Canada is a country known for its rich diversity in terms of culture with its citizen embracing diversified cultural, religious, economic and social practices. There also exist a number of races in Canada yet notable is the prevalence of the Caucasoid members of parliament and other government officials in Canada.
This may be viewed by some as a weakness in the representation of the needs that the different groups of people may have even though the government of Canada has taken great measures to adequately serve its citizens.One of the reasons cited in the opposition of the ‘discriminatory’ representation is that the different categories of people found in Canada have different needs which can only be fully apprehended by members of those groups due to their first hand experience in the problems faced by these groups. At the same time others feel that a Canadian national is one everywhere in Canada hence he/she is capable of representing other Canadians despite his/her cultural or racial background.In this paper I will argue against the debate; Representation in parliament should not mirror Canada’s social diversity. I will demonstrate my argument by examining the following things; undefined categories, poor representation, nature of representation, social fragmentation, Mixed races Representing all the groups found in Canada proportionally may prove tricky due to the problem of having to determine the races of those individuals whose races are mixed who may need to be represented in the parliament.Similarly, the disadvantaged groups of citizens may share in this problem thus bringing in the issue of categorizing the people into their exact groups to allow equal representation (Clarke 1999pp17-21).
Poor representation The issue of proper representation may be compromised if the insistence on proportional representation persists. This is so because, in striving to bring about equal representation of all the groups in parliament, a great possibility of overlooking the most qualified candidates for the position may be overlooked in favor of just anyone who can fill the position to represent the group in question(Nossal 2006 pp22-27).Judging from the complicated relationship of the various aspects of social living, to have all the relationships represented would require an extremely bloated parliament which may just as well encourage individual as opposed to group representation. This in other words is challenging the view that an individual sharing traits with a group of people automatically means that such an individual is best suited to represent that group (McRoberts 1997pp36-38) The question of whether any particular candidate really wholly represents the group from where he/she comes from can arise.
It is not really true that the members of parliament totally represents the groups they are meant to present in public due to the lesser variations that exists within the group e. g. a candidate may be an aboriginal Indian but with a totally different economic status than his/her neighbors. Nature of parliamentary representation The nature of representation of the various groups in parliament would be another huddle that proportional representation would have to get over to be really effective.In the sense that those matters presented and discussed in the parliament are general so as to include as large a number of individuals affected by it as possible, then it would turn chaotic if the such matters would have to narrow down to all the minor groups within the larger one affected by such a problem(Presthus 2003pp54-56) Social fragmentation There also exists the danger of dividing the public along social lines e.
g. into ethnic groups and hence concentrate more on group identification and loyalty at the expense of national unity.This has the end result of fragmenting the society and causing distrust, aggression, and segregation of the people as the public itself would feel more indebted to their own social groups than other social groups within the nation(Clarke 1999pp20-23).. This is to mean that for the sake of unity within the Canadian territories, there is need to allow representation based on a patriotic as opposed to social standing perception which posses the potential of dividing the nation into disunited categories (Panitch 1999 pp20-23).Proper representation Taking that the most important thing is the parliamentary representation itself as opposed to who does it in terms of from which social background the representative is coming from, then it can only be sensible to allow the most suited individual to undertake the task as opposed to someone who may not be as qualified but whose social background is similar to the people he/she is meant to represent (Nossal 2006 p21).
Voting in an unqualified individual with a similar background as one and denying the qualified individual from representing a group could have a similar effect of non representation (Panitch 1999 pp19-21). Looking at the other side of the debate, it has been argued that the best representation is only possible when made by an individual who has taken part in the problems of the group he/she is representing because he/she has a greater understanding than someone who has never undergone through such an experience ( McRoberts 1997pp39-41).This would mean that the representation made is more representative of such a group than the one made by someone who is detached e. g.
a Moslem possess a better understanding of the Islam faith than a Christian. The danger of overlooking or ignoring the minority is high when some of the groups are not represented or have a lesser representation in parliament. If this happens, then the ignored group of people is never felt in the government and their problems may never be addressed.Thus to avoid this, equal representation of all the social groups is really important (Presthus 2003pp53-54) Conclusion From the fact that social living is highly complicated with a high degree of intermingling in the way in which the society orders its various social concepts, it would really prove problematic if not impossible to satisfy the needs of all the groups within Canada.It is not possible to satisfy each and every individual within a group to be represented in parliament. From the above argument it is quite clear that professionalism overshadows mere representation.
The society should feel more content with quality representation by an able legislator either from ones own group or not for as long as the representation is sufficient enough to assist in voicing the concerns of the public in general.Thus, I believe that the ability factor should be given greater consideration than proportional representation when looking for legislators for the parliamentary seats. Considering too that all the Canadian citizens are considered equal politically, then any qualified individual should be allowed to represent the needs of their constituencies. In conclusion then, performance in representation is the most important thing than proportional representation.
