Bill C-20 (Historical)

Fair Representation Act

An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and the Canada Elections Act

This enactment amends the rules in the Constitution Act, 1867 for readjusting the number of members of the House of Commons and the representation of the provinces in that House.
It amends the time periods in several provisions of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and requires that electronic versions of maps be provided to registered parties.
It also amends the Canada Elections Act to permit a returning officer to be appointed for a new term of office in certain circumstances.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

No.

Bill C-20 amends the Constitution Act of 1967, modifying the rules for calculating the province's representation in the House. The amendment attempts to exempt the Province of Quebec from the proposed rules.

The House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, states, on page 766:

An amendment to a bill that was referred to a committee after second reading is out of order if it is beyond the scope and principle of the bill.

In the opinion of the chair, the introduction of this exemption for the rules for Quebec is a new concept that's beyond the scope of this bill.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. It says here, “Bill C-20, in clause 2, be amended by replacing lines 4 and 5 on page 3”, but aren't lines 4 and 5 in clause 1 rather than clause 2?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We'll call this to order. We are here today, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, November 3, 2011, on Bill C-20, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and the Canada Elections Act.

We're in public doing clause-by-clause on this bill.

Opposition Motion--Closure and Time Allocation

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Macleod.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to today's motion from the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I also want to acknowledge the two previous speakers for their good work in the House and the privilege of working with them on the procedure and House affairs committee.

On May 2, Canadians gave the Conservatives a strong, stable national majority government. Canadians expect us to fulfill our commitments to them and that is exactly what we are doing. We are moving forward on our election commitments to implement the next phase of Canada's economic action plan.

There are EI measures within this bill that encourage job creation. There is the accelerated capital cost allowance for small businesses to invest in efficient equipment. There are measures to protect law-abiding Canadians. These important measures for the safety of our communities and for the safety of our children and of our grandchildren have been stalled by the opposition. The Conservatives would also provide marketing freedom for western Canadian grain farmers, something Ontario farmers have had for decades but the same privilege has not been granted to our western colleagues. There are measures to eliminate once and for all the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. There are measures to provide fair representation to all provinces in the House of Commons and move every single province closer to representation by population. As my colleagues across the way will know, we have MPs serving fewer than 40,000 constituents while others are serving four times that many. This imbalance needs to be addressed.

We have introduced legislation in this House on all of these important measures. However, despite the talking points being used across the aisle, not one of these measures is law yet. We have seen delay tactic after delay tactic. Each of these bills has been extensively debated in the House of Commons and at committee hearings.

As an example, let us look at Bill C-13, the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act. This bill would implement the 2011 budget. We on this side of the House think that the 2011 budget should be passed into law in 2011. Looking at the calendar, there is not a lot of time left before we get to the new year. The new year, 2012, is only weeks away and we still have not implemented budget 2011 because of opposition delay tactics.

This bill includes important measures from this year's budget, including a job-creation tax for small business. All of us in this House agree that small business is the economic engine of Canada. There is the family caregiver tax credit. My colleague knows first-hand how important it is to make it easier for families to care for gravely ill relatives. There is the children's arts tax credit and the volunteer firefighters tax credit. In rural and remote parts of Canada, it is important that we have recruitment and retention tools for our volunteer firefighters. There is tax relief for the manufacturing sector, as I mentioned, the accelerated capital cost allowance. The bill includes making the gas tax refund permanent. Municipalities are constantly asking for predictable funding for their infrastructure needs.

All of these measures would promote job creation and economic growth. They would help add to the nearly 600,000 jobs already created in Canada since the global economic recession. These measures were supported by Canadians from sea to sea. They were exactly what Canadians voted for when they re-elected the Conservative government on May 2, with a majority mandate. However, we know the opposition has voted against these job-creating measures. For some reason, it opposes these positive and important job-creating initiatives.

I know today's motion is about debate in this place so allow me to outline just how much debate has already been given to the next phase of Canada's economic action plan. The budget was introduced on March 22 by the Minister of Finance. Debate on the budget started before the opposition forced an unnecessary election. Following the 37-day election campaign, which was focused on the Canadian economy, we moved quickly to reintroduce the budget on June 6. That was followed by four days of debate on the budget in June before we rose for the usual summer break in our constituencies.

When we came back in the autumn, we introduced the keeping Canada's economy and jobs growing act to implement the budget. That bill was debated for four days at second reading before being referred to the Standing Committee on Finance. That committee found time amid its 2012 pre-budget consultations to study the bill. After it was reported back to the House, it was debated for three further days at third reading and report stage. All told, the job-creating measures of the next phase of Canada's economic action plan as set out in Bill C-13 have been deliberated in this House for 12 days. That does not include the two afternoons used for the spring's two budget speeches. Just to repeat, we have had 12 days of debate on these important and urgent economic measures in this House. It is time for action.

I want to turn briefly to a second major bill in this fall sitting, Bill C-10, the safe streets and communities act.

