The government’s Fair Representation Bill to increase seats in the House correctly enhances provincial representation in the Commons, but it does not address the urban-rural voting power divide, say experts who testified before the House Affairs Committee last week on Parliament Hill.“Within each province, suburban and urban voters have much lower voting power than voters generally in rural areas and you also see discrepancies between regions,” Michael Pal, a lawyer and Mowat Centre fellow, told members of the committee last Tuesday during its study of Bill C-20, the Fair Representation Bill, which will add 30 seats to the current 308-member House of Commons if passed.
Mr. Pal explained that because the electoral boundary commissions are allowed to adjust riding boundaries by populations within 25 per cent above or below the average population in the province, it gives rural ridings more power than urban ones as they have less people and the same vote. This means representation by population is not truly achieved, he said.
“If you have a province with an average riding population of 100,000 people, the commission can deviate as low as 75,000 or as high as 125,000 people, not even using the ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause. So that’s actually quite a wide deviation, which makes federal districts an outlier, both domestically and internationally,” he said, noting that he would amend the bill so that a five to 10 per cent deviation would be allowed instead.
University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman, who also testified along with the panel of witnesses last week, agreed.
“The minister and others have referred to Canada’s expectations of their votes being equal, but the real inequality, as Michael Pal has pointed out, is between rural and urban,” he said. “[Conservative MP Tom] Lukiwski, said, and I’m quoting him, ‘It is the fundamental principle of our democratic process that each Canadian’s vote should have the same weight.’ But as Michael Pal points out, Parliament does not subscribe to this principle because its legislation permits 25 per cent variation above and below a provincial average size, when you take into account the seats allowed to each province. The Supreme Court has upheld this variation. I have no problem with it, although, like Michael, I would prefer that it be narrowed, perhaps to 10 per cent, or possibly 15 per cent.”
Democratic Reform Minister of State Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.) introduced Bill C-20 on Oct. 27. It was referred to the committee on Nov. 3. If passed, the bill will increase the House of Commons from 308 seats to 338. Under-represented provinces Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia will receive new seats in addition to Quebec. Ontario will receive 15 seats, Alberta six, and British Columbia six. A new provision under the bill to allocate seats to provinces whose proportion of seats would’ve dropped compared to its population because of the seat redistribution allows Quebec to gain three new seats, even though its population has not increased significantly since the last redistribution in 2001.
Mr. Pal told the committee that the 25 per cent range above or below the provincial average has not been used historically to create distorted ridings. It’s only recently that boundary commissions have used them, he said.
“They operate well within that range and consider that normal. So the consequence is for suburban voters. They’re under-represented, as a whole, compared to rural voters but you can see that suburban voters are under-represented compared to urban voters. So if you live in Brampton, your vote is worth less than if you live in downtown Toronto. You also see other anomalies where western Ontario has a different voting power than eastern Ontario and what’s the principled basis for that,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be five per cent, I think five per cent or 10 per cent, but we’ve used those legitimate exceptions that are out there like the northern most riding in Ontario or Labrador or the Gulf Islands [B.C.] to set their 25 per cent rule. But instead we should have a narrower norm and then exemptions for those small number that are actually exceptional.”
University of Western Ontario political science professor Andrew Sancton, who previously sat on an electoral boundary commission, also said this is a major issue that needs to be dealt with, especially from province to province. He noted that a rural riding in Ontario has 30 per cent more people and much bigger riding areas than other provinces.
“This is an issue that has come up repeatedly in electoral boundaries commissions. The fundamental principles here that we’re dealing with are representation by population, that a vote in suburban Toronto should be equal to a vote in any other part of Canada, and, unfortunately, we don’t have that issue solved right now,” he said.
Prof. Wiseman said that while representation by province is important, first and foremost, MPs represent their constituents, not provinces. “It seems to me that the principle that’s been driving this committee’s work is the notion of proportionality among provinces and it hasn’t been about compensating rural members for their issues in terms of the differentials from one district to another district and so on,” he said.
Retired Queen’s University professor Ned Franks said the population size of a constituency matters for an MP’s workload, and should be taken into account. Prof. Franks compared Canada’s rep-by-pop statistics with other Parliamentary systems. He noted that New Zealand, with a population of more than four million people has 122 MPs—that’s 36,000 people per riding approximately. In the United Kingdom, there are 62 million people with 650 MPs, which is about 96,000 people per riding. In Australia, there are 22.8 million people and 150 MPs. That’s 151,000 constituents per member. In India, with 1.2-billion people and 552 MPs, there are 2.2 million people in each riding. Currently, Canada with 33.5-million people has 308 MPs for 109,000 people per riding on average.
“Constituencies vary enormously in the amount of business that they have, depending on whether they’re urban or rural, whether they’re downtown suburban, whether there’s immigrants or not, how many old age pensioners they have, then for Kingston how many penitentiaries they have as well,” he told the committee. “Fine, but I would get concerned if Canada had 150,000 citizens per member, like Australia, because I think you’re getting to the point where constituency business is going to be either neglected or too hard.”
NDP MP Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.) said not only is the workload an issue, but also access to constituents.
“I come from a riding that has the fourth most diverse makeup in the country or maybe the fifth now. I’m constantly amazed at how amazed my constituents who weren’t born here are, those who grew up in other countries. They’re amazed by how accessible their MPs are,” he said. “If we grow the ridings to an extent where that accessibility is dropping dramatically—I’ve got about 120,000 in my riding but when you move up into the 160,000 or 170,000 or 180,000—your availability to your individual constituents drops off dramatically. It’s just inevitable. I remember trying one night to go to five different events. You can’t do that and that’s the kind of demand on your time that would be increasing.”
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Source: Hill Times
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