44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 15, 2022 02:00PM
- Jun/15/22 2:11:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, “Expect No Warning” is the motto of the HMCS Victoria, the namesake for the Royal Canadian Sea Cadet Corps 344. On June 16, the cadet corps will be meeting for the first time since the pandemic to recognize with medals three deserving cadets: Chief Petty Officer Jayden Traimany, Chief Petty Officer Pablo Silva and Petty Officer Miguel Sharif.
For over 20 years, this cadet corps has been making an impact and will once again be on military inspection and parade ceremony. I want to recognize cadet instructors leading these fine young cadets, including Navy Lieutenant Geoff Kneller, Navy Lieutenant Buchanan, Sub-Lieutenant Jolliffe, Acting Sub-Lieutenant Lajtaka and their instructor Glen Ellaschuk. The cadet program offers youth an opportunity to gain leadership skills and build confidence in their abilities and teaches them the value of discipline. A career in the navy is a worthy life's pursuit.
I give a big congratulations to the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets Corps 344, to the deserving medal recipients and to the families that make this program possible. While they are cadets today, there are oceans of opportunity to trade up the uniform for the navy’s motto “Ready, Aye Ready”.
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moved:
That Bill C-14 be amended by deleting the alternative title.
He said: Madam Speaker, as always, it is a privilege to rise in the House on behalf of my constituents. I will try to be brief and not use up all of my speaking time. I hope that other members will be happy to hear that.
I think we all agree that no one province in our beautiful country should lose a seat when electoral boundaries are redistributed, usually following the census every 10 years. This is essentially how things have been done since our country was formed in 1867.
The last time that a province lost a seat in the House of Commons was in 1966. There was a redistribution in the 1990s, which led to the creation of a third territory, with its own laws and a distinct identity, but that was a unique situation, so I am not counting that.
In reviewing past legislation, I noted only two instances where the number of seats was reduced between elections. A lot of changes were made over a number of years, especially prior to the 1970s, when the process of amending the number of seats was very different from the process in the House today. I will elaborate on that later.
As I said at second reading, the issue was extending the 1985 grandfather clause to the 43rd Parliament. That clause promised that no province would dip below the number of seats held in 1985. That was discussed in committee, and we are now debating a small amendment that I proposed. Essentially, the government is proposing to extend this grandfather clause to the 43rd Parliament, which I agree with, of course.
The three Canadian provinces with the strongest demographic growth are British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. Even with these changes, however, they will continue to be under-represented in the House of Commons.
In 1985, British Columbia had 32 seats, Alberta had 26 and Ontario had 99. At the time of the election in 2019, British Columbia had 42 seats, Alberta had 34 and Ontario had 121. Even with these changes, Ontario will be the most under-represented province in the House of Commons.
I will call the changes proposed in 2012 the Harper formula in honour of the prime minister of the day. The current government is still using the Harper formula because I honestly think it had a lot of good ideas. The Harper formula gave my province, Alberta, and its population nine more seats in the House. That brings us much closer to the proportional representation by population that many Albertans want. I believe they are about 0.5% apart, so we are very close.
British Columbia will continue to be under-represented. It will have only 12.5% of the seats with 13.68% of the population. Even with the grandfather clause from 1985, which will be pushed to the 43rd Parliament, in the next 10, 20 or 30 years this Parliament will have to carry out a more balanced redistribution for Canadians and western Canadians, because our population is growing quickly.
Ontario, the largest province in this country, was the largest province at Confederation. It is still the largest province, and that will not change in the future. Toronto will certainly continue to be the largest city in our country. With each redistribution by the House of Commons, Toronto will post the greatest gains when we ask the province of Ontario how many seats it should have.
I also believe that each redistribution creates tensions among members representing the major cities and those representing the smaller cities and the regions.
There are several commissions that are working on it or that have already produced maps—a first draft, if you will—and they are the commissions in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. I do not think that Manitoba has returned its maps yet. Ontario has not. In Quebec, of course, the commission is waiting to see whether this bill will be passed. It is the Senate that will examine the issue and decide whether the content of this bill is to the liking of senators. In practice, I think only Nova Scotia has published its maps so far.
This has resulted in a major debate in the House, because representing a region, a territory or a group of small towns or villages is very different. I have colleagues who represent regions that have 20 mayors or 30 boards of directors to talk to. I do not even have one. As I said in the House, until 2019, I did not even have a high school in my riding. Even though I had the largest riding in Calgary, I did not have a public high school, a Catholic school, a private school or a charter school. The first school opened a few years ago, just before the pandemic. My colleagues were surprised that there could be a riding in a big city like Calgary that did not have a high school. That has changed, but I still have only one. I do not have a legion in my riding either. I have colleagues who have 10, 15, 20 or 25 events in their riding on Remembrance Day.
Representing a region is very different from representing a riding in a big metropolitan area like Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary or Edmonton. We need different strategies to represent our constituents well.
I said this during the debates at second reading of this bill, but I will say it again because I promised my constituents. On October 29, I wrote an article on a website called Substack. I sent it to the 8,500 constituents who subscribe to the newsletter I send out every Friday. I told them that, if the Liberal government proposed changes to how boundaries are drawn and seats distributed in the House of Commons, I would speak in favour of the principle of representation by population, because that really is extremely important in western Canada.
In the beginning, when Alberta joined the Confederation created by this Parliament, we had seven seats, as did British Columbia. Since then, of course, our province has grown. There are 4.3 to 4.4 million Albertans in our province. I almost said “in our country” because, as I often say, we are a distinct society. I know my Quebec colleagues appreciate that. I know the repercussions. I am thinking of the Charlottetown Accord, the great debates of the 1980s and 1990s in Quebec, and the major Constitutional debates.
I want to make sure that, once again, I do what I promised my constituents. In the future, the next time seats in the House of Commons are redistributed, Parliament is going to have to take a hard look at representation by population for the people of western Canada. This is really important. We cannot have a country where western Canadians are so under-represented. I think we can all agree to a small difference of 0.5%. That is reasonable. We can absolutely do that. However, no one knows where the Canadian population is going to go in the next few years. No one knows what the economy will look like, or which parts of the country will be more attractive than others.
Once again, I want to say that I agree with this bill. It is a lean bill that reduces changes to the redistribution of seats in the House of Commons, so I support this bill.
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Madam Speaker, I would simply like to remind the member that the Charlottetown accord, which guaranteed that Quebec would never have less than 25% of the total number of seats in the House of Commons, was rejected by 58% of Quebeckers during a national referendum.
I would also like to quickly tell him that we cannot blame Albertans for the mistakes of Ontarians.
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Madam Speaker, it is a wonderful question. I do not think they use proportional voting in the member's own party.
I will mention this: My colleagues know me to be a contrarian, and perhaps it will surprise the member for Elmwood—Transcona that I actually voted in the 2003 merger between the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. I was a young Canadian Alliance activist, and I voted no.
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Madam Speaker, I did mention it. There have been Supreme Court decisions and lower court decisions on this. In Canada, what is most important is what is called effective representation. In court decisions, that has been the way to nuance representation by population, which were the great debates that led to eventual Confederation in 1867. The courts have found that effective representation is a concept that goes beyond that: It asks if a member of Parliament can effectively represent their communities. These are not just a number on a map, and include a whole bunch of communities. It is asking if they can they get around, listen to their constituents and then report back to Ottawa. That is the way it is supposed to work, as opposed to what is often done here, which is that someone stays in Ottawa and then reports back on how good Ottawa is to their place of origin. It should be the other way around.
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