Perspectives on the class and ethnic origins of Canadian elites: A reply to Clement and Rich.

The article presents a comment on a previous article that appeared in a previous issue of the Canadian Journal of Sociology. According to the author, the central points of his article were: (a) that an extensive body of ignored research had shown that the methodologies adopted by the original Vertical Mosaic school of thought on elites probably exaggerated the exclusivity of Canadian elites to a considerable degree; (b) that the finding of elite membership that was unrepresentative of the social composition of the population did not indicate a shocking anomaly that demanded immediate remedy. This pattern is referred to in the international literature as the law of increasing disproportion; (c) that, in any case, research conducted using other methodologies, and research conducted since the original publication of The Vertical Mosaic, indicates that the Canadian pattern is in transition. Sociologist Harvey Rich argues that the measures of middle class used in the Vertical Mosaic tradition, and uncritically adopted in author's paper, are far too narrow and would apply to what most would designate as the upper middle class. Consequently, Rich argues that author's guesstimate about the possible proportion of those of working-class origins in the elites was too high. Rich is correct. It is also correct to suggest that author's paper sometimes confused sociologist Wallace Clement's position with sociologist John Porter's position and that its discussion suffered accordingly.