Presented at the Third International Metropolis Conference

Zichron Yaacov, Israel

November 30-December 3, 1998

John Biles

The author would like to thank: all the elected representatives who took the time to complete the survey; Ravi Pendakur, Fernando Mata and John Valentine for their help with data; Michael Smith and Rouba Dabboussy for sharing their knowledge on how the local governments respond to diversity; Mary-Lee Mulholland for her patience and her advice; Jeff Bullard for his encouragement and allowing me the time to pursue this project; Kass Sunderji for his help over coffee; Myer Siemiatycki for not killing me for my disrespectful treatment of deadlines; and, of course, Emma who never gets the time she deserves.

This paper does not reflect the views of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Ottawa-Carleton: The Basics
3. Ottawa-Carleton: The Diversity Angles

3.1 Immigrant Diversity

3.2 Ethnic Diversity

3. Visible Minority Communities

5.3 Provincial

5.4 Federal

6.0 Conclusions

6.2 Substantive Participation

6.3 Making the Links

6.4 The Politics of Place

6.5 Identity and Political Participation

Bibliography

Appendix A

1. Largest/Fastest Growing Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas

4.5 Official Language Group of Responding Representatives

In their seminal book, EthniCity: Geographic Perspectives on Ethnic Change in Modern Cities, geographers Roseman, Laux, and Thieme coined the term "EthniCity." They use the term to describe the "many urban areas in the developed world (which) are experiencing ethnic diversity in their populations that is of recent origin. . . . along with cities that have a longer history of ethnic diversity, contain(ing) varieties of peoples having distinctive cultures and origins" (Roseman, Laux and Thieme 1996: xvii). In this paper I will argue that Ottawa-Carleton is an EthniCity in early adolescence. This status is a vital contemporary policy concern because fuelled by close to a quarter of a million immigrants arriving in Canada every year many Canadian cities are becoming diverse for the first time (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 1997: 1). Unfortunately, smaller urban centres such as Ottawa-Carleton are usually left out of the research conducted on urban diversity in Canada. The majority of research is conducted in the three largest immigrant centres: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

I intend to make a case for studying smaller cities on the cusp of immigration fuelled population explosions. Further, I will argue that the importance of studying urban areas early in their evolution towards supra-diverse populations allows policy makers at all levels to create and implement policies which can alleviate the worst growing pains experienced by cities' whose populations have already arrived at mature diversity. This view appears to be shared by the Government of Canada. The 10^th Annual Report on the Operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act observed that, "the successes of Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver over the last three decades must now be adapted to suit the needs of smaller cities and towns across Canada which are facing increasingly diverse populations" (Department of Canadian Heritage, 1999: 5).

This paper marks the first stage of a much broader project which will examine the political participation of selected ethnocultural communities in the Ottawa-Carleton region. This project is an initiative designed to inject research findings into a fast changing public policy environment vis-à-vis municipalities and governmental responses to increased diversity. For example, the Ontario Conservative Government under Mike Harris has moved to sharply reduce the number of politicians at both the provincial and municipal levels. To reduce the number of elected officials and increase accountability to the electorate is counter intuitive. However, to move in this direction without understanding its possible impact on the diverse communities resident in Ontario, threatens the democratic structures upon which Canada's governance system is based and has long depended (Biles and Panousos 1999).

As a natural starting point I will outline the basic demographic and geographic realities of the Ottawa-Carleton region. I will then turn to the extent to which immigrants, women, ethnocultural and visible minority communities are represented within the formal political structure of the four tiers of government in the Ottawa-Carleton region. This will lead to an examination of policies and initiatives each tier of government has put in place to ensure that all inhabitants have an opportunity to participate fully in the formal political structures of their communities. I will focus on the municipal and regional levels of government because the provincial and federal levels have been covered extensively elsewhere (Jaworsky 1979, Schiffer-Graham 1988, Fleras and Elliott 1992, Pal 1993, Joshee 1995, Joshee 1996, Biles 1997, Canadian Heritage 1999).

Based on these three preliminary sections it is possible to draw some broad conclusions about participation in the region and barriers to participation. These conclusions lead to suggestions for future study and areas where international comparisons would illuminate best practices.

Canada's capital, Ottawa, sits astride the border between Canada's two largest provinces - Ontario and Quebec. It is the fourth largest metropolis in Canada with the fifth largest growth rate according to the 1996 census.