During this spring's election, our Conservative government promised Canadians that we would pass comprehensive law and order legislation within the first 100 sitting days after the election. Looking at today's order paper, I see that today is the 54th sitting day. Just yesterday, the bill was reported from the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The bill includes important measures, including proposals which would crack down on pedophiles who prey on children, and violent gangs that sell drugs to our children. These are all very important items that need to become law.

Despite some 27 hours or so of committee proceedings dedicated to clause-by-clause study and related business, we already have some 34 amendments to the bill tabled for report stage, which we will have to debate and vote on. I have no doubt whatsoever that we will see that number grow before the bill comes forward for debate on Tuesday morning.

After report stage and third reading, the bill will then go to the other place where the entire legislative process will be repeated.

It is fair to say that we are just about one-third of the way through the passing of Bill C-10 into law. One-third might sound like a breeze to some, but passing the nine predecessor bills to Bill C-10 has been anything but a breeze over the last several years and, in some cases, over three Parliaments. There have already been 95 hours of debate in this chamber alone on these proposals. In both houses there have been 261 speeches. That sounds to me to be pretty thorough debate already.

If I had a lot more time, I would go on about some of the other key priority bills of the government, such as Bill C-20, the fair representation act, and Bill C-18, the marketing freedom for grain farmers act, just to name two. Each has its own important and urgent requirements to become law this fall in order to meet timing demands driven by facts of life outside the House of Commons. Farmers need certainty before they plant their spring crops. Boundary commissions need to know what numbers they are working with, and they need to know that by February.

I cannot help but comment on the proposals set out in the motion put forward today by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. I have to be honest; I am quite confused by the mixed messages it sends.

The NDP House leader has put forward a motion that would give the Speaker only 19 sitting days to study his proposals. The debate he contemplates following the Speaker's report would appear to last but one single solitary day. If we look at the wording of his motion, the member is basically putting closure on his own motion.

On top of that, it is totally and completely ironic that the Speaker is required by the Standing Orders to put the NDP's motion to a vote after only two hours of debate in this House. This has to be the shortest debate on any item in the House since we came back in September.

In closing, Conservative members will be voting against the motion which tries to sidestep the fact that the opposition parties are trying to stop good things for Canadians, things which Canadians voted for just six months ago. The NDP wants to stop that great progress, to stop these things from becoming law, despite thorough and extensive debate and study.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the thorough examination and debate of proposed legislation on behalf of Canadians is an essential duty of Members of Parliament, and that the curtailment of such debate limits the ability of Members to carry out this duty and constitutes an affront to Canadian democracy; and, therefore,

that the Speaker undertake a study and make recommendations to amend the Standing Orders with respect to closure and time allocation, such that: (i) a Minister would be required to provide justification for the request for such a curtailment of debate; (ii) the Speaker would be required to refuse such a request in the interest of protecting the duty of Members to examine legislation thoroughly, unless the government’s justification sufficiently outweighs the said duty; (iii) criteria would be set out for assessing the government’s justification, which would provide the Speaker with the basis for a decision to allow for the curtailment of debate;

that the Speaker report to the House no later than February 6, 2012;

that a motion to concur in the said report may be moved during Routine Proceedings, and that only when no Member rises to debate the motion, the Speaker shall interrupt any proceedings then before the House and put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, every question necessary to dispose of the motion; and

if no motion to concur in the report has been previously moved and disposed of on the 20th sitting day following the presentation of the report, Standing Orders 57 and 78 shall be deemed to have been deleted.

Mr. Speaker, this motion has been brought before the House at this time because of the government's gross overuse of shutting down debate in the House, whether it is by a formal closure motion, which shuts down debate immediately, or by time allocation motions, which provide extremely limited time for debate on crucial issues facing both the House and the country more generally.

It is important that we recognize the effect of the motion. It is not that you, Mr. Speaker, need a greater workload, but that is the thrust of the motion. The motion would remove a government's unilateral ability to shut down debate in the House and would allow the Speaker, as an independent officer of Parliament, to make the decision as to when it is appropriate to curtail debate and when it is an abuse of the process. Therefore, a request for curtailment of debate could in fact be rejected by the Speaker of the day.

I have done some analysis of other jurisdictions that have similar parliaments to ours, such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. Going back some 20 or 30 years, all of them moved to provide greater authority to the speaker to regulate when debate should be curtailed, limited or ended. In each of those parliaments, it is quite clear that it is the speaker who ultimately makes the decision in that regard.

The authority is different in each of those legislatures but the general wording and conduct of the speaker has always been: Is the request for curtailment or ending debate an abuse? Oftentimes the term “of a minority segment of that parliament” is used. It may be a large official opposition or it may be a small third, fourth or fifth party, but the speaker has the authority in each one of those parliaments to make the determination as to whether the request by the government to end or limit debate is an abuse of the rights of the members of Parliament.

I will move on to the context in which this motion is being put forward.

In less than two months of sitting days, we have had time allocation applied to Bill C-13, the budget bill, which was 640 pages long. We were given extremely limited time to debate it. It is the only time, that we have been able to determine, in the history of this country that such a limited amount of time has been given to a budget bill. I know the government House leader said that we had some debate on this in the previous Parliament. However, we have 100 new members of Parliament who were not here and had no opportunity to debate this in the last Parliament.

