Partisan dreck: Seat Redistribution Edition

The new seat redistribution bill recently passed the House of Commons, awarding new seats to Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta. Rarely have I seen commentary about legislation so thoroughly skewed by short-term partisan and regional interests, and it makes me ill.

I'll get my principles on the table. I favour representation-by-population in the House of Commons. If there are to be regional counterweights in our parliamentary and federalist system, they are supposed to be found in a Senate (which could be revamped) and in the provincial governments (which hold most of the key powers these days anyways). As such, I have no sympathy with the claim that Quebec's share of the House of Commons should remain fixed at a given percentage (a provision of the 1992 Charlottetown Accord that was widely denounced outside that province), and would have no difficulty with reducing the seat tallies of the Maritime and Atlantic Canadian provinces, overturning earlier legislation, if the appropriate legislative and/or constitutional changes were made. As such, there has been a lot for me to take issue with in the craven pandering that both the Liberals and NDP (the two parties I normally vote for) have been engaged in by objecting to this legislation.

And today, Twitter is abuzz with more partisan dreck in response to John Ibbitson's column hypothetically allocating these new seats according to the 2011 election results. This is not a "Conservative windfall". It's a long-overdue correction in an electoral system that has cheated urban Canada, and particularly Ontario, BC and Alberta of their equitable share of seats in the House of Commons. A decade ago the same allegation could have been made that such a change would have favoured the Liberals. Voting allegiances change over time, and seats are allocated based on population, not the party affiliation of the seats being divided and redistributed. It's not like the Conservative party is able to take the riding of Crowfoot (historically the site of some of their biggest single-riding majorities) and split it into 31 new ridings. And frankly, if you look at the Ontario provincial election, there is extremely good reason to think that new seats created in Mississauga-Brampton would be fair game for all three parties.

If our political discourse is devolving to the point where we refuse to engage in what should be routine corrections to the electoral map, then our system is completely broken. Perhaps the most ardent critics of these changes should openly admit that they are inspired by the political strategies of Maurice Duplessis, the Quebec Premier so well known for turning the rurally-skewed electoral map of his province to the advantage of the Union Nationale machine. It turns my stomach to watch one of the key principles of how Canadian democracy is supposed to operate being undermined for short-term political advantage and media soundbites.

Also, a word to the NDP and the Liberals. Do you honestly think that the Conservative Party of Canada is not keeping a detailed dossier for the next election of your quotes of why your party thinks Ontario, BC and Alberta don't deserve equitable representation in the House? How about making winning those new seats your priority, rather than trying to prevent their creation?

Recommend this Post

I'm sorry, but too many people live in your province, so we'll have to reduce the value of your votes

I'd like to have something more pithy to say about the fact that apparently the major parties in Parliament have agreed to scrap a Bill C-18, which would have addressed voting inequalities that mean that Ontario, BC and Alberta are all underrepresented in the House of Commons. But at the moment all I can say is that I'm disgusted at just how broken our parliamentary system is.

It's bad enough that we don't have a proportional representation system. But the fact that now it appears federal leaders are too gutless to defend the principle of representation-by-population in the House of Commons is beyond the pale. The House was always intended to be the rep-by-pop house - regional or provincial balance is supposed to be the province of the Senate, and the Senate was deliberately created as a weaker body for that reason. It almost makes one want to consider moving to the Maritimes or Manitoba or Saskatchewan where your vote can be worth at least twice as much. Frankly, I'm amazed that Harper thinks his base in Alberta and BC is going to let him get away with continuing to stand in the way of democratic reform that would reflect the changing demographic trends in the country. Of course, their votes aren't worth as much, so maybe he's counting on it not hurting all that much! But I'm particularly disappointed by the quote from Carolyn Bennett, who indicated that the Liberal party wanted "robust provincial consultation" on the bill. About what, pray tell? To find out which ones wanted their citizens' votes to be worth more in the House of Commons? Rep-by-pop isn't that difficult. And if we're in a country that has decided to abandon this principle then, to paraphrase the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, this country is passing through a constitutional crisis without even being aware of it.

Bah humbug - this isn't getting me into the Christmas spirit.

UPDATE 3 Dec 11:15 AM: Interesting. A series of press releases, including one from the Conservative Party, are emerging to deny the details of Ibbitson's story. Was it originally true, but then leaks to the press changed people's and party's attitudes? I'd certainly be pleased to learn that this latest example of parliamentary reform dysfunction was not true, or at least being rectified.

Recommend this Post

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!]

Recommend this Post