A Two-Four And A Six-Pack Of Canadians

Yesterday Canada's new Liberal government unveiled its cabinet, and there was more excitement than ever before. By that I mean, there was some excitement.  It was because Prime Minister Trudeau promised to have the first gender-balanced cabinet.  And he managed to do it, with the thirty members split right down the middle. So there was a lot of talk about how the cabinet "looked like Canada."

That had me wondering about just how representative it was. People have complained about a phenomena where we misjudge how representative groups are.  For example, if everyone expects the group to be dominated by men, but the genders are actually 50-50, people will think of it as over-representing women, because there are more women than expected.

With that in mind, I looked up some of the statistics for this cabinet and for Canada as a whole.  At least I think these are accurate statistics; it seems someone has cancelled the long-form census.

Group	Cabinet	Canada
People from Greater Toronto	23.3%	16.3%
Quebeckers	20.0%	23.61%
Ontarians	36.7%	38.4%
Albertans	6.7%	10.9%
Nunavummiut**	3.3%	0.09%
Sikhs	10.0%	1.4%
Aboriginals	6.7%	4.3%
Men	50%	49.0%
Women	50%	51.0%
People with physical disabilities*	6.7%	13.7%
African-Canadians	0%	2.9%
Visible minorities***	16.7%	16.2%
LGBT*	3.3%	5%
Astronauts	3.3%	0.000026%
* as far as I know
** people from Nunavut
*** Did you know that First Nations aren't considered "Visible Minorities"?

So it's not perfect, but it is surprisingly close.  Except for Sikhs, who are statistically way over-represented; not sure how that happened. Commence "Sikhs are taking over" paranoia in 3, 2, 1...