It is fundamental to our process that a budget bill be given a full extensive debate. We can go back to any number of the authorities where that is repeated over and over again, and not just in this legislature, but in every legislature that works off the Westminster model.

We then had Bill C-18 dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board. This is an institution that is well over 70 years of age. It is iconic in this country. However, on two occasions, at second reading and report stage, we were again slapped with time allocation.

The Wheat Board and the farmers in western Canada were entitled to that debate. The opposition should have been given time in both the House and in committee to deal with that issue. We were given extremely limited time given the significance of what was going to happen if the bill passed, especially when the majority of farmers in western Canada, who use the Wheat Board to sell their wheat, oppose the bill. However, again we were slapped with time allocation on two occasions.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, is made up of nine former bills brought together. Again the House leader said that we had time to debate this legislation. More than 100 new members did not have time to debate this extremely complex bill because they were not here in the last Parliament.

The Conservatives have accused the opposition of delaying this legislation. On more than one occasion, the NDP has offered to take the part of the bill that deals with crimes against children, sexual predator type crimes, and run it through at all stages. It already passed through the House once before, so we were quite comfortable in having that done. On the more than one occasion that we offered that to the government, it refused and then slapped time allocation on the balance of the bill.

It was the same thing with Bill C-19, the gun control bill. We were given extremely limited time to debate an issue that is topical and very controversial. As the debate has gone on, more and more evidence has come out around reasons to not do away with the long gun registry. There was no opportunity to debate that legislation in the House to any significant degree.

Finally, Bill C-20, the seats bill. The bill proposes to make significant changes to the composition of this Parliament and again we are being limited to a significant degree in our ability to deal with it. I sit on the committee that is looking at the bill and the same thing is happening there. Extreme limitations are being placed at committee with regard to the number of witnesses we are allowed to call.

It just boggles my mind when I try to understand what is going on, and I think I am reasonably intelligent in terms of understanding it. It is a complex process that is being engendered now and it is new. It is not what was here in the last Parliament at all. The bill is a new incarnation of the process. It would make a very significant change and we are being given nowhere near the amount of time that we will need.

If we continue with the practice as it is right now, Bill C-20 will be out of committee and back before the House either by the end of next week or early the week following, when we have limited time to debate it here in the House and limited time in committee. The same can be said about the other four bills that I just mentioned. They all have had limited time in committee.

That is the context that we have. We have a precedent, if we want to put it that way, in other legislatures.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

As I said earlier, we have this other precedent. If the bill passes, it will mean more work for the Speaker of this Parliament and subsequent Speakers. However, we need to find a much more proper balance in terms of our ability as opposition members to do our job. Our responsibility here is to determine whether legislation coming from the government is appropriate but we are not able to do that in the amount of time that we are being given at this point. We need to take the government's ability to limit time and place it in the hands of an independent member and, in this case, that would be the Speaker and his successors.

Copyright Modernization Act

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I knew what the Conservatives have against this country's workers. After the tax cuts to large corporations, the subsidies to oil companies and all the inappropriate expenditures for the G8 and the G20—always with Canadian taxpayers' money—the government now wants to target our artists' income.

Many of the artists we love, admire and appreciate are not rich. The majority of them have a very modest income and, because of the nature of their occupation, it is not a stable income. They must accept contracts and work at many jobs to provide for their needs and those of their family.

In Quebec, the average income of artists is estimated at $24,600 per year, based on the 2006 census data. We are talking about $24,600 to pay for rent, food and transportation, to send one's children to school and look after their needs. That amount must also cover heating costs and the material needed to create. What makes things even worse is that, with an annual income of $24,600, Quebec artists are considered to be the richest in Canada. That same year, the average income for artists in Canada was estimated at $22,700 per year.

These numbers reflect the reality of our actors, painters and singers. Our artists are struggling to make ends meet. While all the evidence should convince the government to provide increased support to our creators, it prefers, as in Bills C-10 and C-19, to ignore the facts and please the cultural industry's big businesses. This bill is going to hurt artists and make them poorer. And they certainly cannot afford that.

The Union des artistes is worried about its members' income and so are we on this side of the House. How can artists continue to create if they do not have the means to do so? Copyright royalties are an important source of income for Canada's creators. This government must ensure creators receive their fair share and are paid for their work.

I wish this government would take out its earplugs and start listening to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, which is asking that the bill be amended so that artists are compensated fairly for the use of their creative work in the new media.

I also wish it would listen to the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada, which is telling it that this bill is going to have a significant impact on creators' income and that it needs to be amended in order to strike a balance between the interests of creators and those of consumers. Unfortunately, as with Bills C-10, C-13, C-18 and C-20, this government prefers to turn a deaf ear.

Passing this bill would have a very negative impact on our country's cultural industry, and it would have a direct impact on creators' income. Moreover, many people are worried about producers and publishers, who would not enjoy the same protection as holders of scientific patents.

