadians who are deep into politics but who are too young to be elected (they’re in their 20′s and 30′s). I bet you the House is only about 80% white in 15-20 years’ time, as places like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, with their ever-larger number of ridings, return mostly non-white MP’s.
sf

Based on Jack’s comments about first vs second generation, Mike Moffat’s comments about urban vs rural, and your own admission that the country is 82% white, I’d conclude there is no discrimination whatsoever.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far.

First off, on the rural/urban thing there clearly is demonstrable discrimination as for example the fact that my MP represents about 120,000 Canadians, while many MPs in Parliament represent substantially fewer (some MPS represent less than 40,000 constituents). Generally, the votes of people in urban ridings are worth less than the votes of people in rural ridings. In my case, people in my riding have roughly one third of the representation in Parliament as people in PEI, per capita (now sometimes, and in that particular case, we may deem it to be discrimination we can live with, just like we limit cCharter rights under certain circumstances, but it’s still discrimination…).

On the other hand, you may be right that there’s no discrimination. I just think it’s an important enough point that we should investigate to see if there is, rather than simply assume that there isn’t. The system could still be discriminatory, while producing results that don’t appear superficially discriminatory (or as discriminatory as they really are). Even a terribly flawed and unfair system could, through random probability, produce a Parliament that exactly mirrored society in these measures (just like a perfectly fair and non discriminatory system could, it’s true, end up producing a Parliament that was 100% white and male). I just think it profits us to be suspicious, and aim for evidenced-based improvements where warranted rather than being complacent.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

What possible justification is there for the rural-urban imbalance, apart from the fact that rural people mystically deserve it? (PEI is a special case, of course, because of the mandatory minimum.) I remember my dear old high school civics teacher defending it on the grounds that no system was perfect, but it seems like such an obvious case of discrimination, so easily solved, so fundamental to representative government, that it should be corrected at once.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

I agree for the most part. When I said “sometimes, and in that particular case, we may deem it to be discrimination we can live with” I really did mean that PARTICULAR case, i.e. PEI. I think PEI’s an exception we’d probably need to keep, ’cause the place is just so tiny, but it’s still a province. However, there are PLENTY of ridings across the country that get twice as much representation in Parliament as mine does, with precious little justification, imho. The very smallest riding in Ontario has 6,000 more people than the very largest riding in Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

We just need benches, like the have at Westminster. The House could easily hold 500 people if they all just squooshed in a bit.
madeyoulook

Did Jack just suggest having waaay MORE members of Parliament? Hey, Jack, meet me in the back alley behind the drugstore. I’ve got this super baseball bat I’d like to show you…
http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

You and your cheap-ass foam baseball bats . . .
Lord Kitchener’s Own

Hey, personally I’m all for LESS representatives too, if people want to go that way.

I’m just not particularly enamoured of a system whereby people in certain ridings can get 2-3 times as much representation in Parliament as people in certain other ridings. This is particularly worrisome to me since A) I’m likely to live most of my life in the sorts of ridings that tend to get screwed by the system and B) the ridings that tend to get underrepresented in the system also tend to have the highest proportions of visible minorities.

And yes, I’m concerned about those effects in that order.

LOL.

I think it’s entirely possible that most of the gap between the 83% whiteness of the country and the 92% whiteness of Parliament is due to nothing more sinister than the fact that many more visible minorities live in ridings that tend to get systematically underrepresented in Parliament on a per capita basis. SYSTEMATICALLY underrepresented. MYL, can’t even you agree that THAT is the sort of imperfection in our system that’s worth discussing, and perhaps attempting to fix?
madeyoulook

LKO, yes I can certainly agree with that. the “permissible” range of riding populations is way too wide. But that must not be fixed on the get-more-minorities-into-Parliament argument. That must be fixed because it’s the right thing to do on so many levels.
Lord Kitchener’s Own

True enough myl, still though, if the (patently unfair) wide array of permissible riding sizes is one of the things artificially tamping down the numbers of minorities in Parliament, then surely that’s another (if not the most pressing) argument in favour of rectifying that situation?

Out of curiosity myl, I forget, where would you say you come down on the fptp/pr argument? Not on the particular proposals made in BC or Ontario mind you, just, generally. Would you say you’re a fervent defender of first past the post, or an advocate of some type of more proportional representation, or neither?
http://www.savedarfur.org Sophia Geffros

I think a part of it is that if we were to amalgamate some of the ridings with fewer people in it, the geographic area covered would be so large, especially in Northern Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, that the issues and viewpoints that the regions of the riding had could be quite diverse and perhaps in direct opposition to each other on issues.
Lord Kitchener’s Own

I should perhaps clarify myl, again, that I’m not at all advocating “We need to change the system to get more minorities into Parliament” what I’m saying is “If we can identify systematic barriers which are artificially suppressing the election of minorities to Parliament (or, more generally, artificially suppressing their involvement in the democratic process) then we should eliminate those systematic barriers to the greatest extent possible. And I guess I’m saying I’m at least still concerned enough to want to investigate the question.

