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.