I mean no disrespect for your great efforts to keep us all informed but….. who cares whether its a man, woman or minority nominated. Its their ability and commitment to the job and their position as to who they follow and / or answer to, their constituents or their party leaders that is important.

PS, it would be great if you replaces the party icons with simple script ie PC, GR, Lib etc for those of us on dial up, by the time they download Im done reading the artice and ready to move on!!

Rural – who cares? People who are concerned about the under-representation of women and minorities in our political system. 97% of my visitors use high-speed.

I only count ten visible minority candidates for the Liberals… can you list them?

Joshua – this is who I have listed as a visible minority for the Liberals:

1. KULDIP KULAR
2. VIC DHILLON
3. SHAFIQ QAADRI
4. NERENE VIRGIN
5. KHALIL RAMAL
6. MICHAEL CHAN
7. HARINDER TAKHAR
8. JAI AGGARWAL
9. YASIR NAQVI
10. REZA MORIDI
11. MARGARETT BEST
12. BAS BALKISSOON

Let me know if you are aware of others are if you feel any of these are in error.

Commenting on Hillary Clinton’s “disappointing” stance on the Iraq war, Jane Fonda recently told LA Weekly, “it may be that a feminist, progressive man would do better in the White House than a ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina.”

Fonda has a point. Perhaps the focus should be on genuinely representing the issues of women and minorities rather than a kind of tokenism where women and minorities end up representing the interests of rich white men.

Of course the optics of having women and minorities in government helps — to a point. But even if a party like the [Progressive?] Conservatives were full of women like Bev Oda and Rona Ambrose what would be the point? It’s precisely women like Oda and Ambrose who are against programs like Universal Child Care, Status of Women Canada, the Court Challenges Program (used mostly by minorities), and the Kelowna Accord that would have helped improve the lives of Aboriginal Canadians.

Likewise, does anyone seriously consider women like Kim Campbell, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, or Margaret Thatcher to be champions of the rights of women and minorities? There are exceptions of course: Who knows Marilyn Waring? Exactly….

Gender and ethnicity matter generally, but when it comes to the specificity of candidates, ideology is more important. If an old white guy supports all the programs mentioned above and a woman of colour is against them, then women and minorities would probably be better served by the “feminist, progressive man.”

Regardless of their gender or ethnicity, I’m more interested in knowing which candidates are “progressive feminists.” My guess is not too many, and that’s the real shame.

In some sense, Simon is correct. The only rejoinder I can offer is that it’s statistically somewhat more likely for a woman to be a progressive feminist than it is for a man to be. Certainly, it’s not a 100% vs 0% correlation.

I’m male but I truly consider myself to be a progressive feminist and, I’d venture, moreso than some women whom I could name but will refrain from naming.

At the same time, I do attach a symbolic or psychological import to those who would function as role models for their community.

There is no question, in my opinion, that having more women and having more visible minorities in office or as candidates is a welcome thing in itself. Surely, though and nonetheless, each and every candidate, regardless of her gender or her race, needs to be evaluated against the filter of performance and principle. In our democracy, no one should get a “free pass” based on gender or race or anything else…

“97% of my visitors use high-speed.”
Ironic that a posting about minorities is more difficult to view for the Rural Minorities who do not have that option!
Do keep up the good work but keep in mind that there are still many rural folk who cannot get or afford high speed.
PS. I am more concerned about the under representation of Independent Thinking MPs that what sex or race they are, but more variety of views cannot be a bad thing.

how many of these women/minorities are in winnable ridings?

Yes, I’m aware that some remote parts of the province still don’t get high-speed (indeed where I’m from is such a place). I try to keep the site as nimble as possible. For example, all of the party logos on this site add up to about 120kb, which is 2 seconds on a 56kbs modem.

If you want more independent MMPs (which I think would be wholly a good thing), then take a good look at the MMP system recommended by the Citizens Assembly. By allowing voters to cast separate votes for your preferred local candidate and one for your preferred governing party, we greatly increase the prospects of electing independent local MPPs (since you can now vote for independents without fearing that your vote is “wasted”, since you still get to endorse the party/platform/positions that you prefer). So MMP = good for local independents.

Nick — that’s a good question. A closer look illustrates that many of the minority candidates are, not surprisingly, concentrated in heavily minority communities. Overall, there are minority candidates in 21 of 107 ridings (i.e. there are only white candidates in 86 or 80% of the ridings).

Of these 21 ridings, by my estimate, a minority candidate has a reasonable chance of winning in only 12 ridings — 11 of 12 ridings with Liberal minority candidates (all except Nepean-Carleton, which is likely to remain PC) plus one competitive riding where the PC riding is running a minority but the Liberals are not (Mississauga-Streetsville) — this suggests that the PCs tend to run minority candidates only in ridings where the Liberals also run minority candidates. None of the NDP minority candidates are in ridings where the NDP has a strong base (NDP minority candidates are in suburban areas where the NDP traditionally does poorly — Brampton, Mississauga, Etobicoke, Scarborough, Willowdale). And none of the Green, FCP or other minority candidates are likely to win a seat.

So, as of now, the maximum number of minority MPPs appears to be 12 out of 107 = 11.2%, which would be an improvement over the current 7 MMPs or 6.8%.

Its good news that the GTA has woken up and smelled the Liberal tax raises. We GTA’ers have had enough of the inaction from Dalton’s slow action on solving traffic congestions, we are tired of his failed attempts to reduce any taxes that affect home owners, I mean we hardly rely on the government to help us. But come on, the least you could do is throw us a bone to solve the smog as you continue to keep open the coal fire power plant. Sheesh Dalton makes Dion look better.

Where does one find lists of nominated candidates for the parties?

This doesn’t help me decide who to vote for at all. What I would like to see is an easily accessible site with the election platforms for each riding stated in simple english.

Who cares what colour they are or what ethic group they are in. Let’s vote for people based on their ideas. (WOW!!!) Anything else, including this racial profiling, only makes the problem worse. You aren’t fixing anything with this site – you are causing the problem.