House Hansard - 55

44th Parl. 1st Sess.

April 7, 2022 10:00AM

Apr/7/22 3:22:40 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-14

Mr. Speaker, the average riding size of the four ridings in Prince Edward Island is 38,582. Some basic math here shows that, on average, a vote in Prince Edward Island is worth 2.62 times more than a vote in my riding. How is this fair? How is this democratic? How does this live up to the principles upheld in our courts in 1991? Are the concerns of someone from Charlottetown worth 2.62 times more than someone from my riding? Should they be allowed to have 2.62 times the amount of say in the House of Commons? My riding is significantly smaller than the ridings of my colleagues from Edmonton—Wetaskiwin and Calgary Shepard. The comparison to these ridings is even more extreme. Obviously, I am not naive to the constitutional rules and implications that make this possible, but what I am trying to illustrate here is that there are significant flaws in the way seats are redistributed in Canada. Fundamentally, I believe that one vote in British Columbia should be equal to one vote in Prince Edward Island, to one vote in Quebec and to one vote in Ontario. This is democratic. This is what we should be trying to achieve in Canada, but this is not the case and it should be fixed. In 1915, the first change was made to the original representation formula by the adoption of the senatorial clause, which is still in effect today. This clause states that a province cannot have fewer seats in the House of Commons than it does in the Senate. It had the immediate effect of guaranteeing four seats for the province of Prince Edward Island instead of the three it would otherwise have had. It still has four seats today. Every 10 years when the topic of redistribution comes up, we apply duct-tape fixes to a spillway-gate problem. We are elected to the House to be leaders, to have a vision for our country that extends beyond the next time Canadians go to the polls. The actions we take and do not take have a lasting impact on the future of our democratic system. This is the mantle of a member of Parliament, for all of us collectively, and it is the mantle that should weigh heavily on the minds of every single member in the House. In 2011, the Harper government provided a lump-sum improvement to the under-representation problem by providing 27 seats to British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta respectively. This was a partial fix to our problem, but it still disadvantages those three provinces. On March 2, I voted against the Bloc Québécois motion that would solidify Quebec's political weight in the House of Commons by redrawing the federal electoral map. My reasoning had nothing to do with Quebec. It had to do with the lack of equal representation in my province of British Columbia. In retrospect, Quebec is the closest to fair representation that we have in Canada. However, giving Quebec one more seat under the bill so that it would not lose any proportionality in Parliament is a poor solution to an existing problem. The bill would make the under-representation problem marginally worse than it was going to be anyway. Once again, British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario representation pay the price. The reason the bill is before us today is solely in response to the Bloc Québécois motion. As an MP from the west, this drives me and, frankly, makes me a little upset. I predict that we will be here in another 10 years tinkering with this formula again, trying to compromise and appease the greatest amount of political interest. Alternatively, we could use the next 10 years to come up with a permanent solution that can preserve our democracy and last the test of time. Again, the Supreme Court, in 1991, upheld that representation by population matters. When Confederation took place, nobody ever imagined that British Columbia especially would be as powerful both economically and demographically as it is today. My argument here today is that our Parliament needs to reflect the reality of the changing demographic nature of Canada. Our Parliament needs to take into account where people are living and working. Our Parliament needs to take into account that all of our systems in our democracy uphold the rights of individuals to have an equal say in the House of Commons. What we are doing here today is a band-aid solution to a larger problem that we, collectively, have to address.

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House Hansard - 55