An Inclusive Democracy Requires Diverse Voices

By Susan Franceschet

Alberta’s new cabinet looks a lot like the reductive stereotypes often heard about the province, namely, that it’s populated mostly by rural, white men. Premier Danielle Smith’s team is in stark contrast to what many other leaders – both in Canada and around the world – are doing to acknowledge that an inclusive democracy requires diverse voices.

Although white men represent less than half of Alberta’s population, they now hold 80 per cent of cabinet spots. That gives them higher pay, greater visibility and more policy influence.

Smith selected just four women for her 25-member cabinet, dropping below her UCP predecessor and far below NDP leader Rachel Notley who consistently ensured that half her Ministers were women when she was Premier.

Alberta’s governing team looks spectacularly unrepresentative precisely because the UCP caucus – and the candidates who ran for the party – are likewise unrepresentative of the province’s citizens.

Women make up less than a quarter of the party’s MLAs but over half the province. Visible minorities are less than 10 per cent of the UCP caucus despite comprising almost a quarter of Alberta’s population.

We shouldn’t be too surprised by the homogeneity of Smith’s new team. Getting chosen for cabinet requires winning a seat in the legislature. Although lots of women were elected on May 29 – an historic high of 38 per cent, in fact – most sit on the NDP bench.

Well over half of opposition MLAs are women. But convention dictates that in Canada, leaders choose ministers from their own party.

Even if Smith rewarded each of the 10 women elected under the UCP banner with a cabinet spot, she’d still fall short of parity. You can’t assemble a gender-equal government from such a skewed group of elected MLAs.

If we want representative governing teams, then we need mechanisms that compel parties to nominate an inclusive and balanced slate of candidates.

Unlike a lot of countries, Canada has no legislation that requires or even incentivizes political parties to nominate more women. Several European countries, including Belgium, Ireland and France mandate that women make up half of candidates. Parties that fail to do so face penalties.

Other regions are even more advanced on gender parity – in Latin America, all but one country has a gender quota law.

In Canada, however, the proportion of women elected depends on which party wins power. The inclusion gap between Alberta’s two main parties is mirrored in other provinces and in the House of Commons. Right-leaning parties – no matter their name – tend to include far fewer elected women than centre or left-leaning parties.

In British Columbia, women make up almost half of the legislature. But the gap between the parties is stark, with the governing NDP electing women to over half of its seats while the right-of-centre Liberals elected women to fewer than a quarter of seats.

Party gaps in women’s inclusion are large in Ontario and the House of Commons too. Among Ontario’s governing Conservatives, women hold just under 30 per cent of seats, compared to over 60 per cent in the NDP. Women’s share of Liberal seats federally is twice as large as their share of seats in the Conservative party.

If Canada followed the model of other countries and adopted gender quotas for candidates, party gaps in inclusion would greatly diminish. The ideological diversity among elected women would improve because all parties would have to nominate more women candidates. Women would be better represented across the party spectrum.

And with more women in party caucuses, all leaders could appoint gender parity cabinets. That way, women would have an equal shot at influencing public policy and the direction of government.

Having a representative democracy – a Parliament that reflects the people it serves – should be a goal across the political spectrum. Other countries have made it a priority– why can’t we?

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About Susan Franceschet

Susan Franceschet is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary.

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This post was previously published on quoimedia.com and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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