I’d theoretically have no problem with a 100% male, 100% white Parliament, if I were reasonably confident that said Parliament represented (to some reasonable degree) the democratic will of the nation, and that thedesign of the SYSTEM wasn’t artificially affecting said outcome in any serious way. I’m just not convinced that our current methods for selecting our representatives should engender anywhere near that level of confidence in me.

Lord Kitchener’s Own

On the education numbers, note, for whatever it’s worth, that to get the party breakdowns for “university degrees” above, Wherry is including a section labeled “Professional Desig’n” which I’m not 100% convinced equals “university degree”. I mean, Professional Engineer, for example, is a “professional designation”, but I’d have said they’d all be listed under “Bachelors degree” since they’d have a BSc, or a BEng or a BAppSc or something, depending on the school. On the other hand, a chiropractor, for example, is a professional designation but doesn’t require a university degree.

If you take “professional designations” out entirely and concentrate only on things we KNOW are university degrees and can’t be something else (Bachelors degrees, Masters and PhDs), then the breakdown is Liberals 58%, NDP 49%, BQ 47%, Tories 38%. Not sure if that’s meaningful, but it does suggest that ALL of the parties are significantly below the 93% “university degree threshold” of the U.S. Congress.

Aaron Wherry

LKO: For the record, to get the university degrees above, I simply copied what the PPF presentation indicated. Before you get to the breakdown between bachelors, masters, professional designation and PhDs, there’s a slide that lists those percentages.

Thus, the fuzzy math is not mine.

(Look how defensive this city has made me.)

Lord Kitchener’s Own

LOL,

Thanks for the clarification though! I was looking at the page with the breakdowns and just doing the math there.

And, I mean, for all we know the numbers for “professional designations” only include professional designations that require a university degree, make my whole point above moot.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

LOL. Seriously, though, as things stand they all look a bit like Chekov & Sulu, no? Also it might help with the standing ovation problem if they had to rise under their own power without pushing themselves up on the desks.

cwe

It’s all in the choreography. Jammed in tightly enough, the standing ovations would be more easily delivered by those who knew their cues and performed them automatically, without question. Advantage, Borg…er, Conservatives.

Stephen

As my mother joked when I showed her these numbers:

“Of course the politicians are all white and uneducated. All the kids who look like you beat them out for the best university spots, and then become the doctors / lawyers / accountants and don’t want to take the pay cut to go to Parliament.”

35 years in the country and it’s safe to say she’s got things figured out. :) And, as noted, I think it’s more important that our universities and professional schools are representative of the population as a whole than parliament.

madeyoulook

What makes you think your momma was joking?

madeyoulook

Out of curiosity myl, I forget, where would you say you come down on the fptp/pr argument? Not on the particular proposals made in BC or Ontario mind you, just, generally. Would you say you’re a fervent defender of first past the post, or an advocate of some type of more proportional representation, or neither?

LKO, I have taken this Q out to a new thread because the last one was getting smelly and this is a new thought anyways. And a good one (your question, that is, not my wishy-washy response). Hope you don’t mind.

Honestly, I wish I had a cohesive thought on that. I confess I have not studied the issue enough, beyond reading a few Coyne pieces. All I can say is that my education is way incomplete.

I suppose the most accurate description would be a somewhat lazy response like: Well, what we’ve got isn’t THAT bad. Better the devil you know. Etc. I find PR appealing in an every-vote-actually-really-counts way. And I can see merit in the stability of electing the dictators that the current majority-favouring system offers.

In PR, I can certainly see the opportunity for parties to “stack the deck” with some non-WASP candidates that stand a better chance of actually getting elected, if the party is realistic as to its electoral chances, percentage-wise. But the affirmative-action charge may still apply.

And if I could possibly be any more wishy-washy: I can easily see that parties may, under the current system, “park” their unwanted token minorities in hopeless ridings, if only to evade the charge of some sort of inadequate mix of (choose-your-group) in the candidate pool.

And I must (perhaps naively) reiterate that I find even the preceding two paragraphs a little unseemly. I am blessed to be living and working and playing in a part of Canada that has a magnificent mix of cultures, religions, skin colours, languages, and we all actually get on so bloody well that I find it jarring when issues like this even come up.

Is that on the fence enough for you?

Lord Kitchener’s Own

lol,

Yeah, actually I’d forgotten, even in the context of the earlier discussion some of the minority representation angles possible with PR (including perhaps some that one might consider less seemly options), I was more trying to get at whether perhaps you felt that our current system was so great as to not really merit any close inspection, which is clearly not the case.

As I said above, I’m not concerned with adjusting the system so as to affect the number of minorities elected to Parliament, but I am somewhat concerned that the system as already constituted may be affecting the number of minorities elected to Parliament. At least, concerned enough that I think we need to consider the possibility, and if we can find evidence that it is, act to correct that accordingly.

GGF

“In 2006, 49% of Canadians aged 15 and over had trade certificates, college diplomas, or university degrees. This was an increase of 16 percentage points since 1990.” – HRDC

So the Liberals really are elitist. Good to have proof. Maybe there should be less thinking, contemplating, studying and more DOING in government.