44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 1, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/1/22 11:07:08 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Mégantic—L'Érable.
I am pleased to be joining the debate on this motion. I would have much loved to have been there, but members can probably hear that I sound a bit ill. I have a cold, so I cannot fly there and take part in this debate in person.
I want to outline to my constituents, Albertans, westerners and Canadians how the process works. There is a Yiddish proverb, but I need to introduce how this is going to work first. The Constitution in Canada requires a redistribution of seats every 10 years. This is done based on the political weight of the various provinces. Statistics Canada produces a census. That census was released in February with the data within it.
I have two interesting data points I want to note. As an Albertan, I represent the second largest riding by population size in Canada with 163,447 people living here. Many members will know that number is 40% bigger than what the original quotient average was intended to be. My colleague for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin represents 209,431 people in his riding, which is double the number of what an average riding in Canada should have. With that comes double the case files, double the emails and double the phone calls. Essentially it is double everything with the same resources and the same person to represent them all.
That is the life of an urban Calgary MP. Edmonton—Wetaskiwin happens to be one of those rare “rurban” ridings. It is both a rural county and the city of Edmonton, which is slowly growing into the county as it builds brand new suburbs, which can seen when driving north on Highway 2. That is the challenge of an urban MP.
Then we have the challenges of rural MPs. Those ridings have perhaps fewer people in them, but they have more mayors, more city councillors, more local clubs. Members might be surprised to know that, up until very recently, I did not even have a high school in my riding. Up until 2018, I had no high school in my riding in the city of Calgary. I know that is shocking, but it is not the case for rural MPs. They may have three, four, five, six high schools depending on how big the counties are and which areas they go into. Sometimes small towns have basically everything from kindergarten all the way to grade 11 or grade 12, just in their riding. That brings its own challenges in representation.
When we do the redistribution of the Constitution every 10 years, it is based purely on demographic weight, not political weight, all across Canada. There are four rules that are followed when we do redistributions in Canada. As I said, I have a Yiddish proverb, “Don't give me the honey and spare me the sting”.
We are westerners, and both of us represent provinces which are under-represented. The honey to us would be to have more seats, and Alberta is looking at three seats in this redistribution. The sting comes with the fact that every redistribution makes lots of people unhappy. There is always the case that not everybody gets everything that they would like based on the formula.
Let us talk about the formula that was used. The formula was passed in 2011 and received royal assent in 2012. It is called the Fair Representation Act. It basically acknowledged the fact that the fastest growing provinces in Canada were not gaining enough seats to ensure representation by population. Those three provinces namely were Ontario, British Columbia and my home province of Alberta. In this redistribution, the goal was to ensure that they would catch up in effect. That is why in 2015 we saw the addition of 30 new ridings. It was to try to get closer to what is called “rep by pop” and get closer to the representation that is mandated by the Constitution.
In this redistribution, the electoral quotient being used by Elections Canada is 121,891. Of course, there will be some back and forth available here in order to ensure that the smaller towns, counties and regions are well represented and to reduce to the minimal amount possible the distance MPs have to drive to represent their constituents.
In Canada there are four rules. The first is a quotient that is used by Elections Canada to determine how many seats per riding should be available. We then apply the senatorial clause, so no province can have fewer members of Parliament than it has senators in the Senate of Canada, that other place. Then we apply the grandfathering clause. In 1985, we basically agreed that no province should lose a seat based on what it had in 1985. There are slower growing provinces. Today this primarily impacts Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Finally, in 2011-12, we added the representation rule specifically applied to the province of Quebec in order to ensure that it would always have representation by population.
I will note that in this redistribution, the population of Quebec, according to Statistics Canada is 22.57% and 22.71% will be the seat count. It is trying to reach that goal of getting to an apportionment representation by population in that particular situation.
We have heard some of the challenges that exist in representing very large ridings and representing urban ridings, and the overall challenge of representation as a member of Parliament. I think it is very challenging. Every single formula we agree to at any point will have winners and losers in it, and we are always trying to go for that win-win.
In preparing for this debate, I went back to the debates that happened originally in 2011 and 2012 on this particular subject of how we could ensure that we did not just keep increasing the number of MPs, as other Westminster parliaments have done, because we have these rules we have agreed to over the last 40 or 50 years. However, it is always stinging when we have these changes that can happen based on a formula.
It is hard to predict what is going to happen just a few weeks from now. It is hard to predict what will happen 10 years from now. Economics bears a great deal of weight on how population movement happens in Canada. My home province of Alberta had a boom in the early 2000s that attracted an enormous number of people to our home province, who settled there and brought their families. We built schools and highways and everything. It was a very attractive point for people to move there, so our population grew incredibly quickly.
That is the case for British Columbia today. It is still the case for Ontario. The number one destination for a lot of people who come to Canada remains our major cities, and the biggest city in Canada is Toronto and the greater Toronto region, which continues to attract so many people because of the job opportunities and the economic opportunities it provides. It is also a great place to live, work and play, which I would say all of Canada is. We are in the greatest country in the world, and we should cherish that and make sure that whatever we do here addresses those points and continues that for future generations.
In section (b) of the motion the Bloc has proposed, it does not really propose a solution. There is no real solution here for how to fix the problem the Bloc members have identified. They say “political weight”, but I would read into it as preferably “democratic weight”, and it would apply to only one province. However, the second part of the motion does not offer a formula solution, and the Electoral Boundaries Commission, which is this independent commission, is already working.
It has already started its work. It has a website we can go to. There are actually commission reports. The commission has already started its work. It is already working, so essentially what the Bloc is asking here is to change the rules of the game once the game has already started, and it would be difficult to direct the commission to change it. I think it is still pretty early in the process. I do not think it is impossible, but we should recognize that since October the commissioners have been appointed and they have been holding consultation meetings already. By August, at the latest, they are supposed to write back and publicly disclose the maps that would be used for the next redistribution, hopefully in time for the next federal election.
However, if we go to the Elections Canada's website and the electoral boundaries commission's website, it is saying these changes may not be in place until April 1, 2024. This is a minority Parliament; let us recognize that. The last time a Parliament took it upon itself to discuss this, it was the 2008 to 2011 Parliament, and it was not able to finish it then, which is why it was passed in 2012.
I wanted to lay that out. There is a good logical case to be made that no province should be made worse off after redistribution, but we have this formula, a formula that received royal assent in 2012. It is the 11th hour, so to speak, and I know it is stinging for those who believe that no province should lose a seat. We have different constitutional rules and conventions in place to ensure that does not happen.
I will be happy to take questions and to continue this debate with colleagues in the chamber.
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- Mar/1/22 11:18:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Rivière-du-Nord for his question.
Canada was founded as a binational and bicultural country. The two founding peoples of our country were the francophone and the anglophone peoples. As my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord knows, I am a Franco-Albertan, but I am also a child of Bill 101. I lived in Montreal for a while.
I think we need to recognize that it is not in the House of Commons that we should be deciding how well we are doing and where the Quebec people and the Quebec nation stand. I completely agree with that. In fact, I always say that Albertans are a distinct society according to the description in the Lake Meech and Charlottetown accords.
This is not the first time I am saying this, but we must admit that culture is much more than representation in the House of Commons. The same is true for the francophone fact in Canada. We must recognize that many francophones outside Quebec represent our country’s linguistic and cultural duality.
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