In an earlier post, I pondered the occu­pa­tional com­pos­i­tion of the House of Com­mons and its implic­a­tions on policy mak­ing. This posts casts an his­tor­ical gaze on the occu­pa­tions of MPs at Con­fed­er­a­tion com­par­ing the struc­ture with the cur­rent and hypo­thes­iz­ing about the evol­u­tion over the past 160 years.
As I men­tioned earlier, I had a sense that law­yers were a more dom­in­ant force in earlier times and that busi­ness men and women pos­sibly have a more decis­ive role in policy mak­ing today than earlier. This chart:
1867parliament.png

shows the occu­pa­tional com­pos­i­tion of the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment in 1867. When com­pared with the cur­rent composition:
39thparliamentbyoccupation.png

this anec­dotal idea that busi­ness­man have risen in dom­in­ance is not sup­por­ted. Although law­yers formed a much lar­ger pro­por­tion of the house in 1867 than they presently do, it is in other areas that we have seen greater change. Busi­ness men and today women con­tinue to hold the largest pro­por­tion of seats. How­ever, as dis­cussed earlier, it is those self-identifying as administrator/professional civil ser­vants that have assumed a greater role. The other sig­ni­fic­ant change is the emer­gence of edu­cat­ors as a rep­res­ent­at­ive group.
To gain a wider per­spect­ive, this bar chart com­pares num­ber of MPS for each occu­pa­tion for three ses­sions of Par­lia­ment — the first two of the nine­teenth cen­tury and the cur­rent session:

changes1867-20071.png

The next post will exam­ine region­al­ism, party polit­ics from an occu­pa­tional perspective.

I used the tree chart tool from Many Eyes to cre­ate these visu­al­isa­tions.