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INTRODUCTION
The "earthquake" election of 1993 marked a profound transformation in the cast of major characters in Canadian party politics, as well as an important shift in discourse on the subject of integrating minorities in the polity. In the three federal ballots held between 1993 and 2000, two regionally-based parties won significant representation in the House of Commons, as two more established competitors experienced steep declines in electoral support. The parliamentary institutionalization of the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) and the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance, signals not only the emergence of a new era of multi-party competition (Carty, Cross and Young, 2000), but a departure from the previous era's inter-party consensus on the bilingual and multicultural character of the constitutional framework (Clarke, Jenson, LeDuc and Pammett, 1996).
The BQ advocates the establishment of a sovereign Quebec and draws the bulk of its support from Quebeckers with French ancestry. The Reform party and its successor, the Canadian Alliance, have called for the elimination of public funding for programs promoting ethno-cultural minority traditions, and thus draw more support from White Anglo Saxon Protestants (Nevitte, Blais, Gidengil & Nadeau, 2000; Blais et al., 1997, 2001; Flanagan, 2001, p. 286; http://www.blocquebecois.org). Even the Progressive Conservatives have reversed their support for Official Multiculturalism as part of their rebuilding efforts following the disastrous 1993 election (http://www.pcparty.ca).
The challenges which the BQ and Reform/Alliance have launched against the traditional positions on cultural diversity articulated by the older parties in the third party system make it imperative to explore how well political competition in the fourth phase has continued to reflect Canada's increasingly diverse population. Survey research on the cultural background of Members of Parliament (MPs) elected in 1993 and 1997 suggests that the progress made toward increased ethnic representation in the 1980s has not yet reversed, but that visible minorities continue to be under-represented in relation to their presence in the population (Black & Lakhani, 1997; Black, 2000a). This study will build on those findings by identifying the factors which have enhanced or depressed the nomination and election prospects of politicians whose cultural origins are neither Aboriginal, nor French, nor British. Specifically, we will consider how party affiliation, riding location, local party competitiveness, incumbency, the presence of ethnic competition, campaign expenditures, the concentration of minorities...