It is important to observe that this paper is about the Ottawa-Carleton region as denoted by the boundaries of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. This regional tier of government covers eleven municipalities with a territory roughly analogous to the Ontario portion of the Ottawa-Hull Census Metropolitan Area established by Statistics Canada for use in the national census. Wherever possible demographic data drawn from the census is built from the compilation of the eleven municipalities. Where this has not proven possible, the data is drawn from the Ontario portion of the Ottawa-Hull census metropolitan area.

The Ottawa-Carleton Region has four primary tiers of government - federal, provincial, regional, and municipal. As the national capital it also has a great deal of land controlled by the National Capital Commission, but as that body is not elected by the population at large, it is outside of the scope of this paper.

Each tier of government is mandated to accomplish different goals with the majority of the macro level goals addressed by the larger orders of government and the micro goals and service delivery primarily provided by the lower tiers of government. The division of labour is not static, indeed, it is constantly evolving to meet the changing needs of the populace. At present the entire governmental system is engaged in a broad group of activities covered by the rubric of disentanglement or "down sizing."

The division of labour between the federal and provincial tiers are ruled by the Canadian constitution, most notably provincial responsibility for education. The federal government has been involved in creating and maintaining Canada's famed social safety net since the end of the Second World War. This role has primarily been based upon ensuring national standards by means of providing or withholding financial resources. Increasingly, however, the federal government has been withdrawing from national programs and has been handing responsibility to the provinces. An excellent example of this is the movement by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to get provinces to take more responsibility for immigration policy (Garcea 1994).

Provincial governments across Canada have been as focused on reducing expenditures as the federal government. To control the costs of social programs, the provinces have decreased service levels, or have handed off responsibility to municipalities. As a result, municipalities have been forced to deliver more services with less resources transferred from the provinces.

On a more positive note, however, just as the devolution of responsibilities to the provinces has strengthened provincial governments, municipal governments have been gathering strength from the responsibilities delegated by the provinces. This growth in power is tempered by one important difference between the provincial and municipal tiers of government: provincial governments are established by the constitution whereas municipalities are creatures legislated into existence by provincial governments. This fundamental difference is well illustrated by the forced amalgamation of many Toronto area cities into the "MegaCity" of Toronto in 1997-98 despite widespread opposition from the citizenry (Siemiatycki and Isin 1998).

Regional governments are an interesting upper tier of local government. They are halfway between "megacities" and independent municipalities. This two tier system of local governance allows for the rationalization of services where there are economic benefits to doing so, and retains the openness and accessibility expected from a local government.

Regional government in Ottawa-Carleton is a relatively new phenomenon. It was introduced in 1969 to rationalize resource expenditure on projects of concern to the eleven municipalities in the region. These areas include infrastructure and public transport. Originally it was a council of municipal mayors with only the chair directly elected by the public. However, in an era focused on increased accountability, all members of council have been elected directly by the public since 1989.

At present, the region is primarily responsible for public infrastructure, most notably for the purposes of this paper, for public housing and public transport. In addition, it has responsibility for transportation, emergency services, the environment, and planning and development for the region.

Services are usually provided by the government on the lowest rung of the hierarchy pyramid: municipal government. This is certainly true in the case of Ottawa-Carleton. The eleven municipalities (Ottawa, Nepean, Gloucester, Kanata, Cumberland, Goulbourn, Vanier, West Carleton, Osgoode, Rideau, and Rockliffe Park) deliver the majority of services. Consequently, it is on this level which I wish to focus. I assert that the loss of municipal level political representation endangers the flexibility of the Canadian political system.

[MAP]

From the map of the region it can be seen that the eleven municipalities are clustered around the largest municipality, the City of Ottawa with a population of 318,990. The other municipalities range in size from Nepean with a population of 114, 225 to tiny Rockliffe Park with just 11,995 residents.

Since seventy-five percent of the population resides in the City of Ottawa and the ring cities of Gloucester and Nepean, they will be the primary area of concern in this paper.

Immigration is an excellent indicator of growing diversity in Canada. However, given the fluctuations in immigration in terms of numbers of immigrants and countries of origin over more than a century, it is widely accepted that it is necessary to consider both immigration per se and ethnocultural diversity as reported by individual Canadians. In addition, growing numbers of visible minorities add another aspect of diversity to the picture. This complex intermingling of diverse peoples in Canada is vital to understanding the Canadian public policy set which surrounds diversity.

Unfortunately, policy formation and research on specific aspects of diversity is frequently divided and little cross fertilization takes place. This is especially true between work on ethnicity and immigration, even though as political scientist, Jerome Black, notes, "questions about immigrants and politics naturally overlap with questions about ethnicity. It is neither possible, nor desireable to evaluate the political activity of immigrants without taking into account the relevance of their diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds" (Black 1998, 15).

