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Racial Diversity in the 2011 Federal Election: Visible Minority Candidates and MPs
Jerome H. Black

The 2011 federal election was notable in many respects. The Liberal party won the fewest seats ever in its long history. The New Democratic Party elected its largest ever contingent of MPs enabling the party to form the official opposition for the first time. Another development was the first-ever direct election of a Green Party candidate. The election also produced record levels of gender and racial diversity within Parliament. When the votes were finally tallied, 76 women had won their way into the House of Commons, an increase of seven over the number elected in 2008. This article focuses on visible minority representation which also attained a high water mark in the 2011 election.

Altogether, 28 visible minority MPs were elected in 2011,¹ or 9.1% of the chamber’s membership of 308, a result that compares favourably with the 21 MPs elected in 2008 (6.8% of all MPs). Table 1 provides some broader context marshalling comparable information dating back to the 1993 election, when visible minority MPs were initially elected in noticeable numbers. Such a longitudinal perspective adds some weight to the significance of the 2011 outcome. Firstly, visible minority MP numbers have not always increased from one election to the next, and, indeed, across two election pairings, 1997-2000 and 2006-2008, they actually declined; thus, the improvement from 2008 to 2011 is noteworthy in and of itself. Secondly, the election of an additional seven visible minority MPs in 2011 deserves attention given the modest increments across some pairings, e.g., an increase of only two MPs from 2004 to 2006.

Another, more tempered perspective on the diversity-related impact of the 2011 election is possible: it did little to alter the fact that visible minorities remain significantly underrepresented in Parliament relative to their incidence in the general population. Table 1 also addresses this important vantage point by indicating (the ever increasing) visible minority population percentages and, as well, the result of their incorporation into ratios with the MP percentages. As constructed, a ratio of one would indicate a visible minority presence in the House of Commons at a level that corresponds to their population share. A ratio of .5 would signal that representation is only one-half of what it “should be” given the population percentage. As can be seen, the 2011 ratio is close to this mark, at .48;² put differently, it would have taken the election of 59 visible minority MPs to completely eliminate the representation deficit. In addition, the gap did not diminish very much in 2011 compared to earlier elections. While it is less than it was in the 2008 election (with a ratio of .39), it is the same as the deficits for the 2004 and 2006 elections. Most strikingly, the ratio for 2011 is virtually the same as it was in 1993 (.47); six elections on, visible minority representation has not improved.

In short, visible minority representation following the 2011 election has both positive and negative aspects. Broad countervailing forces operate both to push the numbers upwards and to hold them down, so perhaps it is not surprising that change is more incremental than monumental. For instance, numbers may be boosted by heightened competition for the votes of new Canadians, most of whom are visible minorities; this leads parties to consider nominating more visible minorities as candidates. On the other hand, examples of status quo forces include incumbency effects and various forms of residual discrimination.

Visible Minority MPs and their Parties

It is clear that the NDP’s unexpectedly strong performance, popularly characterized as an “orange wave,” played the largest role in augmenting visible minority MP numbers. The party almost tripled its overall seat count relative to 2008 and in doing so elected 13 visible minority MPs, the most of any party. Table 1 translates this figure into a percentage: thus of the 28 visible minority MPs elected in 2011, 46.4% won as NDPers. Percentages are also shown for earlier elections and underscore how much of a departure the 2011 contest was for the NDP. In no previous election did the party manage to elect more than one visible minority MP. The Conservatives’ performance -- 12 visible minority MPs elected -- also contributed significantly to the overall total. In their case, however, the result continued a trend involving the party (and its various antecedent formations) increasing, almost monotonically, its percentage of all visible minority MPs; across the 1993-2008 period, their portion went from 7.7% to 38.1%. In 2011, the party reached a high point with a share of 42.9%.

Consideration of the Liberals and the BQ raises the question whether their poor performances in 2011 limited what otherwise would have been the election of an even greater number of visible minority MPs. At one level, the answer would seem to be an easy and obvious “yes.” After all, the two parties’ fortunes are simply the flip side of the Conservatives and the NDP’s success; more to the point, many of their visible minority incumbent MPs were defeated. The Liberals elected only two visible minorities (7.1 % of all such MPs), while in 2008 they had elected nine (42.9%). However, the party’s decline is not new. Their share of visible minority MPs has consistently dropped from a high of 92.3% in 1993.³ Still, the subsequent plunge in 2011 is quite sobering. As for the BQ, they elected a handful of visible minority MPs in more recent elections, with shares of 16.7% and 14.3% in the 2006 and 2008 elections (three individuals both times) but only managed to elect one individual in 2011.

Another line of reasoning about the possible role played by Liberal and BQ’s losses in limiting visible minority MP numbers may be a bit more informative. If it turned out that the Conservatives and NDP’s newly elected visible minorities defeated visible minority incumbents elected in 2008 as Liberals and Bloquistes, then such a “replacement effect” would imply that the two parties’ overall electoral setbacks had little impact on the MP total. For the most part, replacement did not occur. Of the 18 visible minorities elected for the first time in 2011, only five won by defeating an incumbent counterpart. In other words, had the Liberals and BQ fared better, perhaps even modestly better, they may have held onto more seats that included visible minority incumbents, thus adding to visible minority representation.

