It’s easy as pie to find information about the number of women sitting as members of the 44th Canadian Parliament, especially those who ran as candidates for the victorious Liberal Party. Depending on the website you browse, commentators are either delighted so many of the fairer sex were elected last September or outraged that more women were not. So far as I know, the question that so perplexed US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her hearings (“Can you define the word ‘woman’?”) has not been raised to any of these ladies, let alone have they been asked to nail down their preferred gender identity.
We Canadians may have bought into the Social Justice program hook, line and sinker, but the websites that celebrate or lament the sexes of our MPs are still running a little behind.
Women and Hyphenated-Canadians
In any case, 36% of the Liberal MPs are women (57 of 168 total). It should also probably be noted that we are currently being governed by a coalition of the Liberals and NDP, so as to ensure Prime Minister Trudeau continues to be able to govern as he sees fit even with a minority. For the record, 44% of the NDP MPs currently sitting are women (11 of 25).
Interestingly, it is a lot harder to find information on the ethnicity of Canadian MPs from Canadian news sources, and it is also becoming increasingly difficult to find easily accessible public information about their place of birth and how long they have been Canadian citizens. However, the UK Guardian has no such compunctions, noting that the previous Canadian parliament was Canada’s “most diverse ever” and celebrating the ten Muslims elected (also a record). All the same, a little laborious grunt work looking into the MPs one by one turns up no less than 40 Liberal MPs (of 158) who declare themselves a little bit loyalty-conflicted by using self-descriptives like “Chilean-Canadian”, “Pakistani-Canadian” or some other hyphenated-Canadian. Some proudly note they are the first-ever MPs so designated. That’s 25% of the sitting Liberal members who are of foreign descent, many of whom were not born in Canada.
Naturally, some of the hyphenated-Canadians are also women, but factoring in the overlap leaves us with a total of 51% of the ruling Liberal Party MPs who are either women or hyphenated-Canadian men. That’s a majority, folks.
For the Record
Let me note for the record that I have nothing at all against either women or people born in other countries, but you may remember that the Bible has a thing or two to say about what it meant for the nation of Israel to be ruled over by women and foreigners. It was not anything for an Israelite to congratulate himself about. They were two glaring indications that the nation was under the judgment of God.
Canada is not ancient Israel, but that is officially where we are at with the commencement of its 44th Parliament. Perhaps it means nothing at all. Then again, perhaps the voices of the 83,576 children Canadians aborted in 2019 have reached the throne of grace.
A third sign of a nation under judgment is being ruled over by “children”. The Liberal Party’s “bold plan to fight climate change” is pretty much straight out of a Greta Thunberg speech.
Born in 2003. Maybe that qualifies.
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Photo of Jagmeet Singh by ideas_dept on Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
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