As Table 3.1 illustrates the three largest cities, Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester have eighty-five percent of the immigrants in the region and seventy-five percent of the total population. The rapidly increasing population is a harbinger of change in the Ottawa-Carleton region in terms of demographics, but also in terms of policies for service delivery and citizen engagement. Those communities which are either the largest or the fastest growing will obviously exert the greatest demographic pressure on policy development.

The largest communities are likely to have influence due to the length of time roots have had to develop whereas the fastest growing and most recent communities are likely to exert influence on the basis of need. While it is dangerous to discount the social and human capital of recent arrivals, especially given Canada's immigrant selection policy, it is important to note the impact of barriers faced by immigrants when they arrive in Canada. It is also vital to remember that recent arrivals are a combination of refugees, family class immigrants, and those who have been selected via entrepreneurial programs. In short, immigrants are not a homogeneous group and consequently have different issues and concerns depending upon a vast array of socio-economic and cultural variables.

Table 3.2 reveals a number of interesting facts. In the first instance, the dramatic difference between the percentage of recent arrivals from European source countries an those of source countries from the rest of the world. The percentage of recent arrivals from Europe is nearly five from Germany, nearly four from the United Kingdom, two from Portugal, and too low to be recorded by Statistics Canada for Italy and the Netherlands. This compares to seventy seven percent for the Somali community, over sixty percent for the communities from the former Yugoslavia, over forty seven percent for the Chinese community and forty three percent for the Filipino community.

Given the sizes of these populations the percentages of new arrivals could be misleading. However, the vast disparity remains even when absolute numbers of recent arrivals are compared. Eight hundred thirty five new immigrants arrived from the United Kingdom between 1991 and 1996, two hundred forty from Germany and forty five from Portugal. This compares to three thousand two hundred eighty five from Somalia, three thousand one hundred fifteen from China, and two thousand five hundred fifty from Lebanon.

Importantly the two largest communities with the largest numbers of new arrivals, Somali and former Yugoslavia are disproportionately composed of refugees fleeing conflicts. This can be expected to translate into a much higher demand for mental health services among others, than would be the norm for immigrants arriving under an entrepreneurial program.

While interesting from the level of regional government, table 3.2 does not indicate which communities may require the most attention at the municipal level. As there are no recent immigrant communities reaching a critical mass of one thousand people outside of the core cities of Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester, the smaller eight municipalities will not be covered in any detail here.

Since the largest percentage of immigrants settle in the City of Ottawa, it is not surprising that table 3.3 shows that most of the immigrant communities represented in the region are primarily located in the City of Ottawa. The largest communities are the Lebanese, Italian, Chinese, American, Somali, Vietnamese, Polish, Indian, Jamaican and German communities. Obviously, many of these communities have long histories in the Ottawa area and it could be anticipated that while recent immigrants from some of these source countries would require some services, it is unlikely that they would require the same services as some of the communities which have little history in Canada.

Consequently, the communities most likely to require new and/or different services from the City of Ottawa are communities which have high percentages of recent arrivals. These would include the Somali, Yugoslavian, Chinese, Filipino, El Salvadorian, Haitian, Iranian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Hong Kong, Jamaican and Indian communities.

While Nepean and Gloucester have significantly less immigrants than the City of Ottawa, they each have several significant communities. The three immigrant communities with the most recent arrivals in the City of Nepean are the Polish, Indian, and Lebanese communities - communities which are also significant in the City of Ottawa. It would, therefore, be expected that Nepean municipal services would be targeted at these communities, and would, perhaps, cooperate with similar services in the City of Ottawa.

The City of Gloucester has only two immigrant communities of more than one thousand people: the United Kingdom and Lebanon. As mentioned earlier, immigrants from the United Kingdom, with their well established communities in the region, are likely to seek government services for the same reasons and at the same rate as the native born population. On the other hand, given the relatively shallow roots of the Lebanese community, we would expect the City of Gloucester to be extending its outreach programs to the Lebanese community.

Incidentally, the Lebanese community is the only community which has significant recently arrived populations in all three core cities. Given the size of the Lebanese community in several municipalities, it should not be surprising that it has the highest profile of any recently arrived community in Ottawa-Carleton. It boasts the only federal Member of Parliament from these communities, and has gained recognition via the annual regional Leborama festival.