Visible Minority Candidates and their Parties

The simple truism that the election of more visible minorities requires, in the first instance, their nomination as candidates in greater numbers justifies shifting the focus to the latter. Candidate-level information has always provided insights into understanding visible minority representation and this is no less true for the 2011 election. At the same time, the relationship between candidate and MP numbers is not a straightforward one but rather is mediated by many variables -- some alluded to above -- that help explain why more or less visible minorities end up being elected. Here attention is given to the parties’ competitive positions. While the candidates of the more successful parties have better chances of winning, the more precise specification is the competitive status or electoral prospects of the candidates’ parties in the particular constituencies where they run. Even if the larger parties will, by definition, have more winnable ridings, the strong regional variations in party support mean that all of the parties have areas of strength and weakness.

In the normal course of events, the previous constituency outcome provides the basis for judgments about a party’s prospects in the upcoming election. Certainly, parties recruit and nominate their candidates very much mindful of competitive circumstances, with the expectation of a semblance of a correlation between past performance and the upcoming election result. Of course, it is understood that unexpected elements will have some bearing on that result, but few anticipated the surprise that was the 2011 election. Many Liberal and BQ candidates went down in defeat in constituencies that ordinarily would have been regarded as competitive, if not safe. On the other side, a very large number of NDP nominees ended up being elected in ridings that the party normally had no realistic prospects of winning. Nowhere is this truer than in Quebec, where a significant number of visible minority MPs were elected in constituencies where the party had trailed badly the 2008 winner. What really mattered for these MPs was not the party’s electoral prospects but their simple nomination.

But exactly how many visible minority candidates were nominated by the party and its rivals? And how do the numbers compare with earlier elections? Moreover, what does the information on party competitiveness precisely look like in 2011? Even if electoral margins in 2008 had less relevance for what ultimately happened in 2011, this does not mean that they were completely irrelevant. And, in any event, taking note of competitive placement provides insights about party intentions with regard to promoting visible minorities in electorally viable constituencies. The evidence from previous elections is that the parties, taken as a whole, are as likely to run visible minority candidates as non-visible minority contestants in competitive districts. At the same time, the degree of even-handedness has varied by parties and elections. How does the 2011 election fit in with this characterization?

Answers to these candidate-oriented questions begin with Table 2, which sets out the overall percentage of visible minority candidates nominated by the parties in 2011. Information on the previous three elections is included, again, to provide context. The 2004 contest is an appropriate starting point because it follows the 2003 merger of the Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties, meaning that going forward there is constancy in the major political formations. As well, in 2004 there was a significant ratcheting up in the nomination of visible minorities by the major parties -- up to 9.3%, nearly double what it was in 2000.

It turns out that the percentages have not increased dramatically since. There was a dip to 9% in 2006 and then an increase to 10.1% in 2008; similarly, the underlying raw numbers show the same modest variation -- 93, 90, and 101, respectively. The election of 2011 very much fits into this pattern of little-to-no change: overall, the main parties nominated 97 visible minority candidates or 9.7% of their combined candidate pools. So, at this broad level, the data indicate a situation of essential stasis with regard to the advancement of visible minorities as candidates. Certainly, the modest jump in visible minority MP numbers in 2011 is not simply explained by a corresponding increase in visible minority candidacies.

Table 2 also sets out the separate percentages of visible minorities for the four largest parties, revealing the already-implied variation by party and election, and, altogether little in the way of sustained or common patterns. Over the 2004-2008 period, only the BQ nominated more visible minority candidates each time reaching a level of 10.7%; but in 2011, the figure was only 8%. For the Conservatives and NDP, the percentages drop from 2004 to 2006, then increase in 2008, while the opposite is true of the Liberals. As for 2011, for the most part the percentages for the parties are not greatly different from what they were in 2008.

Though informative, these data yield only limited insights into the parties’ approach to visible minority candidacies because they include repeat contenders. Incumbents are normally renominated so other recruitment and nomination considerations usually matter less. By viewing only new candidates, more significance can be attached to their characteristics, including their ethnoracial origins, at the time of, or prior to, their selection. The pattern for new candidates also has an up and down quality. In 2004, there were 72 first time visible minority candidates who ran for the four largest parties; the number dropped to 53 in 2006, and then increased to 66 in 2008. In 2011, the same parties nominated 65 visible minorities, so the latest election is hardly an exceptional one in this regard.

Table 3 provides relevant party-specific information for the three largest parties.⁴ The first two lines mark the number of visible minorities nominated and the corresponding percentage among all new candidates. For example, in 2004 the Conservatives nominated 25 visible minorities who made up 12% of the party’s new candidates. The third line records what percentage of those visible minority candidates ran in potentially winnable constituencies (where the party, in the previous election, either won or, if they lost, did so by a margin of 10% or less). Along with the fourth line, which reports the corresponding percentage for non-visible minority candidates, this information aids in understanding the extent to which the parties seriously and fairly promoted visible minority candidacies. To continue with the 2004 Conservative example, the party nominated 28% of their visible minority candidates, but 40% of their non-visible minority candidates, in winnable ridings, suggesting a mild bias against the former.