Ethnoracial Minorities in the House of Commons.

The 35th Parliament (1993-1997) was the first to be subjected to a new methodological approach designed to assess the ethnoracial origins of MPs. In a country that is multicultural both in fact and its official commitment, the reliable classification of origins is a key requisite for an effective understanding of the degree to which Canada's mainstream institutions, including its political structures, reflect the diversity of the country's population. The specific methodology developed to accomplish this task is eclectic in nature as it employs biographical information, last name analysis (aided by surname dictionaries), and, importantly, survey responses directly provided by federal legislators themselves. This article applies that same methodolgy to the present Parliament. The 35th Parliament was a particularly appropriate choice for initiating this measurement approach because the 1993 election heralded an unprecedented increase, indeed almost a surge, in the election of MPs of minority (i.e., nonBritish, nonFrench) background.(1) Altogether, 71 such individuals or 24.1% of the House's membership had minority origins,(2) (while a further 27 had mixed majority-minority ancestry). Not only did traditional ethnic groups of European descent attain a record presence but visible minorities nearly tripled their numbers from the previous election, growing from five to 13. However, the figure still represented only 4.4% of the House's membership compared to an estimated population share of 9.4%, suggesting that visible minorities had not even reached the half-way point in numerical representation (i.e. a "proportionality" index of .47). The same methods applied to the Parliament produced by the 1997 election revealed further progress for ethnoracial minorities, though the augmentation was of a very modest nature.(3) Altogether, minorities came to hold 24.9% of the slightly expanded Commons in the 36th Parliament. For their part, 19 visible minorities were elected that year, a figure that translates into 6.3% of the membership, a percentage still far removed from the 1996 census population estimate of 11.2%.