Having examined the primary engine driving the diversity in Ottawa-Carleton, it is time to turn to the deeper diversity in the region: ethnic communities. The population of Ottawa-Carleton is quite diverse in terms of ethnic background although it pales before the mature diversity of Canada's, and perhaps the world's, most diverse city - Toronto (Lastman 1998). Over one hundred ethnic origins are represented in Ottawa-Carleton with fifty nine ethnic communities in the region surpassing a critical mass of one thousand people.

Like the recently arrived immigrant communities, most ethnic communities are spread fairly evenly over the core municipalities of Ottawa, Gloucester and Nepean, with the highest proportion residing within the City of Ottawa. The largest communities reporting their ethnic origin on the census are English (29%), Canadian (27%), French (25%), Irish (22%), Scottish (20%), German (8%), Italian (4%), Chinese, Dutch and Polish (each 3%), Lebanese, United Kingdom, North American Indian and Welsh (each 2%). (See Appendix A)

As seen with immigrant communities, ethnic communities which are rapidly expanding, should also receive increased governmental attention. Using the ethnicity data from the 1991 and 1996 censuses Table 3.6 illustrates the rapid increase in population among some ethnic communities in Ottawa-Carleton.

The most striking figures on this table are those illustrating the explosion of "Canadian" as a response on the 1996 Census and the dramatic decrease in those reporting French origins. Equally important is the more than doubling of the Somali and Haitian communities and the rate of increase in the Filipino, Iranian and Vietnamese communities versus the six percent rate of growth among the entire population in the region.

There are clear policy ramifications for such rapid population growth in specific communities. While at present these communities only comprise ten percent of the total population, their rapid growth rates suggest a possible rapid rise in their demographic weight. This is very much in keeping with demographic projections for Canada as a whole. Chinese Canadians, due to their growth rate, are expected to be the fourth largest ethnic group in Canada by 2006 (Canadian Heritage 1999; 4).

Table 3.7 shows the distribution of ethnic communities across the three core cities of Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester. Close to half of all members of the largest ethnic communities in the region reside in the City of Ottawa, with the second largest grouping in Nepean and the smallest communities in Gloucester - the same pattern as the immigrant communities.

Notable exceptions to this pattern include the large Haitian and Portuguese populations in Gloucester.

While there is a great deal of confluence among immigrant, ethnic, and visible minority communities in Canada today, and the barriers they face, there are still valid reasons to differentiate these three aspects of Canadian diversity. In the first instance, there are significant barriers facing each group which are unique, or at least disproportionately affect one or more groups. In the second, there are policy implications for each tier of government as their policies have frequently been targeted at a specific group.

As table 3.8 shows, the visible minority population in Ottawa-Carleton is slightly higher than the national average of eleven percent, but it is significantly lower than the thirty two percent of Toronto residents who self identify as a visible minority or the thirty one percent in Vancouver (Mitchell 1998). That being said, as the growth rates illustrated by table 3.6 revealed, the visible minority population in Ottawa-Carleton is increasing rapidly. The governments in the region should be developing policies now to help address the barriers visible minorities have encountered in Toronto and Vancouver. At the very least, they should be developing connections with these communities so that tensions may be tackled before they escalate.

Many studies looking at immigration and studies fail to take into account the already existing complex diversities of what is popularly, although sadly too often incorrectly, referred to as the "host" society. In Ottawa-Carleton two further diversities which need to be examined include the bilingual (English-French) nature of the area and the sizeable population of urban Aboriginal peoples.

Roughly similar size segments of the region's population speak French or are members of a visible minority community. However, the visible minority communities are more evenly spread over the three ring cities than the francophone community. In addition, francophone's are heavily concentrated in the City of Vanier. In fact, 51% of the City of Vanier's population belongs to the francophone community and only 11% belong to visible minority communities.. As geographic proximity frequently leads to political power, we should expect that there will be more francophone representatives in Vanier than in the other areas of the region.

Another key aspect of diversity in the Ottawa-Carleton region is the urban Aboriginal community. While small in comparison to Winnipeg and Regina, they are an important part of the socio-cultural composition of the population.

Much like the other diverse communities examined, the largest concentrations of Aboriginal peoples are in the three ring cities. The one deviation from the norm is the comparatively large Inuit population in Vanier. While only 50 and 35 respondents on the Census selected Inuit as their ethnic origin in Nepean and Gloucester, twice that number selected Inuit in Vanier.

Having examined the demographics of the residents of the Ottawa-Carleton region, I will now turn to how that diversity is formally reflected in the four tiers of government in the region.

The Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1988) is based upon the belief that political participation by all members of a society is considered to be of fundamental importance to the legitimacy of a democracy. Indeed, it states that the Government of Canada will, "promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society and assist them in the elimination of any barriers to that participation." Further, it commits the Government of Canada to, "encourage and assist the social, cultural, economic and political institutions of Canada to be both respectful and inclusive of Canada's multicultural character."

These policy goals are substantiated by a body of literature which suggests that, "minorities that are continually denied access to power will feel excluded and discriminated against and will lose their allegiance to the regime" (Seidle 1994, Lijphart in Philips 1995, Preston 1997, Stasiulis 1997, Kymlicka 1998, Tremblay 1998, Black 1998, Siemiatycki and Isin 1998]. Given the importance of power sharing to the health of the democratic system of governance, I decided to examine the level of access to political power available to immigrant, ethnic and visible minority communities in Ottawa-Carleton. To do so I surveyed all one hundred and two formally elected political representatives in the Ottawa-Carleton Region at all four levels of government in 1998. The survey questionnaire was developed with simplicity in mind to enhance the response rate. It was administered in three waves (e-mail, mail, and fax). It resulted in a response rate of 64% which compares favourably to those conducted by Frizell which garnered 28% and Black which garnered 49% (Black 1997).

This survey was driven by three main considerations. In the first instance, I wished to critically examine the belief that the lowest tiers of government are the most open to diversity [Abu-Laban and Stasiulis 1991].

In the second, the province of Ontario has passed legislation (Bill 81; "The Fewer Politicians Act") to reduce the number of representatives in the provincial parliament from one hundred thirty to one hundred and three, and is pursuing an aggressive amalgamation of municipalities with accompanying loss of representatives.

In addition, other significant changes unfolding in Ontario and other Canadian provinces endanger the democratic process. These changes include the increased spending limits, shortening the time from the dropping of the election writ to election day, eliminating other parties, and establishing a permanent registered voters list. Each of these changes privilege parties supported by wealthy, well-established citizens who understand the intricacies of the electoral process.

The rejection of the directions suggested by the Lortie Commission came at the same time as the decimation of interest groups and the downscaling of government efforts at public consultations. All these changes are likely to have negative effects on the representativeness of governments and their legitimacy.

As a result of these changes, the 1997 municipal elections may have been the last elections for which two levels of local government are elected. If the hypothesis of Stasiulis and Abu-Laban is correct (municipal governments are the most open to diversity), the diversity of elected representatives in the 2000 elections should decrease. In this sense, this survey and paper lay down a base line against which future comparisons can be made. A longitudinal survey of the formal representation of diversity in the political process should yield a firmer understanding of how diverse communities become involved in the formal political process. The relative youth of the Chinese, Lebanese, Somali, Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Haitian, Filipino, Iranian and Korean communities will provide a window into the integration process at work.

Several aspects of diversity can be considered from this data, including gender, ethnicity, place of birth, mother tongue, previous occupation, motivation for running for office, age, and educational background. For the purposes of this paper only gender, place of birth and ethnicity have been analysed. Numbers are too small to make much sense of cross tabulating these three variable, so they have been left as univariates in this paper.

The participation of immigrants in the political process is not well understood. As Black notes, "The foreign born are one particularly important group that has not received much consideration from scholars interested in examining political activity. Indeed, relative to the enormity of the general participation literature that has been produced and its significant segments devoted to other social categories, the limited attention paid to immigrants is striking" (Black 1998, 13).

Immigration figures for the representatives are derived from a question on the survey instrument on place of birth. While there is not an exact correlation between immigrant status and place of birth, place of birth is frequently used as an acceptable proxy.

Twenty-five percent of the population of Ottawa-Carleton consists of immigrants, and twelve and a half percent of the elected representatives are immigrants. While this is quite low at first glance, immigrants cannot run for public office until they have met citizenship requirements, it takes time to build a base for an election campaign, and generally speaking recent immigrants have other immediate priorities for their first years in their new country. Geographic concentration is also important for political participation. Consequently the level of immigrants in the pool of elected representatives in Ottawa-Carleton is within the Canadian norm [Black 1998, Preston 1997, Siemiatycki and Isin 1998].

It comes as no surprise that the majority of foreign born elected officials in Ottawa-Carleton come primarily from "traditional" countries of immigration. They, for the most part, are members of well-established communities, and they are not visibly different from the majority of the electorate.

