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.

Motions in Amendment

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am interested in the topic of political leadership and political courage. We are debating ad nauseam how many new seats can dance on the head of a pin in the House of Commons. We have a Liberal Party that for decades has resisted having real democracy on the issue that really matters, which is proportional representation based on parties. There are about 100 democracies in the world, but only five of them, all British colonies, including Zimbabwe, have our antiquated first past the post system.

The Liberals have resisted proportional representation. My question is this: now that they have 34 seats instead of the 58 that they would have with proportional representation, will the Liberals finally stand up for true proportional representation?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am humoured by the question, but the more important issue is the bill itself, Bill C-20. New Democrats have failed to participate genuinely in the debate on this bill because they have not been able to provide their numbers. All they talk about is wanting more seats, but they are not saying how many. My challenge, not only to this member but to all members addressing this issue today, is to stand in their places and tell Canadians how many seats the House of Commons will have under their proposal.

The NDP is the only political party that has not done that. Canadians have a right to know.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on the unfair Liberal approach, which would create winners and losers and negatively impact smaller provinces. Could the member tell us where and when Liberals have already consulted Manitobans and other Canadians on their proposal?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that I have consulted probably just as many Canadians as the current Prime Minister consulted back in the 1990s when he was in favour of reducing the number of seats in the House.

I suggest she might want to ask the Prime Minister which Canadians he consulted when he came up with the idea of increasing the House of Commons by 30 seats. Why was there a road to Damascus for the Prime Minister on this very important issue to Canadians?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I am absolutely delighted to join in the debate on this very important bill. It seems to be a spirited debate between the members in the far corner and some of the members on the government side.

The bill represents a commitment that our government made to Canadians to move the House toward fairer representation. In particular, it reflects our government's three distinct promises to provide fair representation by: allocating an increased number of seats now and in the future to better reflect the population growth in Ontario, which is my home province, British Columbia and Alberta; maintaining the number of seats for smaller provinces; and maintaining the proportional representation of Quebec according to its population.

We campaigned on those promises and Canadians voted in a strong, stable, national Conservative government. We received a strong mandate and with this bill we are moving the House of Commons toward fair representation for all Canadians. We promised that to Canadians; they voted for us, and we are delivering on that.

I would be remiss if I did not specifically challenge the member who just spoke. I was going to ask him a question, but because I was next to speak, I thought I would address it in my remarks.

I have coined a term for the Liberal proposal. It is a little catchy, and if members find themselves saying it later, it is okay; they do not have to give me credit for it. I call it the Liberal loser plan.

The Liberal plan is a loser because it takes seats away from provinces including Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the maritime provinces, but it also makes a loser out of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta because they are not getting fair representation. It takes the voices away from rural Canada and deposits them in urban Canada. It would take seats away from Manitoba, for example. I would be very interested to see the member go into rural parts of Manitoba and talk about how those people are going to lose representation in the House. That voice for agriculture, that voice for natural resource economies, that voice for rural infrastructure, that voice that speaks on behalf of wardens in rural municipalities, those voices are not going to be here any more because the Liberal Party would take those voices away.

In the province of Ontario, for example, we have very large ridings, especially in the 905 belt, some of which are represented by large representatives, as my colleague is pointing out. There are some very large population-based ridings. Those ridings would still be under-represented. A vote in that province would not carry the same weight as a vote would in other jurisdictions of the country.

I openly admit that the bill would still leave some regions somewhat overrepresented compared to others, but it would move the entire democratic system in this country in the right direction.

If we look at the Liberal plan, as my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills has correctly pointed out, if I live in Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Quebec, I understand one thing from what the Liberal proposal is. In absolute terms it would reduce the number of voices that would represent my province, that would represent my rural part of the country, that would represent my cities in Ottawa. That means that amid all of the voices here, amid all of what goes on here, in absolute terms those regions of the country would have fewer representatives than they have today.

I represent a fairly large riding. By no means is it the largest in the country, but the population of my riding is roughly 126,000. Its population size is close to that of all four ridings in Prince Edward Island. By that math, a vote in the riding of Peterborough is worth about 25% of what a vote in Prince Edward Island is worth. We have understood that. It is okay. Our system is not perfect. We understand that we need to correct it.

Bill C-20 reduces the number of votes in each riding in the province of Ontario and it does so in a very fair and principled way, working off census figures. It makes sure, as I said earlier, that no province is actually going to lose representatives and it also maintains the proportional representation of the province of Quebec.