We are not stupid. Canada's copyright laws need to be reviewed. Former Bill C-32 was reviewed in committee, but the Conservatives chose yet again to ignore the recommendations made by the witnesses who appeared before the committee.

This bill could potentially create more problems than it solves. That is why I cannot support it in its current form. Even the Union des artistes finds that some of the wording is ambiguous and that court challenges are inevitable. For example, they cite the concept of fair dealing for the purpose of education and that of reasonable grounds.

Why is this government still refusing to listen to opinions that differ from its own? Why does this government not want to work with all the players involved in copyright in order to reform it properly and adapt it to the reality of the 21st century? Such stubbornness would not be so bad if Canadians did not have to bear the consequences of the government's bad bill. Copyright in the digital age has to build on two fundamental principles: accessibility for consumers and remuneration for the artists.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government has not respected either principle. It is directly compromising the millions of dollars in royalties artists receive under current copyright legislation, and it is encroaching on consumer rights by adopting provisions on digital locks.

The fact is that this bill gives consumers rights they will not be able to exercise. The general provisions on digital locks will allow the companies to decide which legal rights can be exercised and which cannot. This unbalanced perspective will end up harming artists and educators. That is also quite worrisome.

I urge this government, the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, to review this bill in light of what was said in committee during consideration of the now defunct Bill C-32 and to listen to what the artists have been trying to get across, in order to ensure that this copyright reform is balanced and beneficial to everyone.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

So let's make sure that we're all onside with that.

I think that's a big change from what the impression was around this table. Based on what I've just said, which you've agreed is the case, I believe there is adequate time.

Secondly, in response to a question by Monsieur Dion, I would point out that even though you may not have been consulted personally, the former Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Kingsley, who wrote a report after extensive consultation, said these timelines were the ones that were recommended after consultation. It's unfortunate, perhaps, that you weren't personally consulted, but Mr. Kingsley did indicate to this committee that there was extensive consultation with the people involved in the process. From that I can only take it that he consulted some of the commissioners other than you. And the recommendations put forward in that report were also supported by the current Chief Electoral Officer, who said that he would be able to achieve all that was necessary with respect to Elections Canada's work within the timelines proposed in Bill C-20.

I'd like to get your comment on that, please.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

My concern goes back to the discussion we've had around this table for a number of meetings now, that if you take an MP who is representing a rural or an urban riding and that MP has 170,000 constituents to serve, he or she cannot effectively represent them even though they may have only five hours to debate in the House of Commons in any particular month.

So I think Bill C-20 has in fact found the balance, recognizing the MP's need to speak in the House of Commons on issues that are important to constituents but at the same time saving the MP's time within his or her riding to effectively meet the constituents as well.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for participating, particularly those of you who are participating via teleconference.

We've heard from a number of different witnesses over the last couple of meetings a number of different suggestions as to how effective representation by population should be enacted. We have certainly not found unanimity in the proposals we've heard. I would doubt that we're even close to getting a consensus. I'm not going to stray into that territory right now, but I want to ask all of you to comment on timelines.

What I mean by that is that regardless of what the final composition of Bill C-20 is, there will be boundary changes forthcoming. That in itself of course causes a lot of challenges to parties, because if seats are added, additional riding boundaries will have to be made. That poses problems such that the money that was held in one riding by an EDA will now have to be shared with another riding, because a portion of the one riding is now split. New EDAs will have to be formed; new boards of directors will have to be formed; candidate searches will have to be performed. I would suggest that once or twice we may even run into a situation in which an incumbent MP is actually going to be residing in a new riding. What happens then? Will the incumbent be considered to be grandfathered into the old riding in which he now no longer resides, or would he have to run in the new riding?

All of these are questions that individual parties will have to determine. It is they, of course, who will make the final recommendations to work out the logistics of boundary redistribution.

With all of that work in front of the parties, my question to all of the party representatives here today is, do you feel that if Bill C-20 is passed with the timeline recommended by both the Chief Electoral Officer and the former electoral officer, that is, to have legislation passed prior to February of next year, your parties will have adequate time to do the type of organizational work required?

Perhaps we will start with Madame Vallerand, and then we'll go to our guests via teleconference.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Let's call the meeting to order.

We are here today looking at Bill C-20. We are public and have some witnesses testifying today via telecommunications from Whitehorse and Montreal. We have some technical difficulties, but we're going to try to work through them.

We have from Whitehorse, John Streicker, from the federal council of the Green Party. Mr. Streicker, we will go with you first and see how it works.

Do you have a bit of an opening statement for us? Let's try to keep that to five minutes or less. Let's go ahead and see how it works and then we'll know from that how the rest are going to go.

Please go ahead.

Senate Reform Act

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate and give the Bloc Québécois’s opinion on Bill C-7, the Senate Reform Act.

No one in the House will be surprised to hear that the Bloc Québécois is of the opinion that we can do without the Senate and that we should just abolish it.