Previous research on political representation and diversity has largely relied upon ascribing ethnicity to representatives on the basis of last name analysis or photo identification (Black 1997, Preston 1998). Unfortunately, ascription of ethnicity leads to a variety of complications, not the least of which is the contradiction of defining an individual's identity, when ethnicity is usually held to be a self-defined category. Consequently, this study is based upon responses to a survey where candidates were asked to self identify their ethnic background(s).

Many respondents indicated multiple ethnic origins, consequently totals do not add up to 100%.

Two main disparities emerge from this table: Politicians are twice as likely to select Canadian as their ethnic origin as the general population in the region; and Canadians of French origin are dramatically under represented. However, as noted earlier, previous work by sociologists Ravi Pendakur and Fernando Mata suggests that those who select Canadian as a response to the ethnicity question on the Census are most likely to be of British or French origin (Pendakur and Mata 1998).

Given the high level of British Isles (British, Irish, Scottish, and perhaps WASP) response from politicians in this survey, it seems likely that those who identified as Canadian are most likely to be of French origin. This makes sense in the highly politicized Ottawa-Carleton Region where it is deemed important for politicians of French origin to identify strongly with Canada so as not to be painted a separatist.

A question on visible minority status was not asked on the survey instrument. Consequently, this aspect of identity can only be commented upon by ascription based on photographs of the elected officials and by using place of birth as a proxy. Given the limited usefulness of this approach (visible minority status is a self-defining characteristic and in many instances the self definition does not match the externally ascribed status), little will be reported here. Suffice to say that the one elected official from a visible minority community is not a reflection of the ten thousand two hundred seventy members of those communities. In fact, fifteen percent of the electorate has less than one percent of the formally elected representatives in the region.

Given the near absence of formal representation, later stages of this study will seek to examine how these communities are represented by political representatives from outside of their communities.

Other important diversities which one could expect to find represented within the over one hundred political representatives are Aboriginal peoples, women, and francophones. No respondents reported Aboriginal backgrounds, many reported francophone backgrounds and less than expected were women.

Work on representation of women has been covered extensively elsewhere so will not be covered in depth here (Vickers, Rankin, and Appelle 1993; Maillé 1990; Erickson 1992,; Arscott and Trimble 1997; Brodie and Vickers 1982; Brodie 1985, 1987; Bashevkin 1989, 1993; Megyery 1991; Ship 1998).

Similar to the previous literature, the gender breakdown in table 4.2 shows that women are massively under represented at an aggregate level and at each tier of government. However, it also shows that women are least under represented at the municipal and federal levels. This result would suggest that the assumption of Stasiulis and Abu-Laban that party structures impede access should be examined more closely, or some headway may have been made in the last decade. Action taken by the parties at the federal level may be having a positive impact on the representation of women.

Note due to multiple responses total is greater than 64 responses received.

Given the low level of representation of Canadians of diverse backgrounds in the governments in the region, it should come as no surprise that very few resources are devoted at present to issues surrounding diversity. Two key aspects of governmental processes designed to assist diverse communities should be kept in mind: 1) the ability of governments to adapt to increasing diversity and 2) slippage or backtracking when governments eliminate programs designed to facilitate participation by diverse communities.

Of the eleven municipalities in Ottawa-Carleton, only the city of Ottawa has an office devoted to diversity and equity issues. This office oversees two primary policies relating to diversity: a Multiculturalism Policy, and Human Rights and Employment Equity Policy. In addition to the diversity and equity office, there is a municipal advisory committee has been mandated to oversee the enactment of these policies.

Policies are only as good as the means by which they are enforced. At present, the City of Ottawa has dedicated resources for only one full time employee and no budget for major initiatives in the area of equity and diversity. (The repeal of the provincial Employment Equity Act led to the reduction of staff from six to one employee.) Consequently, the policies in the City of Ottawa are not living up to their full potential.

While the full-time staff has been drastically reduced, an advisory committee continues to function, albeit in a limited capacity. The City of Ottawa has had an Advisory Committee on Visible Minorities since 1982. The committee repositioned itself in 1997 to encompass more than just those issues related to visible minority communities. The committee stated that:

Recent initiatives in the last few years have included an investigation into the perceived discriminatory hiring practices within the Ottawa Fire Department, the institution of culturally sensitive swim times for religious minority women, and the denial of public space as a platform for the Heritage Front to use for holocaust denial (Smith 1998).

During the lifespan of the Ontario Employment Equity Act, three full-time employees were devoted to handling equity issues for the Regional Municipality. At present, there are one and a half staff members assigned to these tasks.

