Looking at Politicians in Canada and the United States
How come Americans elect dentists and Canadians elect chiropractors?
One of the things I’ll be exploring in this space will be how Canada and the United States are similar and how we are different.
In politics, we are both federal systems and elect our legislators from groups of people grouped together by lines on a map. From this basic similarity, we diverge in a lot of ways. I’m going to ignore the structural differences; lets start by looking at the people we (citizens of Canada and the United States) have chosen as our elected legislative representatives.
I looked at the biographies that 435 Members of the House of Representatives, 100 Senators and 338 Members of Parliament posted on their websites. As they used to say, “kids, don’t do this at home.” Reading what 873 politicians have to say about themselves is not how I would recommend spending Saturday night. Trust me on this one.
The biographies I looked at does not fully capture everything these politicians have done; instead, it captures what they want their constituents to know about them. They reveal what is important to the politician both politically and personally. Some share the results of their grade 5 spelling bee results; others don’t go much past party identification. Strategic choices are made. For example, 12.8 percent of Representatives, 12 percent of Senators and 28.1 percent of MPs do not mention how much education they have. For a few, this likely means they have none, but most made a strategic decision to shut up about their fancy-pants, high-brow, pointy-headed credentials. Failure to disclose education is geographically clustered. In the United States, politicians from Michigan are most likely to keep quiet about their degrees. In Canada, it is those from Manitoba. Only 3 of 14 MPs from that province mention their schooling, even (especially) those with lots of it.
Let’s start by looking at some differences between the elected officials between the two countries.
In the US Congress, 8.2 percent of Representatives and 13 percent of Senators once worked as prosecutors (either elected or appointed). In Canada, 0.9 percent of MPs were once prosecutors. The two countries are closer when it comes to former police officers as politicians: 2.8 percent of Representatives, 1 percent of Senators and 2.1 percent of MPs were once cops. The core job of prosecutors is to argue people should be convicted and punished for crimes. I think the much higher presence of prosecutors in the American legislative chambers is both a cause and result of a “tough-on-crime” approach that generates much higher incarceration rates in the United States than in Canada.
There’s a similar difference in military service. 18.2 percent of Representatives, 15 percent of Senators and 4.7 percent of MPs cite military service in their biographies. In the United States, over half of the politicians without personal military service claim some sort of linkage to the military through the service of a parent, sibling or child. This vicarious claim to service can get a little pathetic. One Representative claims a special affinity to the military because some of his college classmates were in the R.O.T.C.; pictures of politicians with people in uniform are ubiquitous on the websites in the United States. These desperate and sometimes pathetic attempts to claim affinity with the military is simply not a thing with Canadian MPs.
Members of Congress are much more likely to have held other elected offices than are Members of the Canadian Parliament. 54.5 percent of Representatives and 83 percent of Senators cite holding elected office at municipal, school board or state levels compared to only 25.7 percent of MPs. This variation is likely a function of the size of electoral districts. The average Canadian constituency holds 112,000 people, compared with over 750,000 for an American congressional district. Senators from California represent almost 40 million. Bigger districts mean nominations are more competitive. Name recognition and a developed doner list is more important.
All our politicians tend to be well educated, but the Americans are more likely to have advanced or professional degrees. There are a lot of lawyers. 17.2 percent of Canadian MPs report having a law degree compared to 29.9 percent of Representatives and 45 percent of Senators. 2.1 percent of MPs report having a Ph.D. compared with 4.6 percent of Representatives and 4 percent of Senators. Just about 6 percent of the American politicians have some sort of medical-professional doctor degree compared to 2.3 percent of MPs. There is a weird anomaly: there are a lot of dentists in Congress but in Canada chiropractors get themselves elected. If anyone has a theory on this one, I’d love to hear it.
Ages were not listed, but judging from the pictures and biographies, the median age of Members of Congress is about two decades older than for Members of Parliament. The Senate has the lowest proportion of women (24 percent) and the Canadian Parliament the highest (30.5 percent). In addition to being the most masculine, the Senate is the whitest (75.5 percent) while Parliament has the lowest proportion of whites (64.8 percent). The composition of minority representation is different in the two countries: in the United States most minority representatives are Black or Hispanic. Canada’s Parliament has more representation from people of Indigenous, Asian and Middle Eastern origin. 11.5 percent of MPs were born outside of Canada compared to 3.4 percent of Representatives being born outside the United States (and only 1 Senator). In both countries many politicians described how their parents moved to the country, but I didn’t think to count the number of “second-generation” folk and am not going to reread 873 biographies.
The occupations reported by elected officials in all chambers is quite similar. Just over a third report having been in business while just under one in five reports working in education, the civil service, advocacy/non-profit organizations or private legal practice. (Some report more than one occupation, others don’t report any). 8.6 percent of MPs report having a media background compared to 3.9 percent of Representatives. I’m guessing this high representation from former media types results from the general downsizing of employment in the media combined with some name recognition – both a push and a pull towards elected office. The American chambers have more clerics, but there is a weirdly high number of former musicians in Parliament.
I’ve got two takeaways from this counting exercise.
First, I’m a little troubled by the lack of mention of any experience in “normal” working jobs: restaurant workers, truck drivers, cleaners, labourers, tradespeople, etc. In all three chambers, only about one in twenty references having held this kind of job. Many (again I did not think to count early in the process) claim an affinity to “normal” workers by describing their parents, but almost none reference their own experience working with their backs and hands. I am guessing that many worked at these kinds of jobs while in high school or college, but decided not to mention this experience. Given that these biographies are designed to present themselves favourably to their voters, it’s a little disturbing that working class experience is almost as unmentioned as alcohol or substance abuse problems. Those that do talk of working-class experience tend to be older. Either the younger ones have never worked these kinds of jobs or they see no positive virtue arising from the experience.
Second, there’s a lot of very bright, educated, talented people amongst our elected officials in North America. When I look at the dysfunction in government and its inability to solve problems, I have the nagging feeling that the collective output is less than the sum of the parts. If the word dysynergy was in the dictionary, it would probably be the word I’d use.