OTTAWA — The Liberals last week used their parliamentary majority to cut off debate in Parliament and end any chance of redrawing electoral boundaries before the next election.
It will mean rural Canada will not lose seats in the next Parliament, as was proposed in new riding boundaries based on the population shift to the cities.
Over objections of the Reform Party, the Liberal government used a form of closure for the first time in the new Parliament to end debate at approval-in-principle stage.
Closure and time allocation, used frequently by the Conservatives in the last Parliament, were roundly condemned by the Liberals in opposition as undemocratic.
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The debate will be resumed in April when MPs return from vacation but the decision has been made.
As a result, the number of MPs in the House of Commons will remain at 295 in the next Parliament, to be elected in 1997 or 1998.
Under existing law and based on results of the 1991 census, the number of seats should have increased to 301.
At the same time, the number of rural seats in the Commons would have declined as Toronto and prairie cities received more MPs at the expense of the declining rural population.
The Liberals suspended electoral redistribution for two years because of complaints from many of their MPs.
Northern Ontario Liberal Brent St. Denis (Algoma) said that a further erosion of rural representation in the Commons would reduce the rural voice but also make rural ridings geographically bigger and rural MPs less accessible to their voters.
The Reform Party, while representing many of those rural ridings in the West, argued that the several million dollars already spent to prepare proposed new riding boundaries should not be wasted.
The boundaries were to be debated at public meetings beginning in April.
Those hearings now will be cancelled as the Liberals figure out a different way to accommodate a growing population, and a population shift, without increasing the number of MPs or carving up traditional ridings.
Critics said the Liberals stopped the process and cut off Reform debate because many Liberal MPs were afraid new boundaries would make their ridings harder to win in the next election.
