Alberta and British Columbia will each have six more MPs to send to Parliament when Canadians next vote for a federal government in 2015.
Ontario will have 15 additional MPs and Quebec three.
The Fair Representation Act, which adds new seats to the three provinces where population growth is greatest, was proclaimed into law Dec. 16, the same night the bill to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly became law.
Quebec’s three seats were added to make sure the province’s parliamentary representation does not fall below its percentage of the Canadian population.
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The new Parliament of 338 MPs still leaves British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario under-represented in representation-by-population but better represented than before the change.
“For far too long, Ontarians, British Columbians and Albertans have been seriously and unfairly under-represented in the House of Commons,” Edmonton Conservative MP and junior minister for democratic reform Tim Uppal said in a statement.
The result will not be pure equality, but “every single Canadian will move closer to representation by population.”
The enlarged House of Commons is a mixed blessing for rural Canada. Rural areas will still be over-represented compared to urban areas, but with 30 new MPs from urban or suburban ridings added, the relative rural influence in Parliament will diminish.
During committee hearings on the bill, some witnesses complained that rural Canada continues to have too much influence because the current formula for seat redistribution does not allow any province to lose seats.
