National Post (National Edition)
Canadian politics' real glass ceiling
On Jan. 20, history will be made in two ways, when Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice-president of the United States: she will be the first person of colour and the first woman to hold the office. This follows the election of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, in 2008.
In Canada, there has never been a person of colour elected as prime minister. In fact, neither of the two major federal political parties has ever had a person of colour as its leader. Canada has had only one female prime minister, Kim Campbell. And at present, only the New Democratic Party and Green party, both of which would find it challenging ever to form a government, are led by a person of colour.
These facts are noteworthy given Canada's self-image as a bastion of multiculturalism and equal opportunity. Yet it is the United States, which is widely believed to have far greater entrenched inequalities, that has done far better than Canada in achieving at least some diversity at the top echelons of political leadership.
We should acknowledge that below that very top rung, there is considerable diversity both in cabinet and in the House of Commons. Visible minorities make up just under 20 per cent of cabinet and about 15 per cent of the members of Parliament. Given that visible minorities make up about 22 per cent of the country as a whole, according to the 2016 census, this is a fairly accurate representation of the population.
There is also a fair degree of gender parity in cabinet and in the House. Likewise, looking across a wide range of occupations, there is wide representation both of people of colour and of women.
Yet, in Canada, the true levers of policy-making are held by senior bureaucrats, and it is noteworthy that not a single deputy minister in the federal government is a person of colour, with the exception of the Department of Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs. There is also a distinct lack of diversity in other key institutions, such as the Supreme Court and the heads of the Armed Forces.
In other words, there appears to be a glass ceiling for people of colour at the very highest level. This is especially striking given the diversity in just about every other walk of life in Canada.
Look a little deeper, and the invisible barriers exclude not just people of colour but many others who do not form part of the so-called “Laurentian elite,” a term coined in 2011 by journalist John Ibbitson that refers to the mostly Central-Canadian old-stock Anglo-Saxon and “pure-wool” French-Canadian elites, whose power and domination go back to the very founding of Canada, if not before. For example, six of the nine current Supreme Court justices are from Ontario and Quebec, the two provinces that have dominated the bench since Confederation.
Perhaps the roots of the problem are not so much racism, but an entrenched class bias at the highest levels of governance in Canada.
It's a sociological reality that the more superficially egalitarian a society appears to be, the more important subtle but telling differences in social class and background become. In France, it's reflected by being an alumnus of the country's elite higher education institutions. In India, it's a function of being part of the upper caste. Even in communist China, descending from old aristocracy that goes back to imperial times carries considerable cachet. The same is true in European countries that have, or have had, hereditary aristocracies.
Last summer's Black Lives Matter protests in Canada, which spilled over from the U.S., highlighted legitimate concerns about racism. However, importing American cultural wars into the Canadian context obscures the reality that the barrier at the very highest levels in Canada are at least as much about class as about race or other more obvious identity markers.
The progressive left loses the plot when it forgets issues of class, perhaps because, ironically, its greatest proponents are the Laurentian elites themselves, who are blind to their own class privilege. The right, which espouses equality of opportunity rather than equalizing outcomes, must do better in acknowledging the persistence of class bias in Canada, while acknowledging that much progress has been made elsewhere in our society.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi isn't part of the country's old elite, as he belongs to a historically underprivileged community. Yet he swept to power in 2014 on an uplifting message of hope and aspiration and won a big re-election in 2019. Meanwhile, in Canada, the current prime minister's main qualification for office appears to be his surname. This irony would not be lost on Harris, whose mother was born in India, and who spent part of her childhood in Canada.