Conservatives have most to gain with six new seats in Alberta, but NDP sets sights on new Edmonton ridings too

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives stand to gain the most when the Tory blue province gets six new seats in Alberta before the next election under the electoral boundaries readjustment, says one pollster.

While the Conservatives are likely to take five of the six new seats in the 2015 election, the NDP will likely pick up at least one riding in Edmonton and could gain another, says Bruce Cameron, president of the Calgary-based firm Return on Insight.

House Of Commons Seat Redistribution: Tories Squash Input From Provinces And Senate To Pass Legislation At Breakneck Speed

The Conservatives' Christmas gift to Canadians is coming Friday: 30 new MPs and a $19.3 million annual price tag.

It is the biggest change to the composition of the House of Commons in 26 years, and it's being rushed through Parliament at unprecedented speed, resulting in no provincial input and no consideration of amendments, just the way the Conservative Government intended.

Tuesday, the Tories used their majority to send bill C-20 to the Senate for further study. That evening, the Tories fast-tracked the bill and with their majority voted, at 10:30 p.m., to send it to committee so it could be approved before the holiday break.

The Bill, the Fair Representation Act, is an amendment to the Constitution Act of 1867, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and the Canada Elections Act. It sets forward a new formula that would give faster growing provinces more seats in Ottawa while taking none away from provinces with declining populations, therefore adding 30 members of Parliament to a chamber already filled with 308 MPs.

Tories fall short in repairing democratic imbalance

MONTREAL

It does not take a degree in advanced mathematics to figure out that Canada’s federal scene is plagued by a gaping democratic deficit.

Our 19th century parliamentary institutions have failed to keep up with 21st century demographics to the detriment of fast-growing provinces such as Alberta and British Columbia.

Part of the rationale for patriating the Constitution three decades ago was to bring the country’s colonial-era institutions up to date.

That was before the well was poisoned by the Meech and Charlottetown capers. Today, repeat failures on the constitutional front have turned attempts at modernization into daunting balancing acts.

But in its ongoing efforts to address the issue of the democratic deficit while side-stepping the constitutional minefield, the Conservative government is very much playing a zero-sum game.

It is advancing the cause of regional fairness in one house of Parliament while moving in the opposite direction in the other.

Even as it seeks to rectify the regional balance in the Commons by granting more seats to the larger provinces, Stephen Harper’s government is proposing to enhance the legitimacy of the Senate — an institution whose regional make-up gives imbalance a whole new meaning.

Feds poised to bring in House seats bill, to increase urban, suburban ethnic ridings

The federal government is set to introduce legislation to increase the number of seats in the House of Commons and it could affect which political party will hold sway over the country’s so-called “ethnic” ridings.

Generally speaking, visible minority and immigrant populations are heavily concentrated in Canada’s urban and suburban areas, the same areas that are likely to see new seats in the coming years, and likely to gain increased importance by the time the next federal election rolls around.

An examination of the top 41 ridings that have 40 per cent or more of immigrant populations shows that prior to the 2011 election, the Liberal Party represented 30 of the 41 ridings, but after the election they were left with only 10. The Liberals still hold three of the top five ridings with the highest percentage of immigrants.

In contrast, the NDP managed to gain a number of Canada’s heavily immigrant ridings; prior to the election the NDP held six ridings with immigrant populations over 40 per cent, after the election they had 12 such seats.