Journal Article

Minorities and elections in Canada's fourth party system: macro and micro constraints and opportunities

Tossutti, Livianna S, Najem, Tom Pierre

2002

Overview

Yet this explanation does not account for why other parties have kept pace with the Liberals' recruitment of ethnic candidates. The NDP's success may be attributed to its programmatic appeal and/or to the incentives it has implemented to boost visible minority candidacies, but the Reform/Alliance's comparable performance is less intuitive, given the party's opposition to Official Multiculturalism and its negative image in many ethno-cultural communities. We propose that while Reform/Alliance has achieved comparable numerical representation of minorities, the neoliberal individualistic principles it expounds may attract individuals who reject or downplay a close identification with their ethnic collectives. The validity of this hypothesis will be ascertained during the elite interviews which were referred to earlier. The Conservatives' image as a white, Anglo-Saxon party remains unchanged in the fourth party system. Despite their long history, they continue to lag behind more recently-established parties such as the NDP and Reform/Alliance in the area of minority candidate recruitment. Reasons for this cannot be attributed to the lack of appeal which the Conservative program might have for ethnic minorities, but are more likely linked to its historical failure to convey an image of openness to these communities through its organizational structure. Despite the overtures of the Mulroney government toward ethno-cultural communities, including the creation of the first-ever Department of Multiculturalism in 1988 and official apologies for the internment and property expropriation of members of the Japanese and Italian Canadian communities during World War II, these efforts have not diversified the party's appeal under the subsequent leadership of Campbell, Charest or Clark. Ethnic identity is a fundamental organizing principle in the daily lives of Canadians, as few respondents deny such cultural labels in national censuses (Herberg, 1989, p. 22) In Canada, the terms \"ethnic\" or \"ethno-cultural minorities\" denote those individuals who do not trace their origins to the Aboriginal, French and British founding groups. They also exclude the growing number of individuals reporting a \"Canadian\" ethnic identification as a result of changes in the format of the ethnic origin question in the national census. Pendakur and Henneby's analysis of Canadian responses found they were primarily from people who would have reported either British or French origins (1998). Our definition of visible minorities is adapted from the Statistics Canada classification to include Blacks, South Asians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Southeast Asians, Filipinos, Arab/West Asians and Latin Americans (http://www.statcan.ca). References to minorities in this paper include both ethnic and visible minority subjects. The 1996 census found that about 27 percent (7.6 million) of all Canadians reported single or multiple ancestries that were neither Aboriginal, nor French, nor British, nor Canadian, and that 11.2 percent belonged to visible minority groups. If the more than 2.6 million Canadians who reported mixed, \"British-other\" and \"French-other\" origins are added to that total, 36.1 percent of the population identified solely or equally with non-founding groups (Statistics Canada, 2000; http://www.statcan.ca).

• Publisher: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association,Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal
• Subject: Adjustment / Alliances / Apologies / Asian Americans / Asian cultural groups / Asians / Biculturalism / Black people / Canada / Candidates / Censuses / Chinese languages / Classification / Collectives / Community / Competition / Cultural Background / Cultural identity / Cultural Pluralism / Data collection / Demographic aspects / Elections / Ethnic groups / Ethnic identity / Ethnicity / European cultural groups / Explanation / Expropriation / Founding / French language / Geographic Location / Government / Government and politics / Identification / Identification (Psychology) / Incentives / Indigenous peoples / Individual Characteristics / International / Internment / Japanese language / Latin American cultural groups / Leadership / Minorities / Minority & ethnic groups / Minority groups / Multiculturalism & pluralism / Neoliberalism / Openness / Organizational structure / Political activities / Political activity / Political aspects / Political parties / Politicians / Politics / Power Structure / Protestants / Public officials / Race relations / Racial Identification / Recruitment / Reforms / Respondents / Search Committees (Personnel) / South Asian cultural groups / Southeast Asian cultural groups / Statistical Analysis / Statistics / World War II