Member-only story
Where’s Our Obama? Our Harris?
Our political history undermines Canadian smugness on race
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first U.S. President of African American ancestry. Twelve years later to the day, Kamala Harris was the first woman, first African American and first Asian American inaugurated as U.S. Vice-President.
Meanwhile, north of the border …
Though Canada has had one woman serve as its Prime Minister (Conservative Kim Campbell in 1993, who took up the role in June after Brian Mulroney resigned, then was promptly annihilated by the Jean Chrétien Liberals in the subsequent federal election in October), we have never had a person of colour serve as the leader of the government. In fact, we have only had two people lead a federal party with seats in the House of Commons during their tenure, and they are in office right now (Jagmeet Singh and Annamie Paul, leaders of the left-leaning New Democratic and Green parties, respectively).
No person of colour has ever been selected to lead one of the two governing parties of Canada — the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party — much less led…
