Andrew Griffith, author and immigration expert and MIREMS Ltd. – Multicultural International Research and Ethnic Media Services – bring decades of experience in Canda’s multicultural spheres. Together, they illustrate the power and potential diverse Canadian voters have, with information that has traditionally been hidden behind linguistic and bureaucratic barriers.
Diversity Votes aims to fill the gaps in understanding between Canada’s diverse communities, the media they listen to, read and watch, and how that can affect how they will cast their ballot in the upcoming federal election.
Canadians will be able to see demographic data at the riding level, focusing on majority-minority ridings. At the same time, news stories from these multicultural communities will discuss relevant issues about their communities and the federal election.
Combining demographic and socio-economic statistics from Canada’s majority-minority ridings, and an on-the-ground look at the ethnic media they engage with opens a door to appreciating the role of cross-cultural communication in politics. In 41 of Canada’s federal ridings visible minorities are the majority. In 93 more, they make up more than 20 percent of the voters. These are powerful communities who look and listen for their own voices in the media.
Andrew Griffith is the author of Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism and Because it’s 2015 … Implementing Diversity and Inclusion. Andrew is the former Director General for Citizenship and Multiculturalism and has worked for a variety of government departments in Canada and abroad. He is a fellow of the Environics Institute and of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. He brings his policy and data analysis expertise to diversityvotes.ca. Griffith is a regular media commentator and blogger with Multicultural Meanderings where he weighs in on and shares news in on topics of immigration, diversity, politics, migration and more.
MIREMS—Multilingual International Research in Ethnic Media Services—has 30 years’ experience as experts in Canada’s cross-cultural communication. MIREMS connects Canada’s decision makers with our diverse communities by providing on-the-ground media monitoring of multicultural and multilingual media from Punjabi radio stations in Halifax, NS to Chinese daily newspapers in Richmond, BC. MIREMS is donating financial resources and providing in-kind donations of translated materials from Canada’s ethnic media. MIREMS works with all levels of Canadian government, private companies, non-profits and curious Canadians. The national leader in ethnic media monitoring, MIREMS’ mandate is to make language barriers transparent. We make diverse voices accessible and available for our national political discourse. Our Diversity Empowers Cities initiative tracked multicultural media in 2018’s municipal elections across the country.