The Senate is an archaic institution. I heard members of other parties describe it as such earlier. I know that, in the House, we cannot denigrate the other chamber. However, I do not think that it is a form of denigration to say that, today, in a democracy, it is completely useless to spend so much money and have 105 senators who simply redo the work that was already done by legitimately elected people. That is the big difference. In fact, the House of Commons, with its 308 members, makes decisions and passes all sorts of legislation while following the procedure that should normally be followed here, which involves first, second and third readings. That being said, with the current Conservative government, this procedure is not being followed at all because the Conservatives are imposing time allocations for almost every bill.

In the beginning, the Senate, whether it was at the federal or provincial level, was put in place to protect certain territories. However, over time, the Senate became a place where the Prime Minister appointed friends to ensure a majority. That is what the current Prime Minister promised not to do but, when he had a minority government, he saw that he could change things by appointing Conservatives to the Senate to have a majority there. He broke his promises. He made a series of very quick appointments so that the Senate would have a Conservative majority. The Senate has thus become a very partisan place. I do not say this to insult the senators. Some are doing the best they can and are doing their work honestly.

I think that almost everyone, at least in Quebec, agrees that we could easily do without the Senate since the House of Commons operates in a completely democratic way with 308 people who, for the most part, campaigned and were elected democratically by the public, which is not the case for senators.

Of course, Bill C-7 seeks to ensure that senators are elected. However, in my opinion, the Conservative government is trying to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. It wanted an elected Senate and it made this an election promise. In fact, this goes back to long before the current Conservatives. At the time of the Reform Party, they also wanted an elected Senate. However, they realized that constitutional changes and consultations with the provinces would be necessary to achieve that goal. So they decided to resort to this process and basically tell the provinces they could hold elections and the federal government would then decide whether or not to accept the results of those elections. This is completely ridiculous.

I believe the government introduced Bill C-7 thinking it could avoid consulting with the provinces. Personally, I think that is the major problem with this bill.

So we are witnessing a Senate reform and also a House of Commons reform, since there is also Bill C-20 dealing with representation in the House of Commons. These two bills will weaken Quebec's position within federal political institutions. We know that, with Bill C-20, the government wants to diminish the political weight of Quebec in the House. As for the Senate, we know that Quebec does not agree with the government's way of doing things, but the government wants to have its way nevertheless.

The Bloc Québécois feels that the job of senator is increasingly becoming a reward given by the Prime Minister to political friends. The Senate as an institution is less and less useful to democracy. We are saying that the Senate should be abolished. As members will see later on in my speech, I have a survey which shows that Quebeckers fully support abolishing the Senate.

I remind the House that Quebec's long-standing position is that any change to the Senate must be made with the agreement of Quebec and the provinces. Quebec is not the only one to hold this view since the government began trying to introduce a bill to reform the Senate.

We can go all the way back to the late 1970s. The Supreme Court of Canada looked at the power of Parliament to unilaterally change the constitutional provisions dealing with the Senate. In its decision, the court ruled that decisions regarding major changes affecting the fundamental nature of the Senate cannot be taken unilaterally.

That could not be more clear. The House does not always agree with the decisions of the Supreme Court, but we must abide by them. With this ruling, the Supreme Court spoke loud and clear:

Changes to the powers of the Senate, the method of selecting senators, the number of senators to which a province is entitled, or the residency requirement of senators can be made only [in consultation with Quebec and the provinces].

That could not be more clear. In 2007, Benoît Pelletier, a former Quebec minister of intergovernmental affairs, a renowned teacher and constitutional expert respected by all Quebeckers, both federalists and sovereignists, reiterated Quebec's traditional position by stating that the Government of Quebec believes that this institution does not fall exclusively under federal jurisdiction. In a press release dated November 7, 2007, which I will table in a moment, this former minister said:

Given that the Senate is a crucial part of the Canadian federal compromise, it is clear to us that under the Constitution Act, 1982, and the regional veto act, the Senate can be neither reformed nor abolished without Quebec's consent.

He said it a number of times, on television and elsewhere. Benoît Pelletier has credibility in this matter. The same day he made that statement, Quebec's National Assembly unanimously passed the following motion:

That the National Assembly of Québec reaffirm to the Federal Government and to the Parliament of Canada that no modification to the Canadian Senate may be carried out without the consent of the Government of Québec and the National Assembly.

Much earlier, the same position was taken by Robert Bourassa as well as Gil Rémillard, a constitutional expert who was a minister and my professor, although that is nothing to brag about. In any case, he certainly had a great deal of credibility.

In 1989, Robert Bourassa said that he did not want to discuss Senate reform before the Meech Lake accord was ratified. In 1982, Gil Rémillard said that the signing by Quebec of an agreement involving Senate reform would depend on the results of negotiations on the concept of a distinct society, the division of powers and the federal spending power.

Regardless of their party, all elected representatives in Quebec agree that the federal government should not make any changes without the permission of the provinces, and of Quebec in particular, in the examples I just gave.

In 2007, Quebec's Liberal government took part in the Special Committee on Senate Reform. In its brief it stated:

The Government of Quebec is not opposed to modernizing the Senate. But if the aim is to alter the essential features of that institution, the only avenue is the initiation of a coordinated federal-provincial constitutional process that fully associates the constitutional players, one of them being Quebec, in the exercise of constituent authority.