That is why, for example, only a few weeks ago when the bill was introduced, Liberal members said that they thought we got it right. The leader of the Liberal Party is on the record as saying that. Members currently in the House who are making some commentary while I am speaking are on the record as saying such. That is why the bill, when it was introduced, received the endorsement, largely, of governments right across the country. That is why Canadians are supportive of the bill.

I would argue that the Liberals are playing a little bit of cheap politics on this. They are saying that they will hold the number of seats in the House of Commons at the arbitrary figure of 308. There is nothing special about the number 308, other than it happens to be the number today, but it was not the number when some of the members across the way were elected. It was not the number when a number of great prime ministers of this country served. That number comes as a result of a formula that has been in place since 1867, which was later refined in the 1980s. That is where 308 comes from.

The longer the current formula is in place, the more the electoral system in Canada, representation by population that we espouse, the more that actually becomes stretched and the less it becomes in actual effect in this country.

It is critically important that we move in that direction. That is what Bill C-20 does. If we determine, as the Liberal Party has, that it should be an arbitrary number of 308, and we start taking seats away from some regions and depositing them in other regions while still not moving any of those regions to representation by population, it would simply be playing cheap politics.

The Liberals are saying it is not the right time to spend money. That is very interesting. They did not feel that way on the per vote subsidy. They thought the per vote subsidy should be maintained. They were not in favour of saving Canadians that money. I am sure my colleague from Elgin—Middlesex—London recalls that debate in the House. We almost had a coalition government over that with the various parties, including the Bloc Québécois.

Ultimately, we are here to discuss fair representation. The Liberal Party members are being somewhat presumptuous when they say that when we add more members of Parliament, it will cost x number of dollars, because they are simply taking that average, but there has been no determination in the House as to what savings can be found. I challenge members across the way. I receive a subsidy to account for the excessive number of folks that I represent compared to other ridings, but I should not expect that the subsidy would be continued if the total number of electors in my riding is in fact reduced, and I do not. I do not expect that at all. I expect efficiencies to be found in those areas.

I would simply note that this all comes back to fair representation. That is what it is about. That is why the Liberal premier of Ontario has said that he supports the government's plan for fair representation, not the plan put forward by the Liberal Party, not the proposal put forward by his Liberal cousins, and certainly not the plan put forward by the NDP, which would probably expand this House closer to 400 members. It would actually move us much farther away from actual representation by population in the country, because it is also quite arbitrary in how it is put together.

This is the best formula. It is quite simply the best formula to move all provinces toward fair representation in a reasonable and principled manner. There has to be a principle behind what we are doing when it comes to representation in this country.

The growth in the size of the House of Commons will be kept at a reasonable level. I should note that all efforts will be made to make sure that the cost of operations in the House are conscientiously maintained at a level that I believe Canadians support.

What I will never support is to reduce in absolute terms the number of voices that speak for rural Canada, the number of voices that speak for northern Canada, the number of voices that speak for places outside the large metropolitan areas. That is what the Liberal proposal would do. It would hurt farmers. It would hurt our natural resource economy. It would hurt our rural municipalities. It would make a loser out of every region and territory of this country. That is why it is a Liberal loser plan.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to my colleague's comments when he said that there is a principle in the bill. I have been sitting here wondering, what is the principle? I know he will say that the principle is fair representation, but surely, if Parliament or the government is to engage in this exercise and talk about increasing seats in the House of Commons, is the principle not about nation building? Is the principle not about respecting the historical representation of Quebec in the House and in this country?

I think that the Conservatives have the wrong principle. Perhaps the hon. member would address that. What happened to the principle of nation building?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a fair and reasonable question. The principle on which the bill is built is to allocate an increased number of seats now and in the future to better reflect the growing populations of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. We also want to maintain the number of seats in smaller provinces. This is a principle. We do not want to take any seats away. We want to make sure that the proportional representation of Quebec according to its population would be maintained no matter what the formula was.

The bill would specifically add fifteen seats for Ontario, six seats for Alberta, six seats for British Columbia, and three seats for Quebec. That is in keeping with the principles we set out to maintain. It is also in keeping with making sure that all provinces are fairly represented.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, NDP members have put themselves out of this debate by not having the courage to table their numbers.

The debate is between a House of 338 seats or a House of 308 seats. I am ready to have this debate with the member in every province of our great country. I am sure Canadians will say very clearly that they do not want more politicians. They do not want more than 308 seats. They want the same proportion. They want the same fair representation. They will say that en français and in English.

