Bill 13's passage, GSAs and the Catholic Church

Bill 13, Ontario's anti-bullying legislation, passed third reading in the legislature today.  The bill obtained 65 votes in support from the Liberal and NDP members, and 36 votes against from the Conservatives.

I'm quite pleased that this legislation passed in the final form that it assumed, which incorporated amendments giving students the right to call their clubs "gay-straight alliances" if they so chose.  This measure, of course, has infuriated the Catholic hierarchy, as one might well expect.  One can certainly expect that there will eventually be a court case pitting the denominational rights of Catholic schools in Ontario against this legislation and the rights of the students that the province seeks to protect.

What makes me quite pleased is that if there is to be a court case, the province has now made it quite clear where it stands on the very sensitive issue of explicitly using the term "gay", which the Catholic church rejects.  This means, I believe, that the province will be in the thick of it in a court case, defending its own law, rather than forcing a student group to try to make the case in court against a school board that they should be allowed to call these groups gay-straight alliances, in the absence of clear wording in the legislation to support their case.  I expect that now the financial burden of defending this legislation will rightly fall to the provincial government, rather than students and their supporters who should not have to shoulder the heavy burden of court costs to defend their position.  (And of course, if the courts do rule in favour of the Catholic boards, there always exists the option of a constitutional amendment to remove public funding for the Catholic schools, which would require the consent of only the Ontario and federal governments.)

I'm sure that the next few years will be tumultuous ones on this front as the Catholic hierarchy in Ontario lurches about like a wounded bear, aggrieved by this legislation.  I can only hope that the tide of public opinion, which currently seems to support the students and the province's legislation, holds firm as we move forward.

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Dalton McGuinty, GSAs and Catholic Schools - A rose by an ambiguous name

Over the past several days, Bill 13, the Accepting Schools Act, 2012 has been in committee hearings. This is the provincial government's anti-bullying legislation, meant to provide support groups in schools for various groups of students that have been victims of bullying, but, when it comes right down to it, is aimed to provide protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans students who have been blocked from forming support groups, particularly in the province's publicly-funded Catholic schools.

This saga has been ongoing for quite some time now, with a major flare-up last year in the summer prior to the provincial election, when the It Gets Better campaign was drawing tons of media attention to the issue of bullying queer youth. At the time, it seemed that the McGuinty government wanted to keep the issue off the front burner for the election campaign. With the election now behind them, the provincial Liberals have introduced this legislation.

This gets me to the crux of this post. Many gay organizations, foremost among them Queer Ontario and the Xtra! chain of newspapers, have been pushing very strongly for Bill 13 to explicitly include provisions that would mandate that support groups formed by students under the protection of this legislation would have an explicitly defined right to call their groups "Gay-Straight Alliances" or GSAs. Catholic groups, in particular trustees, have repeatedly stated that they won't permit this, citing directives from the Vatican, and have indicated that at best they would allow something called "Respecting Differences" groups. Queer organizations, with Xtra! reporter Drea Houston chief among them, have been pushing Education Minister Laurel Broten and Postsecondary Education minister Glen Murray (who had been the point person on this issue in the pre-election period) to be clear about whether these explicit protections would be incorporated into the legislation.

Now, one can debate back and forth as to whether the name of the group is a crucial issue. One can also make the case that insisting on the terminology might make it harder for groups to form that in practice would provide a supportive environment, regardless of what trustees might like (since it is remarkable what can happen under the guidance of a supportive teacher). I've had these discussions elsewhere. But what has been galling me is the cowardice and double-talk that has emanated from the government. Ministers Broten and Murray (the latter particularly on Twitter) have gone back and forth as to whether the bill, as currently worded, would require that schools accept groups named as GSAs - even in the face of trustees testifying before the committee that such names would be explicitly prohibited. They have also implied that they think that a group seeking to use such a name would have the protection of the Charter (as a free speech issue). And yet, they are not willing to take the step of explicitly incorporating the right to use this name in the legislation, claiming that this might violate Catholic school board rights under section 93 of the Constitution.