The Government of Quebec, with the unanimous support of the National Assembly, therefore requested the withdrawal and/or suspension of various bills that were introduced by the Conservative government over the course of previous sessions, including Bill C-43, which had to do with elected senators. It also requested the suspension of proceedings on Bill S-4—which became Bill C-19, then Bill C-10—which had to do with term limits, so long as the federal government was planning to unilaterally transform the nature and role of the Senate.

Bill C-7 raises the same problem and it clearly shows that the government wants to act unilaterally.

I would like to quote a poll on the Senate conducted by Leger Marketing in 2010. It said, “The majority of Quebeckers think that the Senate has no worth in its current form and even more Quebeckers are in favour of abolishing the Senate.”

I encourage all members of the House to consider the opinion of the Government of Quebec, of the other provinces and of Quebeckers in this poll, to truly understand that the government cannot act unilaterally here.

[Dr. Louis Massicotte, Professor, Department of Political Science, Laval University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure for me to participate in your work, which deals with an issue I have been interested in for a long time. I followed from afar the 1974 reform, which produced the terrible amalgam formula. I was an undergraduate student at that time. I followed the 1985 reform much more closely. I was then a research officer at the Library of Parliament, and I was assigned to two parliamentary committees that studied that formula. I also appeared before your committee in 1994 when Parliament, in its wisdom, tried to put an end to the ongoing redistribution process. In addition, I also conducted a study more recently on electoral redistribution and Quebec for a focus group on federalism.

My opinions will not necessarily be shared by everybody around the table. My only defence, as the late Senator Forsey would have put it, is that whenever somebody honours me by requesting my opinion, he is in great danger of getting it.

I myself would prefer that the current formula for allocating seats be maintained, at least when it comes to the redistribution following the 2011 census. I think there are two advantages to maintaining the status quo. First of all, the current formula provides for a moderate increase in the total number of seats. That's a great improvement over what we had in the past. Second of all, that formula was not too bad for Quebec. It did not single it out on the basis of its cultural difference alone.

However, like everyone else, I recognize that this formula penalizes the three growing provinces significantly, a disadvantage that is likely to increase and is now deemed to be unacceptable by those provinces. It is also rather considerable compared with what is seen in other federations. The seven declining provinces have been unable to join forces to protect the advantage they gained through that formula.

Bill C-20 proposes a new level of interprovincial fairness in terms of representation. As it's been mentioned, the bill manages to do that by increasing the total number of seats considerably—by 30. I will discuss those two elements in succession.

When it comes to the proposed redistribution among the provinces, I feel that Bill C-20 is an improvement over the two related bills the government had previously introduced.

Henceforth, there will be three categories of provinces. The three growing provinces will remain under-represented, but to a lesser extent. The six declining provinces other than Quebec will continue being overrepresented, but to a lesser extent. As for Quebec, it will be represented in proportion to its population. That way, it can avoid becoming the only declining province to be under-represented. Any other province in the same situation will be treated in the same way.

Therefore, overall, we would be moving toward fair representation for Canadians, but not at Quebec's expense. That province is not to blame for most of the current unfairness.

Others are calling for Quebec's representation to be frozen at 25% of the total, or the level it is currently at. The motivation behind that request is the fact that a motion of the House of Commons recognized Quebec as a nation in 2006, and that a nation is given special treatment because of its status.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with that kind of an approach. My research has made me realize that I'm not alone in feeling this way, as I have not seen similar special treatment in other democratic federations, even those that are multilingual or have a somewhat multinational nature.

I'm now getting to the second element, the proposed addition of 30 seats to the current 308. That's a considerable increase. If we do the math, that increase would be the most significant one, in real numbers, in House of Commons history. You may recall that the 1974 formula, also known as the amalgam formula, was dropped after being used only once precisely because it involved significant increases.

According to a proposal made public last Friday—and I will refer to it as formula 308 in order not to make it too personal or give it partisanship undertones—it would be possible to reach an almost identical level of interprovincial fairness as the one proposed in Bill C-20, but without adding 30 seats.

In my text, I had looked into that approach without achieving results I would consider to be satisfactory. Therefore, I was very skeptical and critical in my study of the proposal known as formula 308.

After some thought, I agree that you should give that proposal some serious consideration. I think it's a worthwhile solution. I had some concerns, especially when it comes to how Quebec would fair under that formula. I see that Quebec has not been forgotten and that a positive aspect of Bill C-20 has been carried over. I was also worried about Manitoba and Saskatchewan. However, I see that they are covered by the 15% clause. I think this solution should be explored.

In closing, I have a comment about the population figures that were chosen as the basis for the redistribution. That's something that was not covered by those who spoke before me.

Bill C-20 breaks with Canada's political tradition, despite that tradition having been followed in the two previous bills introduced by the government. In its readjustment of provincial representation, this bill uses—for the first time—population estimates or population projections prepared by Statistics Canada, instead of census figures.

