Since October 3, a figure should shine in the firmament of Quebec: 22%.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Since the Quebec elections, 22% of the elected members of the National Assembly come from diversity (thus are not of French, British or Aboriginal origin). It is difficult to determine the equivalent percentage in the general population, the identities at Statistics Canada are multiple, however it is clear that these 22% of people from diversity are greater than or equal to their weight in the population1.
But there is more specific still. If we take only members from visible minorities, they are 12% to sit in the Assembly, a proportion similar to their presence in the population (12.6%)2. It’s a record.
Explanation: the difference between the 22% of elected members of the National Assembly “from diversity” and the 12% of elected members from “visible minorities” are made up of elected members from, for example, Italy or of Armenia, which researchers like Frédéric Castel of UQAM include in the diversity, but which are not considered “visible”.
While visible minorities represent a little less than a third of the population of Montreal, they now represent 37% of the city’s elected members of the National Assembly. Another record.
These data do not include Kateri Champagne Jourdain, Innu from the Uashat mak Mani-utenam community, the first Aboriginal woman elected in Quebec.
All parties have taken seriously the issue of the diversity of our political representation. Among the 880 candidates registered with Élections Québec, 143 came from diversity, or more than 16% of all candidates.
For the presence of women too, we broke our last record and are now a hair’s breadth from exact parity (46%). In this regard, the Quebec state is at the 14e place in the world and Canada, at the 61e.
It will be remembered that, during the last municipal elections, the number of women elected had also increased as much for councilors as for mayors. Mayoresses now run five of the ten largest cities in Quebec — here too, Quebec is leading the way.
Do you know of another state in the Americas whose elected officials are so representative? Not me.
The next time federal elected officials try to give us lessons in openness, we can tell them to focus on what is happening at home, in the House of Commons. In Ottawa, there are only 30.5% women MPs. MPs from diverse backgrounds occupy only 14.8% of the seats, even though they account for 22.4% of the Canadian population.
It is even worse for black elected officials, who represent only 1.5% of elected officials against 3.5% of the population, while in Quebec 4% of elected officials are black for 3.9% of the population.
This success of Quebec in terms of representativeness is all the more interesting since political integration is probably one of the last stages, if not the last, of integration into a society. Immigrants must first settle down, find work, integrate their children into school, build a support network, take part in the sporting, cultural or social life of their neighborhood, etc.
Political engagement comes pretty far down her list of priorities, but today we are there.
Talleyrand said that anything excessive is insignificant. There is a lot of insignificance in the debates on immigration, diversity, racism, on all sides. It often feels like a schoolyard.
However, on October 3, Quebecers voted serenely, for all sorts of political reasons and for all sorts of candidates: men, women, people of color, people with names that are exotic compared to those of the majority. By giving themselves such a representative national assembly, probably one of the most representative in the world, they have given many nations, many people, a great lesson in openness and democracy.
Me, I’m proud of it.