My problem with this stance is as follows. We don't currently know whether imposing GSAs (called such) on Catholic school boards would violate the Constitution. We do know that student groups want to use this name, and that Catholic trustees have vowed to stop this. So the question is: who ends up in the courtroom when this inevitable case comes before the courts, and who foots the bill for the extensive legal costs (because we're probably looking at a case that is Supreme Court-bound)? It seems pretty clear that the McGuinty government is trying to avoid being the "bad guy", imposing its will on the Catholic school boards, and would prefer that the rights issue be settled by a citizen group - with all the legal and political costs that entails. It's symptomatic, to my mind, of the lack of political leadership that we've seen in the post-Charter era on contentious social issues, where governments of all stripes try to avoid acting themselves and offload responsibility for defending or seeking rights onto citizens, and onto the courts to rule on them. It feeds into a conservative discourse of judge-made law, and it is something that progressives should be worried about. If our "supportive" governments refuse to show leadership on our behalf on issues they profess to believe in, then they are indirectly providing fuel for their conservative opponents who decry the increased power of the courts (and may yet start appointing judges more friendly to their interpretations).

I might feel differently about this issue if I thought that the provincial Liberals actually were not supportive of the GSA name. But I think that in this case, they are playing politics and trying to avoid a Catholic backlash at the ballot box. Which makes today's news that a majority of Ontarians support GSAs and oppose public funding of Catholic schools quite interesting indeed. A little food for thought for our confrontation-averse provincial government, perhaps?

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Camera-test your ties - Ontario Leader's Debate Edition

So, despite a deep-seated desire not to inflict pain on myself, I tuned in this evening to the Ontario election leader's debate. To make this a productive hour and a half, I also set up the ironing board and a stack of 12 shirts. If you don't feel like reading the rest of this post, feel happy for me that I at least got my ironing done.

Alas, that's really the only great thing that I can say about how I spent my early evening. The debate was formulaic, with no surprises, endlessly-repeated talking points, and folksy populism. And I'm sick of it.

Could we please end the new tradition of having the questions be asked by videotaped, carefully-selected "average voters" whose questions are picked because they aim right at one candidate or the other's talking points? And if not, could the leaders at least give up the oh-so-fake approach of pretending to be talking to these people directly and endlessly repeating their name in the ensuing 12 minutes? I get it, you wrote down that her name was Catherine!

And while we're on the name game issue, would it be too much to ask for an end to the folksy anecdotes about the hard-working family folks whom the leaders have met on the campaign trail, be it Julie from just outside of Wawa, or Kevin the electrician from Tilbury, or Sammi the nine-year old lemonade stand operator from Moosonee who is concerned about the HST on the paint she uses for her sign?

I don't feel that I got a great sense of any of these leaders' platforms beyond their endlessly-repeated talking points. Hudak claims to have a "5-point plan" (as if the number of points matters) with health and education as his priorities and cuts that will miraculously appear. McGuinty is all about clean energy, university tuition cuts, a $355 tax cut last year and home care for seniors. And Horvath (insofar as I got to see her tonight) will end the HST on hydro to help out seniors, and defend public health care. And all of them are parents, and have parents, and have kids that have had to use the health care system recently. And they all care about families and seniors. (And if you're single or in a couple but without kids, and in your 30s or 40s, none of the leaders could care less about how you vote!)

I would love to see the debate format turned into a rigorous on-camera grilling by journalists, or perhaps experts. To balance things off, perhaps each party could nominate their choice of a journalist or an academic with policy expertise. And then we might see an actual debate where there is interactivity, and a chance to get beyond talking points and have the assertions of the leaders challenged by those posing the questions. But that's probably a pipe dream, and we're doomed to several more debates that are a race-to-the-most-folksy-and-down-to-earth competition.

For what it's worth, I didn't think there was a clear winner or that any of the candidates really distinguished themselves. I think that hurts Horvath the most, as she seemed to be marginalized a lot of the time, and unable to get a word in over the other two, which is a problem when she is the least well-known of the three. I saw a lot of Twitter commentary about McGuinty waving his hands around, and his terrible hypnotic tie, but he stayed on point (perhaps too tightly and scriptedly so) and didn't seem to get too flustered - I still take issue with a number of his policies, especially on post-secondary education, but I don't think he hurt himself. I don't know whether voters waffling between a Liberal and Conservative vote would find that Hudak came across as a premier-in-waiting. I'm quite firmly opposed to even the notion of this, but I still don't think he was all that impressive (and who picked that purple-and-green monstrosity of a tie!) So in a debate without a winner, might we be headed for minority territory?