You should know that, based on the 2001 and 2006 data, the projections will slightly decrease Quebec's portion and increase Ontario's portion of the total. This decision by the government seems to suggest that the census figures are unreliable for establishing the representation of each province, but that those unreliable figures will be used to draw constituency boundaries. I am not against that change, but I think it needs to be justified more adequately.

Thank you for your attention.

I'm willing to answer your questions in either language.

[Dr. Ned Franks, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, As an Individual]

Thank you.

As often happens amongst the professoriate, I'm not going to agree with everything my friend Ken Carty says here.

I will begin by saying that I don't get excited about this growth in the House of Commons. I think there has to be a cut-off.

I apologize that I didn't have time to get my paper to you in time to be translated and distributed, but let me just read a few figures. New Zealand has a population of four million-plus, with 122 MPs and about 36,000 citizens per member. The United Kingdom has 62 million people, with 650 MPs and about 96,000 members per constituency. Canada has roughly 33.5 million people, with 308 members and close to 109,000 per member. Australia has 22.8 million people, with 150 members and 151,000 constituents per member. India has 1.210 billion people, with 552 members and 2.2 million constituents per member. Canada, under Bill C-20, would have 338 members, and that's 99,075 per member.

I don't look at that issue as a question of the cost of finding offices for MPs. I'm sure they can work out of their hotel rooms, as we professors do. But I want to suggest that with either Bill C-20 or things as they currently stand, Canada is within a zone--10% or so--larger than the British. That in my mind is about as high as I would like to see the number of constituents per member go, to address the question that was raised earlier about constituency business.

Constituencies vary enormously in the amount of business they have, depending on whether they're urban or rural; whether they're downtown or suburban; whether there are immigrants or not; and how many old age pensioners they have—and, for Kingston, how many penitentiaries there are. That's fine, but I would be concerned if Canada had 150,000 citizens per member like Australia, because I think you would get to the point where constituency business would be either neglected or too difficult.

I'm comfortable with the 308 seats we have now. I'm comfortable with 338 or 350, but I simply can't get excited about it. At the time of Confederation in 1867, there were fewer than 20,000 people per MP, and only a few thousand of them had the vote. We've come a long way since then. Fortunately we're not like India. We would have 15 members in the House if we had India's proportion. But that's a totally different system. I've done some work in India, and I've been astonished at the way the Lok Sabha works there.

The distribution of seats between provinces and territories is not based on rep by pop, as we very well know. We have what I call “legacy seats” in the eastern provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and New Brunswick. They are over-represented, and as far as I can see, they will be unless they all agree with the rest of the provinces of Canada to change the Constitution.

I want to point out some of the anomalies there. If we had representation across Canada on the same basis as P.E.I., we'd have more than 900 members of Parliament. If we had it on the basis of New Brunswick, we'd have close to 450. I don't advocate equal size based on the size of the maritime provinces to begin with. So I think we have to accept that we have anomalies. The northern territories I accept again.

I asked in my paper whether there were other grounds, such as the costs, the size of the House, the size of constituencies, etc. I don't get excited if Canada grows. I have a terrible feeling that we all feel that at some time—usually in the past—we lived in a golden age and that things have gone downhill ever since, but I don't feel that's happened to Parliament. In many ways, it's a far better place than it was when I first started looking at it in the 1950s, especially in terms of constituency work and the committee work of the House. I do not believe costs should be a major factor in determining the size of the Canadian House of Commons. The costs of Parliament are minuscule in comparison with the rest of government, and we have to ask what price we want to pay for democracy.

The last question I asked in the paper was whether the process of reaching and considering this legislation has been fair, open, and thorough. My own answer—and the government members are welcome to disagree with me on this—is that we've had a three-stage process. First, it's been about Alberta and British Columbia; second, about making additions for Ontario; and third, about making additions for Quebec. Then when I look at the materials I find on the web explaining this, I found an enormously complicated formula, which I don't even want to understand, that explains how we got to this point. I don't believe that's how we got there; I think we got there through a process of the government making a proposal, people reacting, and then it making another proposal. We have wound up in a good place, but having started my career as an engineer, I would want to suggest that normally in science, the formula comes first and produces the answers. What we've done here is produced the answers and then created a formula, so I don't really trust it, and I don't care whether it's good or bad—but it is irrelevant for this discussion.

Thank you.

I have one more thought. I am somewhat disturbed that this piece of legislation was rushed through Parliament with no public consultation before it got here and that there's a fairly strict time allowance for its discussion. I say this because our democratic processes are the core of the country.

Thank you.

[Dr. Kenneth Carty]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry I can't be with you in person, but time and distance make that impossible.

Let me say why I have some credentials on this subject. I have been a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia since the 1970s. During that time, I have actually had a good deal of hands-on experience with the issues of Bill C-20.

Initially, I started working for the British Columbia ombudsman on the legal issues, and then for the Fisher royal commission that ultimately led to the initial court cases on the constitutionality of boundary changes. Then I was a senior member of the research team for the Lortie commission, that is, the Commission of Inquiry on Electoral Reform and Party Financing. Then I was appointed by the Speaker of the House of Commons to be an electoral boundary commissioner for British Columbia during the last go-round. Since then, I have worked for the citizen assemblies in British Columbia, Ontario, the Netherlands, and New Brunswick.