The primary equity issues of concern to the regional government are focused on employment. Consequently, the two policies of interest for this paper are: Human Rights and Workplace Equity; and Workplace Harassment.

Equity issues within the regional government are handled by several working committees designed to handle grievances and to ensure that access to services is available to all residents in the region.

Recent initiatives of the Regional government in the field of diversity centre around employment, complaints, training, and policies.

Ontario has had a long history of provincial interest in diversity issues. The Ontario Advisory Council was established in 1973, an Official Multiculturalism Policy was created in 1977, the Ontario Human Rights Act was passed in 1981 (with a Human Rights Commission mandated to "promote multicultural understanding in compliance with the Act") [Fleras and Elliott 1992], and the Employment Equity Act was passed in 1993. This Act required employers to undertake a mandatory process for the development of employment equity plans [Currie 1998].

Since the election of the Conservative party under Mike Harris in Ontario, programs relating to equity and diversity have been devastated. Central to the platform of the Harris Government was the Job Quotas Repeal Act (1995) which repealed the Employment Equity Act passed by the previous government.

In addition, the Conservatives have dissolved citizenship programs, cut budgets and abolished anti-racism programs. Services such as Multilingual Access to Social Services, Community Neighbourhood Support Services, and the Multi-service Centre Program have been eliminated. Budgets for remaining programs have also been cut. For example, programs designed to ease the integration of newcomers were cut by 6%, budgets for cross-cultural sharing and multicultural events by over 75%, and budgets for social justice grants by 24%. Anti-racism programs within government were abolished. Most notably, the Ontario Antiracism Secretariat and the Race Relations and Policing Division (Joshee 1996).

At present there are two primary vehicles the Government of Ontario employs to address issues arising from the diversity of its populace: the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Equal Opportunity Plan.

The Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, Marilyn Mushinski, outlined the government's Equal Opportunity Plan in the Ontario Legislature on December 14, 1995. She announced that, "This government's approach to fairness in the workplace is merit-based, inclusive, voluntary and built on partnership. . . It is based on co-operation, not coercion, and will encourage all of us - government, employers and employees - to work as partners to develop workplaces where merit is the basis for employment practices" (www.equalopportunity.on.ca).

The Conservative government of Mike Harris has almost completely eliminated the role of the provincial government in the proactive tackling of issues around diversity. Instead, it has converted the provincial response, like that of the municipal and regional governments, to a more reactive stance.

Recent initiatives undertaken by the Government of Ontario include the launch of a website entitled "Gateway to Diversity." The site is designed to help the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation to build partnerships with organizations and to provide them with access to information, resources, and best practices (Canadian Heritage 1999).

Another important initiative in this area was the addition of mediation to the Ontario Human Rights Commission's portfolio: seventy-five to eighty-five percent of cases sent to mediation have ended in settlement. This process has cut the Commission's backlog considerably (Canadian Heritage 1999).

While the federal policy set surrounding diversity in Canada is extensive, there are two key policies, Multiculturalism and Employment Equity, which must be considered.

The Canadian Multiculturalism Act sets the context and objective of the Government of Canada to ensure the full participation of all Canadians in the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of Canadian society. The objectives of multiculturalism were most actively pursued by the Conservative Governments of Brian Mulroney, but with the election of a Liberal government and the arrival of the anti-multiculturalism Reform Party on the national political scene in 1992, the objectives of the Act have not received extensive attention in terms of political leadership or resources (Biles 1997).

The Employment Equity Act is designed to ensure the full participation of all Canadians in the labour market. This policy originally set in 1986 and revised in 1996 has yet to achieve significant improvements in the hiring and promotion of visible minorities even in the federal public service.

It is readily apparent that one of the key elements in federal response to diversity is an acknowledgement that diversity is a cross-cutting issue which is the responsibility of all federal departments and agencies. Correspondingly, many of the initiatives led by the federal government involve many departments. Important initiatives at present tackle issues of social justice and ensuring that policies are developed on the basis of solid research results.

To sum up, political leadership and resources have been dramatically reduced at all four levels of government in the areas of diversity and equity. This has resulted in few new initiatives and a reversion to reactive policy responses from the proactive stance governments tried to create in the 1980s. The impacts of these changes is not yet known, but given the accelerating increase of diversity in cities across Canada, the lack of knowledge and practical policy experience within governments is unlikely to result in governments which have the capacity to handle tensions resulting from increased diversity. Governments should not be scratching their heads in bewilderment about how their electorates feel disconnected from them, when they have systematically eliminated the avenues by which Canadians have been connected to their governments in the past.

