This paper seeks to advance our understanding of how ethnic minority representation is working, within the current political context in Canada. Two related shifts have occurred in Canadian federal politics over the past decade. First, there has been growing party competition for the increasingly large and politically consequential ethnic minority vote. Second, there has been an overall increase in the number of MPs from ethnic and visible minority backgrounds in Canada''s federal parliament (Black 2002, 2008). We need a deeper understanding of how these developments are translated, through the rules and practices that structure the Canadian political system, into particular repertoires and dynamics of representation. Yet if our goal is to consider how representation works as a whole and complex nexus, there is no a priori reason to focus on representatives rather than the represented. I argue that the citizen end of representation has been largely ignored in the Canadian literature, and that paying attention to citizens'' views of representation can provide us with a rich perspective on the interrelationships among the various elements of the complex representational nexus. The research presented here is based on a set of focused interviews with several groups of ‘visible minority’ (including Blacks, Chinese and South-Asians) and ''white'' Canadians - all resident in ethnically diverse constituencies within the metropolitan Greater Toronto Area. Against the general current of literature in this domain, which tends to argue that one kind of representation is more important than another (usually the arguments pitch ‘descriptive’ against ‘substantive’ representation of particular groups), the paper examines how the elements work together, sometimes in compensatory fashion. The paper also provides insights into representational repertoires that appear to facilitate the political integration of newcomers and minorities, and promote social cohesion and trust in terms of relations among diverse groups within Canada.