I understand the aims and goals of Bill C-20and its intention to provide for proportionate representation in the House of Commons. I think it's an admirable goal, and all reasonable democrats should endorse it. After all, it seems to me that there's no reasonable or valid justification for several of the country’s provinces to be continually underrepresented and for their votes to count less in the selection of our governments than others'.

Certainly, as a boundary commissioner, I heard a good deal from ordinary citizens at hearings about how they thought the system was unfair and biased against their province and their community. However, I must say, despite my admiration for the determination of the government and the House to move to correct the imbalances that now exist in the patterns of representation, I have serious reservations about the way you're proposing to go about it and about what the bill proposes for rectifying this situation.

Let me put it this way. When I first started teaching Canadian politics at UBC in 1974, there were 264 members of Parliament. Then in 1979, the number jumped to 282. In the 1988 revision, the number increased again, this time to 295. In the 1990s there was another redistribution, and that led to 301 MPs. And then, after the 2004 redistribution, the number climbed to 308. Over the three decades I've been teaching my students about the House of Commons, it has grown by 44 members, which is almost a 20% increase. Now, as my teaching career is about to come to an end, there is a proposal to add another 30 MPs. to bring the total to 338. That is an increase of 74 MPs, almost 30%, just over the years I have been teaching at UBC.

One other thing promised by the bill is that the number will grow again after the next census and will grow again in the census after that. For each census after that, there will be this continual growth.

I want to propose to you that the time may have come to stop this endless growth. Our national House of Commons is now more than twice the size of that of our Australian cousins, and I find it difficult to think how we can justify this continual growth.

We know why it continues to grow. It does so because this appears to the easiest way out of the redistricting controversies and claims for representation that are inevitable in this important rebalancing exercise you're engaged in. We, after all, pretend that no province has really lost anything, even as their proportion in the House continues to shrink. The 10 seats New Brunswick has in the proposed 338-member House of Commons are not going to be worth the same as the 10 members of Parliament they had in the 264-member House when I was an undergraduate at the University of New Brunswick. Their role has, in fact, shrunk—although by not changing the number, we pretend that it hasn't.

What is really important, of course, is not the absolute number but the democratic principle of proportionate representation. I think it's time for members to take the bit by the teeth and make some hard decisions.

Seventeen years ago, the member of Parliament for Calgary West spoke out in the House, arguing that the House didn’t need to grow any larger than it was, and I think he was right then. There were only 295 MPs that year. I can’t imagine what that member, Stephen Harper, who is now, of course, the Prime Minister of the country, thinks of Bill C-20. The bill proposes a House of Commons that's going to have 43 more members than he thought were necessary in 1994.

I believe it is important for this committee to ask when all of this continual growth is going to stop. By ignoring the question, of course, you guarantee that the House is going to continue to grow indefinitely every 10 years.

Of course, to provide for proportionate representation, we're going to need to accept that the territories and very small provinces like Prince Edward Island have a Senate floor. But they account for only a very small number of seats; the rest of the House can be organized proportionately without growing it.

But--and of course there is a but, and it's an important one--we'll have to accept that the so-called grandfather clause is the problem. It's the reason for the endless growth. If we do away with the grandfather clause, we can produce a result in proportionate terms very much that like that envisioned by Bill C-20, and make sure that we're not going to be doing this again and again every decade and that the House will continue to grow endlessly.

My recommendation to this committee would be say that the House ought to stay at its current size. We're not going to grow any longer. Some provinces would lose seats under that kind of arrangement, however you worked out the mathematics. Under the proposed bill, seven of them are going to see their relative share of seats in the House of Commons shrink anyway. All but Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario are going to have a smaller share under this bill; only they are going to have more.

So I urge you to be the members who face up to what I think is the foolishness of the grandfather scheme that condemns us to an increasingly and endlessly growing House. It was, after all, a rule only invented by the members of Parliament in the 1980s, and I think it's your challenge to decide that it's a rule that hasn't served us well and that it's time for you to create your own rule.

No doubt there will be some outcry against such a determined and quite sensible action, but it won't come from ordinary voters. I predict they'll salute the members of the House who put an end to this endless growth.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee.

[Dr. Andrew Sancton]

I would like to make a quick defensive comment, as an electoral boundaries commissioner for Ontario. When we're talking about the population in Brampton West, or these ridings, I wish people would look at the populations as they were in 2001, not as they were in 2006, or as they are in 2011. The point is, we drew those boundaries equal in population back in those times. That's why we're having another process to fix them. We would be doing that even if you were not debating Bill C-20.

It is true that in northern Ontario, we made special provisions. It's also true that in Prince Edward Island, they have many smaller constituencies. You cannot do anything about that. That's entrenched in the Constitution, which cannot be changed unless you have unanimous agreement of the provinces. What I'm asking you to do is to fix the things that you can deal with. You can make it more equal. The electoral boundaries commissions will make the individual constituencies more equal the next time around.