Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm afraid you've asked for lecture number four in Political Science 101, which is a 50-minute exercise. My view is that the House of Commons worked as well as it could in the context of the day in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Increasing the size hasn't changed it in

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, I don't think so.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The problem for the House of Commons is that we talk about it in terms of provinces, and maybe we should be thinking of it in terms of voters, if it's a democratic system. At what point do we want to sacrifice the principle of all voters counting equally? All Canadians choice of

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As long as we have these constitutional guarantees that essentially make equal representation impossible—and that's what the Senate four for Prince Edward Island does—the circle can't be entirely squared. But we can come pretty close to it, if we abolish the grandfather clause an

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Excuse me, I didn't quite—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, as I indicated in my comments, I think the grandfather clause is the source of the real problem. But the 15% rule was a previous rule, again, to avoid the hard question about what the real numbers should be. So if I were to take my principal position to its extreme, I would

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that's the heart of the problem. If we got to a stage where there were three or four much larger provinces—and you point to the prairie provinces as the case, if they had fewer seats than New Brunswick—I think you'd be coming close to serious constitutional issues. New

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't know what the point of it is. If the House gets larger and larger, I'm not sure that it would accomplish things that the current House doesn't. I'm not sure the current House does accomplish the things that the House did when it was 265 seats We're increasing it not bec

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You want to pretend. You want to play this game where no one ever loses seats.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I guess I heard enough comments from citizens at boundary commission hearings 10 years ago all across British Columbia. We have federal seats that are virtually the size of England and we have federal seats that are only a few city blocks. It occurred to us, listening to those

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, Mr. Reid raises the question of the size of the House and I'd say it's an important one. My view about this bill is that it provides for a much larger House with no rationale why it should be so. It's just the way the numbers work out. It provides for a House that will grow

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Fixing the total number is a fairly arbitrary decision. Parliament worked well when it was 265 members. It worked well when it was 295. I think that's a matter of making a decision. In fact, most of the other Houses that Professor Franks referred to have an absolute number. They

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I am, Mr. Chair.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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. Dur