Mr. Speaker, according to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, the anti-democratic intentions in Bill C-20 are based on the 1998 supreme court advisory opinion.
Yet, in 1991, in the reference on Saskatchewan's electoral boundaries, the supreme court concluded “There is a further, equally important aspect of the right, namely that each vote must be relatively equal to every other vote. To water down the importance and significance of an individual's vote is to weaken the democratic process”.
We remind anyone getting ready to question the rule of 50% plus one that in 1991 the supreme court ruled, and I quote “A system which dilutes one citizen's vote unduly as compared with another citizen's vote runs the risk of providing inadequate representation to the citizen whose vote is diluted. The result will be uneven and unfair representation”.
One thing is clear: with Bill C-20, democracy hangs in the balance.