Steve Paikin, incidentally, was a good moderator, in terms of trying to pull the leaders back to the questions and allow for fair amounts of time. But the format really didn't allow him to press the leaders directly, as we sometimes see in the American Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates, or Canadian leaders' debates of the past.

As I said at the beginning - at least I got my ironing done!

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Ontario Election: GSAs, Greens and Catholic Schools

The issue of gay-straight alliances in Catholic schools in Ontario has heated up again, this time in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, which voted this week to place denominational rights above other rights in implementing the provincial equity policies - which were supposed to guarantee GSAs in Ontario high schools. Clearly, the individual schools in the board are interpreting this as carte blanche to ban anything which explictly has "gay" in the name, going so far as to threaten disciplinary action against students who are fighting for these support groups.

I am pleased to see that this issue is not only getting attention from the gay and alternative media. The Globe and Mail has been devoting significant coverage to this issue, including today's commentary piece from Aidan Johnson.

I'm going to be very curious to see how this issue plays out in the provincial election campaign. So far, the approach of the McGuinty government has been to support the creation of GSAs, using gay Toronto Centre MPP Glen Murray as the main spokesperson on this issue. (Although I find it curious and significant that Education minister Leona Dombrowsky is largely MIA on this issue). But there is clearly reluctance to putting the full weight of the government behind a strategy of compelling the Catholic boards to accept these support groups, especially with the Liberal government in danger of losing the election.

The option of seeking a constitutional amendment to eliminate public funding for the Catholic boards - as was done in Quebec and Newfoundland - does not appear to register on the radar for the current government. I'm not overly surprised by this, given the stew John Tory found himself in in the 2007 election with his promise of funding for other denominational schools. I'm not sure if the gay community and their supporters will be able to mobilize this as a major campaign issue, particularly given the fact that the only major party to endorse an end to public funding of Catholic schools in the 2007 election - the Greens - have retreated from this platform promise, and so there will be no standard bearer for this approach.

I imagine that the Liberals (and the NDP, for that matter), will make vague promises about resolving the issue in the courts, which should tie things up for at least a few more years.

More's the shame, as it will be gay and lesbian teens who suffer in the meantime. I'm not at all surprised by the hateful position of the Catholic schools (having been educated in the system myself), or by the hesitancy of the major parties when faced with a sizeable Catholic voting block. But it does betray their cynical political calculations and lack of willingness to passionately advocate for one of our most vulnerable populations.

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In which Dalton McGuinty tries to buy my vote

I don't have any particularly strong opinions about Ontario's adoption of the HST, although my husband, who runs his own translation business, will now have to collect more tax for his services. But my general take on thie issue is that if you're going to be implementing a new tax, then just do it - we've known for quite some time that this tax was coming, and delaying its full brunt for a year just puts off the political pain that will accompany the inevitable hostility that always welcomes a new tax.

Cue the reason for this post. I received a notice in the mail that I'm going to be receiving Dalton McGuinty's HST tax rebate. Or, more to the point, as a couple, my husband and I are eligible.

I've never seen such naked pandering to middle class voters. As a university professor, I earn a very good salary, and my partner's business does quite well. There is no way that we should be qualifying for this rebate - at least under any calculation method that is related to progressive tax policy or promotion of social justice. Moreover, as a DINK couple (double income/no kids), we certainly shouldn't be receiving more than 1.5 times what two single people are getting back.

I suppose that this is the first time that being a married gay couple has actually saved us money (as opposed to bumping us into higher tax brackets), but the naked political opportunism of this ploy bothers me. It certainly isn't going to make me more eager to vote for the man who plans to try to freeze my salary for at least the next two years.

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Of premiums, surtaxes and income taxes in Ontario

Since joining the ranks of the gainfully employed, my days of tax-free living as a postdoctoral fellow have come to seem like hazy distant memories. Not that I mind paying my taxes. Indeed, I'm very fond of the tax-and-spend approach to government services. Tax me heavily, but provide me with top notch health care, education, transportation infrastructure and other services in return.

With those socialistic bona fides established, I feel compelled to observe that even my tax-loving self recoils a little bit every year as I complete my Ontario income taxes. It's not that the tax rates are particularly high - they aren't. It's the fact that after I calculate my basic tax rates, I then have to perform two additional calculations to establish my health premium surtax and my Ontario surtax, and then add these amounts onto the basic tax. I have no illusions that the collective health premiums paid by Ontario taxpayers cover the full cost of our health care services (even when the government isn't running a deficit) and I can't imagine that other taxpayers think this is the case, and so I wonder about the optics of this approach.