Diversity in Canada continues to increase. Consequently, governments at all levels are going to need to become more responsive to the needs of diverse communities within their jurisdictions. While the experience of no two jurisdictions will be identical, it is reasonable to assume that there are significant past practices which would benefit newly emerging "ethniCities" both in Canada and around the world.

Obviously, the full and active participation of all citizens in the democratic structures of the society within which they live is a key goal of democratic governments. Equally clearly, from the results of this study, significant communities are not represented in the formal political structures of the region. Nor is their demographic weight well represented by the policies enacted by the different levels of government. In fact, as diversity has increased, it appears as though commitment to handling issues resulting from diversity has diminished.

The extent to which communities in Ottawa-Carleton are effectively disenfranchised from the formal political structures of the region is fairly clear from this study. What is not clear, however, is whether these communities are actively participating in other arenas, or if their isolation is equally pronounced in those areas. Some of the key areas for further study to help governments in the region enhance participation by all of its residents are explored below.

One of the most important findings from studies on the political participation is that we must move beyond the focus on formal political structures. One of the more obvious candidates for an expanded definition on political participation is participation in school boards. An examination of the nomination process would probably yield a better understanding of the barriers which face candidates from minority backgrounds.

In addition, factors such as language use, availability of daycare, media coverage and others should be considered in further studies on the formal political process. The impact of devolution/amalgamation/disentanglement or other political jargon for the decrease in the number of representatives must also be examined to understand the impact this will have on minority communities.

Merely expanding the scope of studies on formal participation will not give rise to a full understanding of the (dis)enfranchisement of specific communities. It is important to delve into the substantive representation to fully understand how community concerns get addressed in a democratic system of governance. Questions which will need to be answered include: to what extent a community can be represented by an elected official from outside of their community, and to what extent does formal participation of communities translate into a higher profile for their issues and concerns.

A great deal of work has been done in this area by feminist scholars which could be profitably mined to kick start work in this area.

A great deal of work has been done on the subject of political participation. Unfortunately, as Stasiulis notes, remarkably little has been done on the subject of the political participation of immigrants and ethnocultural/racial communities. Even where work has been done on disadvantaged groups, it does not necessarily contribute to the study of other groups. For example, while much work on political participation in women has been conducted (Ship 1998: 313), it has not forged many connections with work on immigrant and ethnocultural diversity.

Clearly, there is a pressing need to bring together researchers and policy makers working in the area of inequality. This extends beyond the need to integrate the work of feminist scholars into the work on immigration and diversity. As the City of Ottawa's Advisory Committee on Visible Minorities noted in 1997, "Increasingly, there is a recognition that there are significant links between work to overcome inequalities for disadvantaged groups. Racial and ethno-cultural issues are linked to women's issues, disability, sexual orientation and poverty issues" (City of Ottawa, 1997).

The forging of links between the interests of different minorities has received a greater degree of attention since Dr Hedy Fry was appointed as the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism AND the Status of Women. This joint appointment has given rise to greater cooperation between her two departments than has hitherto been the case. Examples include family violence initiatives and the Metropolis Project.

There is a disjuncture between the political spaces that are being claimed by groups and those which are being offered to them. As Magnusson observed, "The world keeps surprising us, not least in the constant innovations of the young who keep inventing political spaces of their own." (Magnusson, 1996]. This observation could just as easily be applied to groups based on gender, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, sexual orientation or language. Findings by the World Values Survey as recorded by political scientist, Neil Nevitte, observe that people around the world are become increasingly active politically, but are less likely to do so through formal political processes (Nevitte 1996).

Just as an understanding of the findings of feminist literature around empowerment and participation can be of use to those studying immigrants and ethnocultural minorities, so too can the knowledge gleaned from different sites of political organizing give us knowledge necessary to fashion political structures which are encompassing of the entire population. This entails an active engagement with scholars who are examining shopping malls, places of worship, public transport, athletic facilities, urban gardens, the internet, and community centres to name but a few.

The Government of Canada has long understood the importance of identity to the exercise of full citizenship. This positioned has been buttressed by researchers like Jerome Black who has observed that, "a noticeable body of evidence has built up indicating generally positive relationships between group consciousness and political activity, particularly for minority groups" (Black 1998, 24). Before abandoning programs designed to foster the identities of diverse communities, governments better examine what impact that will have on the participation of those communities within their societies.

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(N.B. Due to the recording of multiple responses and rounding the percentages do not add up to 100%)