Amid the sesquicentennial celebration in Ottawa earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directed Canadians to “turn toward the future and think about the next one hundred and fifty years” before introducing the Canadian Space Agency’s newest astronauts, Jennifer Sidey and Joshua Kutryk.

Lost amid the ensuing fanfare is the fact that Canada’s spacefarers remain an exclusively white group, a disappointing and disturbing pattern for a country that advertises diversity as a core value, and presents astronauts as “the future,” and as science and technology role-models for all Canadians.

To be clear, both Sidey and Kutryk appear to be highly-qualified and very solid choices for roles in space. Kutryk, an engineer and military test pilot from Alberta, is cut from the same cloth as NASA’s original Mercury Seven, and is basically Chris Hadfield 2.0. He attended the same university and U.S. Air Force test pilot school as Hadfield and even flew in the same RCAF squadron. Sidey, also from Alberta, has a PhD in mechanical engineering from Cambridge, and was also a lecturer there specializing in combustion and the physics of fire.

Problems appear with some historical perspective. In 1983, the National Research Council (NRC) put out Canada’s first-ever call for astronauts (the Canadian Space Agency was established in 1987). It was open to all Canadians, and sought candidates with engineering or medical degrees to conduct experiments in orbit as payload specialists in NASA’s space shuttle program.

Back then, nearly 5,000 Canadians applied, and a government committee chose 20 finalists based on questionnaires, interviews, medical screenings, and stressful physical and mental tests (the model still used today). A recent dig through the NRC’s archives as part of my research into the history of astronauts turned up photographs and biographical information of the 20 Canadian astronaut finalists from 1983 — 19 men, and one woman, and only one visible minority. Compare that to this year’s 17 finalists, which included five women but no visible minorities — uneven progress at best.

Ultimately, in 1983, the NRC selected six astronauts including engineer and military pilot Marc Garneau (now the federal transport minister), who became the first Canadian in space in 1984, and Roberta Bondar, a medical doctor and neurologist, who became the first Canadian woman in space in 1992. Since then, in similar open calls to all Canadians, the CSA recruited four additional astronauts in 1992 (including Hadfield, and engineer Julie Payette), and, after a 17-year gap, military pilot Jeremey Hansen, and medical doctor and astrophysicist David Saint-Jacques in 2009 — neither of whom has been to space yet.

Add Sidey and Kutryk in 2017, and Canada’s astronaut selectees remain exclusively white, and skewed male, problematic trends out-of-step with national demographics. It’s part of a wider diversity problem that’s existed in astronaut selection since the dawn of the space age that leaves many feeling disconnected, or at worst, not welcome in this vision of the future.

Out of the 14 Canadians we’ve selected as astronauts since 1983, none have been visible minorities. Compare this with recent census data from Statistics Canada which state 20 per cent of Canadians self-identify as visible minorities (and this designation doesn’t even include the nearly 1.5 million Indigenous people). The selection of Sidey brings the number of women selected to three out of 14, 21 per cent, compared to 50.4 per cent in the general population.

The CSA states that our astronauts also function as ambassadors for science and technology travelling the country encouraging “young Canadians to pursue their education in STEM fields” (and with the duo selected back in 2009 still waiting for their first flights, these newest recruits could be stuck in this mode for a decade or longer). Besides the moral imperative to extend human diversity to space, finally separating “the right stuff” from “the white stuff” would make the science and tech pitch more effective, and the lofty, inclusive, future-oriented rhetoric more convincing.

When it comes to diversity in astronauts, America — which began flying minorities in the early 80s — sadly has us beat. NASA’s latest batch of “astronaut-candidates,” announced just last month, includes names like Rubio, Kim, Moghbeli, and Chari. Sidey and Kutryk will surely make Canadians proud, but officials in charge of our selection need to explain why, with 3,772 applications this time, our astronauts still fail to show anywhere near the same diversity as, say, the Trudeau cabinet. After all, to paraphrase the PM, it’s 2017.

Jordan Bimm is a PhD candidate in Science & Technology Studies at York University. In 2014-2015 he was a NASA Research Fellow, and in 2015-2016 he was a visiting student at Cambridge in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.