Have there been studies done of how taxpayers react to these additional tax calculations? Because my gut feeling is that there is a negative psychological impact attached to performing additional surtax and premium calculations, and that perhaps a significant proportion of the taxpaying electorate might be happier just calculating the lump sum at tax time. With the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if the short term benefits of Dalton McGuinty's technical keeping of a promise not to raise income taxes are annually offset by taxpayers grumbling as they figure out the amount of their additional premiums and surtaxes.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about this, but it might be something that future tax policy-makers might want to consider.

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Ontario Budget: "A whole new University of Guelph!" What about the existing one?

You'll forgive me if I'm not branding Dalton McGuinty the "Post-secondary Education Premier" after today's throne speech. Lt-Governor David Onley's throne speech made reference to a commitment to increase university and college spaces by 20,000 this year, likening this to "a whole new University of Guelph".

Meanwhile, the actual University of Guelph, where I work, is suffering from the last few years of Ontario budget cuts, which failed to deliver on promised inflation-matching funding increases, and turned off the taps on graduate funding, after encouraging the university (and others province-wide) to hire new faculty. What we're faced with now is a non-existent budget for sessional instructors, curtailed funding for graduate students, growing undergraduate class sizes, and faculty retirements that there is no budget to replace.

Here's an idea, Dalton: how about restoring core operating funding to Ontario's colleges and universities so that they can deliver quality education to the existing student base, rather than pumping more undergraduates into overcrowded classrooms?

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Knowledge economy? What knowledge economy? Ontario budget edition

Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised in the next few days when someone points out the super-secret pot of money for post-secondary education that is part of Dalton McGuinty's spend-a-thon budget. But as of right now, I don't see it, and it's not showing up in any of the media coverage I have seen so far. There's a bit of money for infrastructure, which would be great if only we could afford faculty (or even part-timers) to teach in these buildings.

Recessions are usually periods where university enrollment goes up, as people try to upgrade their skills, or generally wait out a bad job market. So we're likely going to see more students in our universities for the next few years. Those students will be entering a post-secondary system where endowments have been slammed by the stock market's decline, and thus resources are tight for scholarships, bursaries, and in some cases, basic teaching resources. They will enter larger classes, because there is no funding to hire new faculty, and even the resources to hire sessional instructors are tight. It would have demonstrated some foresight had McGuinty and Duncan thought to compensate for the anticipated crunch in the post-secondary sector. But I've come not to expect that from him. It's a particularly bitter pill to swallow when my own MP, Liz Sandals, is the Minister for Colleges and Universities. Apparently, she doesn't have much pull at the Cabinet table.

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Recessions and universities

During recessions, more people tend to enroll in universities, both to improve their credentials and to wait out the tough economic times in a (hopefully) stimulating environment. At most universities across Ontario (with the notable exception of York), first year applications are up - by about 6% in the case of my institution, the University of Guelph.

This week, York University's contract faculty and teaching assistants were legislated back to work. The University of Toronto's contract faculty have struck a tentative deal on Thursday. While I did not agree with all of the York union's demands, both they and the university's president pointed to one crucial issue which is being overlooked. University funding is stagnating, as enrollment continues to rise. Promised increases in university funding, which were supposed to keep pace with inflation, have been halted by Dalton McGuinty's government. This is particularly troublesome when you consider that this is the same government that encouraged Ontario's universities to hire more faculty in order to grow their graduate programs. They did, and now the promised funding isn't coming through.

At the same time, the federal government, which also contributes to university funding (especially through scholarships and research funds) is also causing headaches. While the spend-o-rama federal budget included funds for capital improvement, it cut back on funding to the major research granting councils, and scrapped funding to the Genome project.

What does all of this mean? Well, unless one level of government or the other decides to think about the long-term implications of their decisions, it means that universities will be filled with more and more students, who are increasingly taught in nice buildings with massive lecture halls to accommodate huge class sizes. They will be increasingly taught by part-time faculty who don't have time to do research because their teaching load is so high. The lucky faculty who do land tenure-track jobs will also find themselves with larger class sizes, and fewer teaching assistants to help them grade and run tutorial groups. And they will be competing for an ever-shrinking pool of research funding - assuming that they have time to squeeze in a bit of research in between grading for the hundreds of students they teach each term.

