Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Right. Because when I think of what Canada needs right now it’s more politicians. If you thought that the House of Commons wasn’t already an incoherent mess of bloviating bloc-voting squabblers, with about 20% of the 308 MP’s ever bothering to actually get up and speak, imagine what adding 30 more to the pile would result in. Other than the 30 more six-figure salaries with generous full-indexed pensions and free air travel added to the burden of taxpayers, is this the government’s idea of increased democracy?
How about this: less is more. We don’t want bigger government. We don’t want “more representation”. It’s already ridiculous to have a riding for Spadina street in Toronto, and then one for Lansdowne as well. It’s already silly that elections are decided before people in British Columbia even get to the polls because Toronto already voted. It’s already blatantly obvious that Ontario runs Canada’s interests without adding 18 more politicians to represent them.
There are 36 federal ridings in British Columbia with about 15 being represented by the Greater Vancouver Area. The Greater Toronto Area has 47 ridings alone, 11 more than the entire province I live in. Just because southern Ontario’s population density is the highest in Canada, why should Toronto have 15% of the say in this country? There’s a reason that the big smoke is called the centre of the Universe, because we’re all forced to revolve around it.
The main problem with representation by population distribution is that even if 20 million people lived in Ontario, it still has nothing to do with addressing the needs of people in other regions of the country. Each province has specific needs and regional issues that cannot be addressed by stacking the Parliament with people from Toronto. The salmon in British Columbia, or the ranchers in Alberta, or the grain mills in Saskatchewan aren’t helped by adding more representation to urban ridings in Canada.
Increasing the size of representation in the House of Commons is a 9.7% increase in the size of Parliamentary administration. It is safe to assume that this is an increase of a minimum of 10% to the expenditures of running the government. And the question you have to ask yourself is whether you, as a taxpayer, will be getting an increased value for that expense. And can we, as a nation running $20-billion structural deficits, really afford to add 30 more jobs to the public service?
What happened to those “symbolic” wage freezes? The average cost of paying a Member of Parliament who is not a Cabinet Minister is $157,731 a year. Increased salaries alone would go to $4.7 million, without including staffing, expenses, travel, and all the rest of the perks of the sunshine club.
Ontario’s “representation” would rise from 34% to 37% under the adjustment, while Quebec would fall from 24% to 22%. If you add in the Atlantic provinces, Eastern Canada has 64% of the vote before we’ve even hit Manitoba. British Columbia’s 7 new MP’s sounds impressive, although it’s really just adding more urban representation because of the population boom here, and raises BC’s national proportional representation from 12% to 13%.
This move is also sure to inflame Quebec, who would be getting nothing out of the deal by remaining at 75 seats, and nothing irritates Quebec more than feeling like they’re being excluded. The optics of reducing Quebec’s influence in the House of Commons while giving Ontario 18 new MPs could even precipitate the backlash the sovereigntists have been searching for.
“The Conservatives are unable to obtain a majority government,” MP Claude DeBellefeuille said. “The only way they found is to increase the number of seats west of Quebec.
“This reform is nothing but a partisan maneuvering at the expense of the Quebec nation.”
Spend one day watching Question Period – just one – and then come back and tell me if you want 30 more people like that working for you.
Adrain,
I understand your sentiment, but this will be one of the rare times when I disagree with you. It has nothing to do with the Bloc and independence or sovereignty as they would like us all to believe. It has to do with trying to make it so one part of the countries vote isn’t worth more then anothers. PEI voters get the most bang for the buck as well as the rest of Atlantic Canada. They are way over represented for what is available to the rest of Canada. Quebec is what they government is trying to emulate with about 100,000 people per seat. To reduce the seat count in all of the other provinces is not going to happen. PEI has a garuanteed 4 seats due to the constution. (Aside from that I would have no probelm rotating through the other 304 seats and rebalancing them through population)
The probelm as I see it is there is no equal allocation in the senate for the number of provincial jursidictions. If there was 109 seats in the Senate and say 10 for each province and 3 for each territory then there would be a balance for Regional interests and population interests as well.
Where the majority of the people live they should have more seats then where few people live, but that should be balanced in the other house by the provincial considerations as well.
Rocky
Then why can’t we cut seats to the proportion that they’re overrepresented? But yeah, it would be nice to have the Lower Chamber represented by population and the Upper Chamber by equal distribution of region.
Then why can’t we cut seats to the proportion that they’re overrepresented?
Sadly Adrian, this ship has sailed. When you can’t cut direct political contributions to the parties without precipitating an election, you can imagine the reaction of trying to claw back PEI’s Commons seats. I’ll have to throw in with Rocky, the more seats in the West the better, and if Quebec doesn’t like it, well that’s a feature not a bug.
The main reason being. I don’t think any government wants to be the one that cuts seats. So like anything they would need to have some testicular fortitude for it to happen. Because the campaigns would probably go something like this.
Conservatives hate (fill in province affects by seat redistrution) because now they have less seats. But they love Alberta, BC and Ontario because that is the only way they can get the coveted majority. (It just so happens that the areas mostly affected are not traditionally strong Conservative supporters)
And it would never pass in the house with a minority. Where as I think it won’t be as big of a deal to pass an increase in seats because as we all know by now. I am entitled to my entitlements, so more entitled people will be better. Or at I imagine that is how some of the thinking may go.
Where as there might be a little stupidity going on around Quebec on the issue of adding more seats the rest of the country probably won’t care at all.
Rocky
Rocky,
Your argument seems to validate the BQ assertion that this is nothing but a politically motivated attempt to secure more seats for a majority government.
Your argument seems to validate the BQ assertion that this is nothing but a politically motivated attempt to secure more seats for a majority government.
