Lord’s Prayer to Stay at Queen’s Park

Looks like tradition has won this time.

Where are the CBC MPs and MPPs/MLAs?

There are 305 MPs in the Canadian House of Commons. Two of them, Olivia Chow and Raymond Chan, are of “full” Chinese descent (another, Michael Chong, is half Chinese, half Dutch) and both are not CBC. In fact, both came after the age of 10 (I believe Oliva Chow came to Canada in time to start high school (or the year before) and Raymond Chan came in his late teens). As they came as older kids/young adults, they are not exactly qualified to represent the views of people of Chinese descent born and raised in this country when it comes to diversity. They are more likely to side with the “mainstream” of diversity and multiculturalism from the immigrant point of view.

***Note, there is one Vietnamese-Canadian MP, Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac. She wasn’t born here either. Interesting to note that there are probably twice as many South Asian MPs than Chinese, yet South Asians only slightly outnumber Chinese Canadians in terms of population. Something’s really, really wrong here!***

There are 107 MPPs at Queen’s Park (Member of Provincial Parliament….why is Ontario the only province who uses the term MPP? Other English-speaking provinces use MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly)). Out of the 107, only one, the Hon. Michael Chan, is Chinese Canadian, and he’s also “not from here.”

In British Columbia, there are 78 MLAs and 4 of them are of Chinese descent. BC seems to be a little better, as at least one, Ida Chong, is CBC.

So my question is this: Why aren’t people more CBCs elected or even running? Confidence issues? Or is it because Chinese people just don’t have a “history” of voting (India has been independent for decades) ? If it’s the latter, why on EARTH are there more non-CBCs than CBCs in government?

(I’ll do a separate post on city council at a later date)