I'm not optimistic that the next provincial budget will include increased university funding. Although more and more Ontarians are sending their children to university and college, post-secondary education is the poor cousin of the provincial budget, falling far behind health and primary/secondary education. Because its benefits are long-term, it probably won't be seen as a priority area for a "stimulus package", and it's not going to be perceived as a vote-getter. This is unfortunate, because the huge cohort of students flooding our universities will not be receiving the best education that they could.

Perhaps I'll be surprised, and Dalton McGuinty will show some long-term vision, and use the recession to improve how institutions are funded, with a view to the future. But judging by past experience at the provincial level, and the fingers-in-the-dyke approach to crisis management being demonstrated in Ottawa, I'm sadly not optimistic.

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When helicopter parents become politicians

Ask around any Canadian university and you'll quickly find out what a helicopter parent is. If you ask a faculty member, they'll probably let you know that a helicopter parent is a recent nuisance that has descended on campus - normally an affluent baby boomer parent who is incapable of letting their adult child make decisions on their own, and certainly not allow them to face the consequences. They are likened to helicopters because they constantly hover over their children, swooping in with dreadful regularity. At their worst, they contact professors directly to ask how their children are faring in university (at which point they are firmly and politely informed that the university treats its students as adults, and if they want to know how their child is faring, they should ask them directly). At best, they harass their university-aged children to find out when they are going to bed. I am greatly alarmed at this overprotective approach that the current generation of parents is all too often taking towards their children - who are now young adults. It is infantalizing, and I strongly suspect that when it occurs, it delays the maturing process.

It gets even worse when these parents try to make their hyper-concern a matter of government policy. We see this at the federal level with a government which would like to criminalize teen sexuality - or at least deny any sexual agency on the part of teenagers. And now we are seeing it in Ontario, with Premier Dalton McGuinty's latest ill-thought out policy which would create a special class of drivers up to the age of 21 who are required to have zero blood-alcohol when behind the wheel, and are not allowed to have more than one additional teenager in the car with them. As more than one person has observed, this policy will likely hurt efforts to have young people act as designated drivers, and certainly undermine carpooling efforts. It would also set a new, much higher threshold for adulthood than is currently in effect in Canada for voting, consensual sex, and the consumption of alcohol.

This isn't the first time that McGuinty - author of Ontario's bullying law - has attempted to use his power as premier to act in loco parentis to young adults. Last time it was an effort to deny driver's licences to students who dropped out of high school at age 16 - a decision which the law allows them to make.

At a certain point, teenagers and young adults need to be able to make their own decisions, and to face those consequences. That's how they grow up. The longer they are protected, sheltered or prevented from making those decisions, they longer they will act like oversized children. If we want our young adults to act responsibly, our politicians and parents need to entrust some responsibility to them, and allow them to face the consequences of their decisions. Sheltering them for longer and longer periods is simply going to increase the age at which they are forced - or perhaps it's more accurate to say "allowed" - to grow up. I shudder to think that if McGuinty's ill-thought out law had been in effect when I was younger, I would have been a 21-year old with my university degree in hand, but prevented by law from having two teenagers as passengers in my car. Heck, I couldn't have driven my two sisters to the mall!

It's time to ground the helicopters - for the good and maturity of the next generation.

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Ontario, Equalization and the Question of National Unity

This CBC story has put me in the frame of mind to write about an issue which has been percolating for a good year or so now, and is potentially more destructive to national unity than Quebec separatism (how's that for hyperbole?)

Ontarians, for a long time, have been among the most likely of Canadians to think of themselves as "Canadian" first, and a resident of their own province second. A long chain of Ontario Premiers have played the "honest broker" role in federal-provincial relations, whether in terms of trying to accomodate Quebec, or to foster national unity in some form or another. Accepting equalization is part and parcel of this broader approach of how Ontario and its politicians have seen their role in the country.

Many, especially residents of Atlantic Canada and Western Canada, have argued that Ontarians think of themselves as Canadians and agree to these schemes because, they argue, Ontario benefits the most from Confederation and "national" policies, and Ontarians play a determining role in which party forms the national government.

