Although, as Professor Norman Ward pointed out in The Canadian House of Commons: Representation, statistical studies of the personnel of Parliament are not entirely satisfactory, they are none the less valuable to the political scientist for they help him to a better understanding of legislative bodies. The nature of a parliament is partly determined by the characteristics of its members. Thus the British House of Commons, with its membership broadly distributed in many occupations and its many trade union members, has a collective approach to contemporary problems of government different from that of the American Congress dominated by lawyers; and a legislative body with a large proportion of Roman Catholics will handle legislation on divorce in a manner quite different from that of a parliament composed almost entirely of Protestants.

The present study does not consider whether the various segments of the Canadian population are represented in proportion to their size in the nation, nor question the quality of Canadian representation. It is simply an attempt to discover some of the measurable characteristics of members of the House of Commons elected June 27, 1949. An effort has been made to indicate trends by comparing the results of this study with the conclusions reached by Lionel Laing in his article on the characteristics of members of the twentieth Parliament. The major source of data has been The Canadian Parliamentary Guide. Although the information is not complete in all biographical sketches of members, the absence of only a few items does not seriously alter the final statistical picture. No attempt has been made to include information on members elected in by-elections since June, 1949.