The tears Rechie Valdez shed as she took the oath as minister of small business in this week’s federal cabinet shuffle marked a breakthrough for her — and for the Filipino community she represents.
“It was a profound moment for me to know that I was representing the close to one million Filipinos now here in Canada,” she told CBC News on Friday.
Filipinos are arguably the most politically underrepresented group in Canadian federal politics.
A community that, according to the latest census, has 960,000 members has not had a single Filipino-Canadian representative in Parliament since 2004 other than Valdez, who was elected in 2021. Rey
