My Canada includes Ontario
Ignoring for a moment the fact that Peter Van Loane is an idiot, and Dalton McGuinty is fighting a losing battle; Ontario’s place in Canada seems to be a prominent subject of discussion these days. For those not in-the-know I will summarize:
The Tories have decided that some provinces are under-represented in the House of Commons, and are going to increase the number of seats, in total and for these specific provinces. Seems sensible so far, does it not? The catch is that B.C. and Alberta will get an increase that brings their number in line with their respective populations; while Ontario’s increase will only go half-way towards that goal (a deficit of 10 seats.)
Expanding the House of Commons is tricky; provinces can not have the number of seats reduced, and any expansion is bound to create political tension. Space is of course also limited… which provides a convenient explanation for Ontario’s exclusion. It is also pure bullshit; if there was only enough room to expand the House by X number of seats and three provinces were identified as needing expansion then the fair thing to do would be to determine the amount of seats to be added based on space available, and proportionally divide them among the three provinces based on population of the total group (Alberta, B.C., and Ontario.) Lets say that the feds want to add 23 seats (thereby avoiding me having to do long-division)::
Ontario: 15
Alberta: 3
B.C.: 4
… which I guess leaves the remainder for Stockwell Day and the “derrr!” constituency. He’s only worth a fraction of a seat anyways.
Another plan would be to determine how many seats each province is short and create a total. Divide the number of seats being created by that total, and multiply by the required number of seats for each province to determine how many of the new seats that province gets.
Now while these plan makes sense (to me at least) on paper, there are two key problems with them. First, it doesn’t shift power away from Ontario to the Conservative base; and second, everyone loves to hate Ontario almost as much as they love to hate Toronto.
It’s pretty obvious by the way this plan is being implemented and Van Loane’s histrionics that the Conservatives want to dilute Ontario’s power in the House of Commons, or at the very least increase the power of their provinces-of-support. Either they all failed grade six math, or politics is influencing the process. This is really beyond the pale, and I’ve yet to hear a single lucid defense of this approach. Anyone out there brave enough to try?
The question is how far you want to go to ensure equality of representation - if everyone had the same representation as PEI for example (1/30,000 or so) there would be approx 1,000 seats in the HoC. The real issues are threefold:
1. If the current woeful underrepresentation of Ontario is so bad - why did it take a Tory government to do something about it? It’s not equitable but the status quo is worse.
2. Why aren’t more people criticising Quebec’s attempt to retain overrepresentation?
3. Why don’t we just junk the ridiculous formulas in the 1867 Act and replace it with a straight 1/100,000 formula (with a minimum 1 per province/territory) with Statistics Canada and Elections Canada doing automatic reallocations after every census rather than waiting for various governments to decide when the most politically opportune time is?
Comment by Mark Dowling — November 22, 2007 @ 8:55 am
also - there’s no e in Van Loan.
Comment by Mark Dowling — November 22, 2007 @ 8:56 am
Point 3 by Mark is the right thing to do.
It will not happen as it will require the maritimes and Quebec to give up the disproportionate share of power our crazy constitution gives them. (Quebec gets 75 seats no matter what and the maritmes get a seat for every senator.)
We have too many MPs already but we have no choice but to add more to get our fair share here.
Oh and Joseph … McG can win this one if we support him.
Will Harper dare make this a confidence vote ????
Comment by Ron — November 22, 2007 @ 9:59 am
Maybe Dulton should address the inequity in the Provincial ridings where cities and rural votes have a distinct differential value.
Oh, wait a minute, he was asked to do that and refused. Seems the over-abundance of city ridings works in his favor.
Go figure, a hypocrite, being a politician.
Comment by Fred — November 22, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
Dalton’s way, the “Quebec Formula”, would have PEI losing 3 seats, Nova Scotia would lose 2 seats, Newfoundland would lose 2 seats, New Brunswick would lose 3 seats, Manitoba would lose 3 seats, Sask. would lose 4 seats, and the Territories would barely have enough for 1 seat collectively among the three. The current plan and the new proposed one aren’t perfect, but much better and fairer than McGuinty’s 1/105,000.
Comment by Glenn Jamison — November 22, 2007 @ 3:20 pm