When introducing the government's new Fair Representation Act recently, Minister of Democratic Reform Tim Uppal declared that it "moves every single province towards the principle of representation by population." In introducing the Liberal party's response Friday, Stéphane Dion has prioritized the same principle.
What Uppal and Dion did not mention is that while "rep-by-pop" is certainly one principle for representation in Canada, it is not the only one. In fact, Canada's election laws state that constituency boundaries must deviate from rep-by-pop in order to ensure that communities of common interest, like regions, towns and neighbourhoods, are effectively represented in Parliament.
This second principle recognizes the fact that voters don't make decisions in isolation. Rather they are situated in communities - communities that often face unique needs and common challenges because of the makeup of their population or where they are located.
In many cases these two principles of representation come into conflict. Attempts to preserve or protect specific communities of interest mean that some areas (usually rural ones) are over-represented at the expense of faster-growing areas (usually urban ones). What effect does this have? Is this harmful to democracy?
Despite the obvious importance of these questions, we know surprisingly little about this subject. One study found that over-represented rural ridings receive a little more government spending and pay slightly less tax on a per-capita basis. Until recently no one had investigated whether citizens' experiences of democracy are affected by the size of the population in their constituency. To help fill this gap in our knowledge we used data from the Canadian Election Study to test whether discrepancies in representation-by-population affect how individual voters experience democracy. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, our findings showed that riding population had no substantial impact on the democratic experiences of individuals.
While those living in more populated ridings were marginally less likely to be contacted by parties during an election, they were just as likely to ask their MPs for assistance. Perhaps most importantly, we found that there is no relationship between the population of the riding in which a citizen lives and his or her satisfaction with democracy.
Of course, surveys are never perfect. So we went further and conducted an "audit experiment" examining how MPs respond to email requests from constituents. Once again, we found that the rate or quality of assistance that constituents receive from MPs didn't vary with the population in an individual's riding.
One final issue of concern for some is that the over-representation of rural areas may undermine the voting power of visible minority citizens, who tend to be concentrated in urban areas. This situation is certainly concerning and should be studied closely. However, while rural communities may not be as ethnically diverse as their urban counterparts, the challenges they face are many and varied. For instance, the needs of farming communities alone differ widely across the country, without even considering the needs of fisheries, mining, or forestry communities.
Our research also showed no clear evidence that visible minorities have worse democratic experiences than other Canadians. In part this may be because visible minority citizens don't vote primarily as members of a particular ethnic group, but rather as residents of a particular community. Furthermore, even though rural areas are over-represented, Canada's high levels of urbanization mean that the bulk of parliamentary seats are still urbanbased. Consequently, the party winning the majority of urban seats is still likely to form the government, as was demonstrated by the recent Ontario election.
The Fair Representation Act will certainly go a long way toward improving the population equality between federal electoral constituencies. However, rep-by-pop is not the only objective that should be considered when ridings are being designed. Instead, democracy may be best served when citizens feel they are fairly represented, not equally represented.
Origin
Source: Ottawa Citizen
What Uppal and Dion did not mention is that while "rep-by-pop" is certainly one principle for representation in Canada, it is not the only one. In fact, Canada's election laws state that constituency boundaries must deviate from rep-by-pop in order to ensure that communities of common interest, like regions, towns and neighbourhoods, are effectively represented in Parliament.
This second principle recognizes the fact that voters don't make decisions in isolation. Rather they are situated in communities - communities that often face unique needs and common challenges because of the makeup of their population or where they are located.
In many cases these two principles of representation come into conflict. Attempts to preserve or protect specific communities of interest mean that some areas (usually rural ones) are over-represented at the expense of faster-growing areas (usually urban ones). What effect does this have? Is this harmful to democracy?
Despite the obvious importance of these questions, we know surprisingly little about this subject. One study found that over-represented rural ridings receive a little more government spending and pay slightly less tax on a per-capita basis. Until recently no one had investigated whether citizens' experiences of democracy are affected by the size of the population in their constituency. To help fill this gap in our knowledge we used data from the Canadian Election Study to test whether discrepancies in representation-by-population affect how individual voters experience democracy. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, our findings showed that riding population had no substantial impact on the democratic experiences of individuals.
While those living in more populated ridings were marginally less likely to be contacted by parties during an election, they were just as likely to ask their MPs for assistance. Perhaps most importantly, we found that there is no relationship between the population of the riding in which a citizen lives and his or her satisfaction with democracy.
Of course, surveys are never perfect. So we went further and conducted an "audit experiment" examining how MPs respond to email requests from constituents. Once again, we found that the rate or quality of assistance that constituents receive from MPs didn't vary with the population in an individual's riding.
One final issue of concern for some is that the over-representation of rural areas may undermine the voting power of visible minority citizens, who tend to be concentrated in urban areas. This situation is certainly concerning and should be studied closely. However, while rural communities may not be as ethnically diverse as their urban counterparts, the challenges they face are many and varied. For instance, the needs of farming communities alone differ widely across the country, without even considering the needs of fisheries, mining, or forestry communities.
Our research also showed no clear evidence that visible minorities have worse democratic experiences than other Canadians. In part this may be because visible minority citizens don't vote primarily as members of a particular ethnic group, but rather as residents of a particular community. Furthermore, even though rural areas are over-represented, Canada's high levels of urbanization mean that the bulk of parliamentary seats are still urbanbased. Consequently, the party winning the majority of urban seats is still likely to form the government, as was demonstrated by the recent Ontario election.
The Fair Representation Act will certainly go a long way toward improving the population equality between federal electoral constituencies. However, rep-by-pop is not the only objective that should be considered when ridings are being designed. Instead, democracy may be best served when citizens feel they are fairly represented, not equally represented.
Origin
Source: Ottawa Citizen
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