Or you could say, why does the Government of Canada hate AB, BC and ON? Their citizens’ votes are diluted compared to Quebeckers and PEIslanders.
Well, I think what I’m really saying is why do we need more MPs in a province where a single city has 47 ridings already?
Adrian,
It could very well be one of the reasons that the Cons are doing it. I happen to believe though that we need to make the changes for the change in population. That house whether we like it or not is supposed to be a rep by pop, so it needs to be more closely aligned to what the shifting demographics are. People that move to Canada generally settle in Ontario, BC and AB.
Rocky
The main problem with representation by population distribution is that even if 20 million people lived in Ontario, it still has nothing to do with addressing the needs of people in other regions of the country. Each province has specific needs and regional issues that cannot be addressed by stacking the Parliament with people from Toronto.
Adrian, that may be a side effect of rep by pop, but the alternative has a whole other host of problems.
To deal with the concern of a few people in one area being in control of other areas, I would say that is why we have provinces. I’m a believer in less centralized control for just this reason, and increased local control. Sadly, for several decades, we have been seeing the feds trying to take over more and more; trying to propose and shove national programs down our throats. I would like to see the feds reduce both their taxation and service levels, and give increased control to the provinces to deliver more things locally, paid by local taxpayers, according to the wishes of the people in the local areas.
With a fertility rate of about 1.5, we’re really adding 30 MPs because of an increase in immigrants to urban centres.
With a fertility rate of about 1.5, we’re really adding 30 MPs because of an increase in immigrants to urban centres.
Yes,
That is exactly it.
Rocky
“Then why can’t we cut seats to the proportion that they’re overrepresented? ”
Because it’s in the Constitution that no province can have fewer seats than it has senators. Therefore, PEI must have 4 seats, Quebec must have 75, etc. etc.
So the only way to change it would be a constitutional amendment, and good luck to any government that tried to cut the number of seats to any province.
No-one really wants more politicians, but Adrian, you just have not lived out west long enough to understand how badly under-represented people feel out here. It’s less so under the Conservatives for obvious reasons, but when the Liberals were in power, it was as though the west did not exist.
On the other hand, if we abolished the Senate, then there would be no minimum requirementfor Commons seats, so may be that would kill two birds with one stone, although it would still require a constitutional amendment.
Unless I’m wrong, I believe that the government cannot reduce the number of seats in a province without a constitutional amendment. Add to that the constitutional provision that says Prince Edward Island can have no less than 4 seats and Quebec no less than 75 seats (or is it 25% of seats?), the only way to get more representative distribution of seats in the HoC is to create more seats for the growing provinces.
I read somewhere that in order to have a truly representative HoC with these constitutional restraints is to increase the HoC to over 600!
The only way that we can make the HoC more representative without increasing the number of seats, and create an equal Senate, is to open up the Constitution. Since no one wants to do that, the only other option is to do work-arounds.
I don’t want more politicians, but my desire for better representation trumps that feeling.
Allright, so we can’t reduce the size of the House of Commons, but you really have to question the timing of this increase. I mean, after their big deal about symbolic wage freezes and everything else, to go and increase the size of the federal government at its highest levels…
I read somewhere that in order to have a truly representative HoC with these constitutional restraints is to increase the HoC to over 600!
Er, technically? Close to 1,000.
The thing is, are you getting more “representation” with more politicians? Or just more bloc-voters?
Quebec’s guarantee of 75 seats (and Sask and Manitoba of 14 each) isn’t constitutional. It’s merely an amendment to the Canada Elections Act, which could and should be junked, so that rep by pop can be adjusted downward instead of upward. Under the present rule, the House can only continue to grow until Hell freezes over.
338 MPs will be equivalent to the US House of Representatives having 3,400 members!
Apart from the fact that increasing the number of MPs will guarantee a larger percentage of voiceless ciphers and add about $25 million to the cost of running the place, I’d like to know where they plan to put 30 more. MPs are already packed like sardines into a non-expandable space. Maybe they can hang a few from the ceiling. (Hey, I like that idea.)
The real problem is that in order to pass a constitutional amendment changing the base numbers for certain provinces (*cough* PEI *cough*) requires such a convoluted process that it would never pass.
Until then, the only thing Harper can do is increase the size of Parliament until it becomes readily apparent to everyone that the situation is ridiculous. Quite frankly, maybe he should make Parliament 1000 MPs strong just to drive home the point that the constitution is dysfunctional and needs fixing.
Eric,
At the moment, the “no fewer MPs than Senators” rule has little effect. Nobody, for example, has ever suggested using the number of voters per MP in PEI as a template. If that was done, we’d need 750 MPs right now.
No, the problem is primarily legislative – mostly because of Quebec’s guarantee of 75 seat. If that was reduced, instead of increasing the numbers for Ontario, Alberta and BC, Quebec would be in no worse position than they will be when seats are added to the three provinces but, try to explain that in Quebec!
My understanding is that every 5 years, we have a census in Canada. Based on that information submitted to parliament, there is to be a Vote which will increase the number of ridings based on population, but this has not been supported especially by the Liberals, who have their power centre in Toronto. I used to live in a Conservative rural riding, but when the Liberals had a majority, they redrew the electoral districts and combined us with an urban low-income section which votes left (NDP or Liberal). In effect, it cancelled out our vote. I have been waiting close to 10 years for my area in B.C. to be properly represented. There are over 150,000 eligible voters in our riding –compared to what in PEI (35,000?? per MP).
Unless you live in the west, you have NO idea of the strong resentment that has been building over the years. Until this Conservative gov’t, all the policies pandered to Quebec and Ontario for votes. This action of increasing MP’s will, I hope help to reduce Quebec’s influence over the ROC, when it is clear they have no sincere interest in what happens to the ROC. Good move, I think on several levels.