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.

Second Reading

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, there have been extensive discussions on this topic and I believe we finally have agreement. If you were to seek it, I believe you would find unanimous consent for the following motion: That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs that it travel for the purpose of meeting with veterans as part of its hearings into the impact of the recent decision by the Conservative government to cut over $200 million from the Veterans Affairs department, that it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs to hold hearings in each province and territory, and that in relation to this study, the 12 members of the Veterans Affairs committee be authorized to travel within Canada no later than December 16, 2011, and that the necessary staff accompany the committee.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Does the House give its consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, there have been no extensive consultations. There have been two of these so far today, and the members are misrepresenting what is going on. They should not be saying there have been extensive consultations when they have been consulting themselves.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh has two minutes to begin making his comments.

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

Madam Speaker, since there is no use going into the topic itself in that short period of time, let me make a few comments about the government moving time allocation.

This will now be the sixth time in about 40 sitting days that the government has moved time allocation. It is fast approaching matching the former Liberal government in its 2000 to 2004 term of office with the number of time allocation motions it moved, although the Conservatives are way ahead of the Liberals in terms of the period of time within which they did it. It took the Liberal government of the day about 130 sitting days to move time allocation on nine different occasions. The Conservatives are up to six time allocation motions already in a little over 30 days.

We have seen incarnations of this bill twice in previous Parliaments, and each time there is a difference in the numbers. There appears to be a different rationale each time.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member will have 18 and one-half minutes to make his comments when this bill is next before the House.

It being 5:52 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

Bill C-20--Time Allocation Motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That, in relation to Bill C-20, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and the Canada Elections Act, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration at second reading stage of the Bill; and

At fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government business on the day designated for the consideration of the said stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67(1) there will now be a 30-minute question period. I would ask hon. members to keep their questions and responses to about a minute so we can accommodate more questions and more members.

As in previous question periods, members of the opposition will be recognized more often than government members to allow questioning from the opposition parties. Some members of the government will no doubt be accommodated as well.

The hon. member for Windsor--Tecumseh.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are again going down the same road which the government has obviously chosen to go down to thwart debate in the House, and quite frankly to thwart the democracy that the debate supports.

I want to put on the record again in Hansard that the Conservatives have obviously decided that they want to set a record for the number of time allocation motions. We are up to 43 sitting days so far in this session of Parliament. They are trying to catch up with the Liberals and are doing a really good job at it.

The Liberals took 122 sitting days before they set the record with nine time allocation motions. As this is the seventh one by the government in 43 days, I ask the government House leader, how many more are we going to have? On what possible basis can he say that we need time allocation for this bill which has changed quite dramatically from its earlier incarnation? There is a significant shift in the bill that requires significant debate.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the question, if there is a record being set, I think it has been set by the opposition. That would be the record for the most number of reasoned amendments ever in such a short period of time. Those are amendments from the opposition that aim to prevent a bill from getting past second reading. The opposition has moved such a reasoned amendment, saying that this bill should not go past second reading. The opposition has made up its mind. It has said that the debate is over. It has said that it is going to vote against the bill. All that is left is to allow this House to decide. That is the purpose of our motion, to allow it to happen.

The reason we think it is important to do so in this case is best captured in the words of the member for Hamilton Centre, the NDP critic for democratic reform, who said, “If we don't have those seats available”--the ones that are being generated by this bill--“for the next election, then the government has failed in terms of the promise they made”.

As we know, the census results will be released in February. The redistribution process will begin at that point. That means this bill has to get through this House at second reading, through a committee, back to this House for report stage and third reading, then over to the Senate for second reading, through committee, and third reading there, and then royal assent by the Governor General, all before the redistribution process in order to fulfill the objectives set out by the NDP critic for democratic reform.

That sets out the imperative of the timeline we are under, the reason we feel the need to move in this fashion to achieve those objectives. That is indeed why we are doing it in this case.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the government House leader, particularly when he was quoting me, which I stand by.

I think it is the purpose for all of us. We go through a lot of different processes in the course of debate. There is a lot of zigging and a lot of zagging, but at the end of the day, I think there is a collective commitment, certainly I know the government has one and we in the official opposition have one, to have the appropriate bill in place that gives our provinces and territories the appropriate number of seats.

We have a challenge in front of us. We have the government bill in front of us, which I believe is the third go-around on this matter. We also have the bill put forward by the official opposition. They are apart, but I want to say that there is a closer resemblance to our bill and where the government is now.

If the government is planning to slice off debate here due to the time limits, will the government House leader assure us that we will have adequate time at committee to do the work that is necessary, or is he going to thoroughly stifle all democratic debate on a democratic bill and deny us the opportunity to do the work we need to do?

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Madam Speaker, our government received a strong mandate to move toward fair representation in the House of Commons.

We have presented a principled formula, a formula that is fair for all provinces and moves every single province closer to representation by population. It is based on population figures. It is based on the fact that we have growing provinces. The provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario are significantly under-represented. It is important that we add seats to those provinces to bring them closer to representation by population.

Again, this formula brings every province closer to representation by population. We have made a commitment that we would move forward on this. That is exactly what we are doing.

The NDP members have already staked out their position. They do not even want this bill to get to second reading. They do not even want it to get to committee. They are talking about committee, but they are the ones who do not want this bill to move to committee.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for the House leader.

This is the umpteenth time we are debating closure instead of using House time to debate bills. I am wondering how his calculation has now come down to one day. Does that mean all future bills will be debated in less than an hour or 10 minutes, or is it going to be brought down to a few seconds? That is my question to the House leader.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is important that we get this bill to committee and passed, so the seats are available to bring Canadians fair representation and every province closer to representation by population as soon as possible. We ask the opposition to support us in passing this bill.

I have a question for the opposition. What does it have against Alberta, B.C. and Ontario getting closer to representation by population? They are significantly under-represented. As members of the House, it is our responsibility to ensure that every province gets closer to representation by population.