Why Some New Canadian Communities are More Prominent in Politics – New Canadian Media

Richard Landau on some of the reasons behind greater prominence of some communities over others, highlighting the following factors:

• Educational Attainment
• Economic Self-empowerment
• Longevity & Social Engagement

I think he underplays two additional factors:

• Community cohesion around ‘homeland’ issues (e.g., Ukrainian Canadians, Canadian Jews);
• Greater diversity with the community (e.g. among Canadian Muslims with the large number of diverse ethnic origins) or lack thereof (e.g., Haitian Canadians, Italian Canadians).

And of course, as Landau notes correctly, the first-past-the-post system means that communities with higher community concentrations will tend to elect someone from within the community:

Some communities punch far above their weight. For example, if we use political representation as one yardstick, Canada has nearly 500,000 Sikhs (about one and a half per cent) and yet with six MPs, nearly two per cent representation in Parliament. According to the World Sikh Organization of Canada, there are currently 17 elected Sikhs at the provincial and federal levels.

Meanwhile, the close to 1.2 million Muslims in Canada, are vastly under-represented and currently can count amongst themselves only three elected members at the provincial and federal levels along with the Mayor of Calgary.

“Sikhs have been more successful because they tend to concentrate geographically. They are more cohesive as compared to others, especially Muslims. This is not to say there are no internal differences between them.” – Mohammed Ayub Khan

Mohammed Ayub Khan, PhD candidate in the department of political science at McMaster University says Muslims must contend with an immense national linguistic diversity and a lack of effective electoral education in the community. As a result, voting percentages continue to remain low among Muslims.

“Sikhs have been more successful because they tend to concentrate geographically,” Khan says. “They are more cohesive as compared to others, especially Muslims. This is not to say there are no internal differences between them.”

Khan goes on to add that this is exacerbated by an absence of professional media, which can highlight and discuss what the issues are within the Muslim faith community. He also points to negative attitudes, if not outright hostility, from the larger population. He says that while Sikhs come second in terms of unfavourable attitudes, they are able to overcome this due to their geographic concentration.

When a community embraces educational attainment, economic self-empowerment, and to a lesser degree, social engagement with the broad mosaic, it can indeed give itself appropriate representation and a prominent voice in the life of the nation.

Why Some New Canadian Communities are More Prominent in Politics – New Canadian Media – NCM.