The member does not have the courage to do the right thing that other democracies in the world are doing. When it is time for fair representation, it should be done through redistribution and the House should be kept to a respectable size. Why not?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once again, this is not about courage. I would argue it is about practising the art of the possible.

We have constitutional guarantees in this country that the member is simply not acknowledging. He is saying that we can set the number at 308 and we will make sure that every vote in the country is equal. He knows in his heart that is not true. He knows in his heart that simply cannot be done.

I could never support the member's plan. I would gladly go into any rural part of the country and debate with the member on this fact. His plan in absolute terms would reduce the number of voices that speak for farmers. It would reduce the number of voices that speak for tourism operators. It would reduce the number of voices that speak for natural resource companies. It would reduce the number of voices that speak for all the various rural municipalities in this country. In absolute terms it would reduce the number of voices that represent them here. I am totally opposed to that.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at committee when we were studying this piece of legislation, many experts and quite a few political science professors came forward to give their bit on how best to do this.

The intention of the legislation is to have representation by population. They were asked if anybody had ever studied the work of a member of Parliament outside of this place. Almost none of those so-called experts said yes. They could talk about the work of a member of Parliament inside these four walls and the work that we do on pieces of legislation and the committee work we do.

Making representation by population smoother would lessen the workload in the offices of members who have large constituencies. The member for Peterborough is an expert on that. Could he talk about how this legislation would help make that job easier?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member makes a great point. Elgin—Middlesex—London, not unlike Peterborough, is a mixed riding. It contains both urban and rural centres and that is a particular challenge.

As the member suggested, my riding is medium in size geographically. It is certainly much larger than some of the metropolitan ridings, but it is much smaller than some of the northern ridings and so forth.

The member is absolutely correct in pointing out that by expanding the number of seats, we will be increasing access for folks in each of the constituencies to speak to their MP and to do so in a convenient manner. The Liberal plan would remove rural voices. Those folks would have a lot farther to travel and fewer doors would be open to them.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with one comment that my colleague who just spoke said, which is that there has been a very spirited debate in the House today. Sometimes we do not see that as it is quiet. However, this has been a very interesting debate.

I have been sitting here all morning listening to the debate. I do not know if it is because we are talking about our place or our home, so to speak, that we get so caught up in it. Maybe that is a reason. But it raises fundamental issues in terms of how many members of Parliament there are, how they are selected, and what criteria is used. I do think they are important issues.

However, in looking at Bill C-20, which is supposedly calling for fair representation, I do think that there is an underlying issue that to me is very important, that being that we are dealing with a Conservative government that now has a pattern of putting forward legislation that really is out of touch with the reality of Canadians.

Last night we passed Bill C-10, the mega crime bill, for which there was massive opposition across the country. Every leading expert in the country said it was a bad bill and yet here were the Conservatives hell-bent on pushing it through. They brought in closure, time allocation, because they believed that this absolutely had to be done. When the evidence shows that crime is actually going down, putting more people in prison is a completely failed agenda when one looks at what has happened in the United States.

I wanted to preface my remarks today on that because there is a pattern in that we are now debating legislation that many people do not see as relevant to the real priorities they are facing. Here we have this bill on seat distribution and adding additional seats. However, it completely misses the fundamental issue in terms of our democratic and electoral systems, that being that the basic system by which we elect members of Parliament is fundamentally not fair.

It is not only a question of seats but also the way that we vote in this country, what we call first past the post. It is very revealing that when the government has an opportunity to bring forward these issues, it makes a decision to bring forward a bill that is actually flawed instead of focusing on a debate or a proposal to implement something that would fundamentally improve the democratic process in Canada and would enormously improve the way that people actually relate to politics.

All day I have heard the Liberals' position to actually take seats away. I am sure there are members of the public who might support that position.

What I think would be a good a debate is one that proposes proportional representation. Then we could really engage people and ensure not only fair representation but that when voters vote. their vote is actually counted in a way that is proportional to the aggregate votes for any given party. That is certainly not the system we have now.

It is hugely disappointing that on the one hand we have a bill that deals with the Senate that again did not deal with any issues around proportional representation, and on the other hand we have Bill C-20, which is at report stage today and will be going through third reading I imagine quite soon. It is a bill that will continue a pattern and proposal that is basically not fair in terms of its representation.

I am glad that the NDP put forward its own private member's bill that did lay out the important principles of what we need to look at when we deal with seat representation.