The specifics of whether or not this is borne out by the evidence might be debated. But the fact of the matter is that while Ontario's leaders have groused from time to time about the fairness of equalization and transfer payments, this has usually stayed at the level of a murmur. I think we're starting to see a very different attitude coming out of the McGuinty government. I also don't think this is just belligerence from Dalton McGuinty (and those who know me are aware that I'm far from his biggest fan). The recent trend of Ontario-bashing from the federal government is aggravating an already bad situation, and the rhetoric out of Queen's Park is going to get worse. I shudder to think what will happen when Ontario is no longer willing or able to play the role of national unity broker.

My prediction - Ontario will never officially become a "have not" province for the purposes of equalization. The figures might justify such a classification, but I'll bet a large sum of money that the formula is rejigged before Ontario starts receiving more than it contributes to the program.

So, how about that Newfoundland surplus and tax cut...

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A dental plan for Ontarians?

Well, not for all Ontarians, but Dalton McGuinty is planning a dental plan for the working poor of the province.

I have long wondered why those who run our public health care system don't believe that teeth and eyes are part of what makes us healthy individuals. Back in the 1960s, the Hall Commission, which recommended that the Pearson government create its medicare plan, also proposed including dental care among the services that should be covered. I'm pleased to see that a government is taking action on this file - even if it is forty years late. Frankly, I'm surprised that this issue managed to sail in under the radar during the election campaign.

I am, however, somewhat disappointed that the once-cherished universality aspect of social welfare programs is not going to be part of denticare. I recognize that it will make the program more affordable, but it will also make it a more difficult program to protect from cutbacks in the future.

All of this reminds me that I need to find a dentist, now that I'm back in Ontario, and seem to have survived my first term of teaching (which you can read as my excuse for infrequent posting over the last couple of months).

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George Brown, Dalton McGuinty and Rep-by-Pop

Why is Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty so upset about Peter Van Loan's proposed federal bill to alter the number of seats that each provinces has in the House of Commons - a formula which would create 22 new seats by 2014, with Ontario receiving 10 new seats, BC 7, and Alberta 5?

It's quite simple really. One of the main reasons why George Brown, editor of The Globe and leader of the Clear Grit faction in the parliament of the United Province of Canada, was a champion of the Confederation project is that he wanted to bring representation by population to the legislature. He was tired of a legislature in which Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) had equal numbers of seats, despite a significantly higher population in Upper Canada. The House of Commons established at Confederation was supposed to meet that demand, with regional representation established through the Senate.

The problem is that the principle of Representation by Population has been systemically undermined, usually to the detriment of Ontario, Alberta and BC. A 1915 constitutional amendment established the rule that a province could not have fewer MPs than it has Senators (hence PEI's 4 MPs and New Brunswick's 10), and a 1974 amendment created a grandfather clause under which a province could not lose MPs under parliamentary redistribution, it could only gain new ones. Had the 1992 Charlottetown Accord passed, Quebec would have been permanently guaranteed 25% of the seats of the House of Commons.

Currently, only three provinces have a higher average population per House of Commons seat than the national average (106,267) [for the sake of argument, my numbers are based on the Statistics Canada population estimates for October 2006]: Ontario (120,017), Alberta (131,287) and British Columbia (120,206).

I recognize that the Conservative bill's seat distributions are designed to take population growth by 2014 into account. It is nevertheless interesting to look at what happens if those 22 seats were to be immediately added, creating a House with 330 seats, and an average population of 99,182 people per riding. Four provinces would be over the national average (albeit marginally in two cases): BC (100,636), Quebec (102,255), Ontario (109,670) and Alberta (110,111). By 2014, this is likely to be skewed even more against Alberta, in light of that province's high population growth. But Ontario is still definitely up there in terms of underrepresentation.

McGuinty's position is even more understandable if you apply the national average to each province and see how many more seats they should have in a 330 seat House of Commons based on rep-by-pop. Instead of the 116 seats being promised to Ontario, it would have 128. Alberta would have 34 instead of 31, and Quebec (!) would have 77 instead of 75. Every other province, with the exception of BC, would lose seats. Of course, the 1915 constitutional amendment prevents this, but it gives you a much better sense of why there is such discontent.

Van Loan's bill is grossly inadequate as a form of parliamentary reform. While these provinces should have more seats in the House of Commons, the bill doesn't go far enough towards a truly equitable treatment. Moreover, there are other key elements of democratic reform which need to be addressed.

[Note: Please feel free to double-check my math - I'm a historian, not a statistician!]

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