A chorus of voices is opposing the federal government’s plan to add 30 seats to the 308-seat House of Commons by the 2015 election.
An underlying theme in many of the presentations is that the real problem in Canadian parliamentary representation is the over-representation of rural voters in Canada.
It is not an issue the government seems inclined to tackle as it tries to get Bill C-20 through Parliament before Christmas if possible.
The Conservative proposal is to add 15 seats in Ontario, six in Alberta and six in British Columbia, where population growth has been the strongest. Quebec would receive three new seats to make sure its parliamentary representation does not fall below its population proportion in Canada.
No province would lose seats, as a 1985 law requires.
However, led by Liberal MP Stéphane Dion and supported by many academics, the critics argue the House is big enough already and riding boundaries should be redrawn to give under-represented provinces proportionally more seats.
It would mean a loss of seats for smaller provinces like Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
“Under my preferred approach, I’m the first to admit that these two provinces, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, would lose relatively more seats that the Atlantic provinces,” University of Western Ontario professor Andrew Sancton told the procedure and House affairs committee, which was studying the bill in late November.
University of Toronto Mowat Centre fellow Michael Pal told MPs that the bigger issue in under-representation is rural-urban. He said the problem is made worse by the current formula that allows a 25 percent variance above or below the average voter population in a province when riding boundaries are being drawn.
“So within each province, suburban and urban voters have much lower voting power than voters generally in rural areas,” he said.
The 25 percent variance can mean that if a province’s average riding voter population is 100,000, a rural riding can have as few as 75,000 and an urban riding as many as 125,000.
Pal said a five to 10 percent maximum variance would be fairer to under-represented urban voters.
University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman told the committee that the rural-urban split undermines the underlying principle of the bill, which is designed to improve the representation of fast-growing provinces.
“The minister and others have referred to Canadians’ expectations of their votes being equal, but the real inequality is between rural and urban,” he said.
Critics of the Conservative proposal found an easy target in a speech prime minister Stephen Harper made in 1994. As a backbench Reform party MP, Harper objected to an increase in the House of Commons beyond 273 MPs.
Now, the Harper government is intent on increasing the size of the Commons to accommodate grievances from provinces that receive the bulk of new domestic and international immigrants but have not had seat increases to recognize the growing population.
The New Democratic Party rejects the idea of freezing or reducing the number of Commons seats and is proposing an even bigger House of Commons than the Conservatives.
The bill is expected to be up for final Commons debate and vote this week or next.
