SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Ziad Aboultaif

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Edmonton Manning
  • Alberta
  • Voting Attendance: 64%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $109,026.29

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 55 - Apr/7/22
Mr. Ziad Aboultaif (Edmonton Manning, CPC)
  • Apr/7/22 3:33:29 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-14 
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with my colleague, the hon. member for Peace River—Westlock. I come from a province that for years was under-represented in this House when its population was taken into account. For years, Albertans felt there was an injustice in the way seats were apportioned in the House of Commons, until more seats were finally added in 2011 to allow fair representation for my home province. Canada has always been a place of competing interests, of give-and-take between provinces and regions. As a nation we have always tried to strike a balance, knowing that compromise is necessary but not always acceptable to everyone. In theory, we agree with the principle that each member of Parliament should represent a riding with a similar number of electors. It may not be a perfect system, but it allows constituencies to be more or less equal in population size and makes it possible for a member of Parliament to serve his or her constituents without being overwhelmed by the numbers. Of course, we do make allowances for history. No province can have fewer MPs than it does senators, and we have agreed that no province should have fewer MPs than it did in 1985. That explains why Prince Edward Island has four ridings with a population size of about 35,000 people each, while ridings in Nova Scotia are double that population. In Quebec, most of the ridings have more than 100,000 people, as do all the ridings in Alberta, except for one. We have accepted this disparity in the name of national unity. The system has worked well on the whole, and, as I mentioned, the number of MPs was expanded in 2011 to allow for more representation in this House, especially for Alberta and Quebec. I have to wonder, therefore, why the government desires to change the rules once more. As population shifts, so do riding boundaries and representation in this House. That is something we all understand and accept, or maybe not all of us. Looking at the bill, I wonder what sort of precedent it sets and what sort of message it sends about democracy in Canada. How do those who are already feeling jaded about the state of our political system feel about the rules apparently once more not being applied fairly? In any sports contest, the rules are agreed upon before the game starts. Both teams take to the field knowing what they must do in order to win. They do not pause midway to suggest rule changes because they have decided that the rules they started with were not good enough. I know that may be an imperfect analogy, but I am sure this proposal to redistribute seats and change the 1985 benchmark looks that way to many Canadians. Someone does not like the rules of the game, so they want to change them. The population of Canada is constantly shifting. Our cities are growing bigger. Some regions are attracting more immigrants than others. The reasons for demographic change are many, varied and complex. In this House we are tasked with finding a balance between competing needs or, more accurately, competing wants. The latest census data, as examined by Elections Canada, would see the addition of four more seats to this House to take into account the increase in our nation’s population. Given the increasing workload of members of Parliament, I doubt there is any member of this House who would disagree with the conclusion that more seats will enable MPs to better serve constituents. The problem is that under this impartial formula, Quebec would lose a seat in the House of Commons. Those from that province are understandably concerned that their influence will be lessened, though there would still be more MPs from Quebec than from the three prairie provinces combined and Quebec would still have more MPs than it did 20 years ago. What are we to do here? We could guarantee that Quebec would always have the same number of seats it does now, which is the intent of this bill. There are those who believe it important to recognize the historical importance of Canada’s only francophone province. Would that be enough? What if the population of Quebec continues to shrink? This bill would amend the Constitution Act, 1867 to provide that when the number of seats in the House of Commons is redistributed after each decennial census, no province would have fewer seats than it had in the 43rd Parliament. At some future time, will we want to guarantee an even more uneven distribution of seats as a tribute to what once was? What will the 50th Parliament wish to address, or does our living democracy mean that this House will only tackle this question in the future? After all, the House of Commons is the people's chamber and should be representative of the population across the country. Conservatives respect the fundamental constitutional principle of representation by population that was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1991. However, we acknowledge that sometimes, as is proposed by this bill, there are other considerations, and deciding which considerations are more important is a difficult task. This bill reflects a motion that this House considered last month, which stated: That the House oppose any federal electoral redistribution scenario that would cause Quebec or any other province or territory to lose one or more electoral districts in the future, and that the House call on the government to act accordingly. Coming from a province that will receive three more seats in the next redistribution and received additional seats from the last one, I understand the desire of members from an area of the country not blessed with Alberta’s growth to preserve what they have. The question we must ask and hopefully answer is this: Is this the wisest course to take? This Liberal bill preserves the redistribution formula created by the previous Conservative government’s 2011 Fair Representation Act, which added 30 new seats in the House of Commons. That was a huge jump in representation, much larger than the one about to be implemented, and perhaps set the stage for where we find ourselves today. Instead of giving a larger workload to members of Parliament and adding the resources necessary to do the extra work, this House chose to increase its size. How long can we continue to expand in this way? The Liberal government has made many promises on electoral reform but has failed to even start an honest discussion on what this House should look like a decade or a century from now. We should be having a longer and deeper discussion on how we want to govern ourselves. Until we do, we will be passing this same act, with slight amendments, every decade or so. Is that the way we want to run a country?
1163 words
All Topics
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border