I am from British Columbia and the first to say, as I know my colleagues from the NDP in British Columbia will say, that B.C. has been under-represented in the House, as have other provinces. We understand that. However, when we look at this bill, even from a B.C. point of view, we are not gaining adequate representation. I think the NDP bill that has been put forward really addresses some of the principles at issue here. One of those principles is the historical context of this country and how it was founded.

We cannot deny the reality that we do not have pure representation by population. It is not possible in a country as diverse and as large as Canada. Many people have given the examples of Prince Edward Island or other maritime provinces that on a population basis are hugely overrepresented, or northern communities. We understand that. We understand that there is a balance.

In fact, those balances and those principles have been reflected in decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada and other decisions that recognize the history of this country. Certainly, one of those principles is the place of Quebec within the nation of Canada. I was in the House when the motion was passed in November 2006 where we unanimously declared a nation within a united Canada. That was a very important principle that was enunciated by the House. Therefore, in terms of recognizing what that means to seat distribution and recognizing the historical level of seats within Quebec, this bill fails on that ground.

The Conservative government chose to raise this issue. It chose to bring it forward on its political agenda. It chose to use the particular seat distribution that it came forward with. I find it very surprising and perplexing that it did it in a manner that is not consistent with the historical representation that we have had for the province of Quebec.

I feel there are some very sound arguments here to speak out loud and clear that this bill is flawed. If we are going to do it, should we not be doing it properly? Should we not be ensuring that there is fair representation, and should we not be doing it on the basis of fundamental democratic reform and advancement in this country?

Many of my colleagues have pointed out that we are now really one of the last remaining nations under parliamentary democracy that still uses first past the post. Why are we not having a debate on that? Why are we not seeing a bill that would bring that forward? Unfortunately, we know the answer. The government is afraid to lose what it sees as a monopoly that it has on the system that we operate under. We have seen that with Liberal governments before them.

I am very proud of the fact that the NDP has been a champion of proportional representation and has been in the forefront of that struggle to say that it is a fundamental reform that needs to take place in this country.

We are responding to a bill that the Conservatives brought forward. We have our own bill that lays out very clear principles of the way we believe this issue should be approached. It should be approached as a nation building exercise. What consultation was done here? What provinces, what people were consulted on this bill?

This is another unilateral, arbitrary, dump it down, and rush it through bill. Like many of the government's bills, it is recycled. This is the third time it has come around. There was a choice here if we were going to deal with this issue to deal with it in a way that would have actually advanced democracy in Canada, and would have advanced representation in terms of members of Parliament for the population. Unfortunately, this bill does not cut it. It does not meet that test or standard.

That is why we are here today in the House at report stage pointing out the flaws of this bill and saying that there could have been a better choice.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my colleague. She did bring up some principles, particularly representation by population and fairness. I had also been listening to the debate this morning and the speech by my colleague, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. Even though I do not agree with him, he has actually brought forth a principled position. He has actually brought forward the numbers so that the Canadian people can judge it.

I come from an area in Ontario that is growing very quickly. We are under-represented. We have brought forth a solution to that. What I am going to ask the NDP member right now is to actually stand up in the House and let the people of Canada know the exact numbers she is proposing to change. What is Ontario going to end up with? Into the future, she is proposing a change that would give one province representation forever and ever with a certain percentage. I believe that would take a constitutional change.

Could the member address those two issues?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to address the issues being raised by the parliamentary secretary.

If the member were to look at Bill C-312, which is the NDP bill on this matter, he would see that we have taken the time to lay out the process. Numbers are important for sure, but on an issue about seat distribution and representation, the process of how we engage people is also important. It is the process of nation building.

From everything that we can see in terms of the minimal consultation that was done, there is very little comment from the premiers. There has basically been no consultation with the provinces. This is not the way to build a nation in this country.

I reiterate, the bill is a failed approach. I think the NDP bill is a much better approach and response to this issue.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for my colleague. However, I would tell her that if she wants to be principled about the issue, she should table her numbers, not only for us but for Canadians.

Looking at the NDP legislation, it wants more seats for Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. We agree with that. NDP members want to respect the Constitution and they respect the Senate clause. We agree with that. They want to keep the grandfather clause, like the government. We think it is a mistake, but it is what they are doing.

In addition, the NDP wants to freeze forever the representation of the province of Quebec at 24.35%. The question is, how will these four rules add up? How many seats will be in the House under the NDP plan? We have the right as Canadians to hear an answer from my colleague.