Madam Speaker, there is an amendment before us from the Bloc Québécois to defeat this bill at second reading, so it my honour to speak to that amendment and to the broader bill behind the amendment, Bill C-12, the Democratic Representation Act.
My party is supporting the bill and the Bloc clearly is not. Therefore, my comments today are directed toward the Liberals and the New Democrats.
Before I begin, I am splitting my time with the member for Edmonton—St. Albert.
For my colleagues across the aisle, this is one of the most important pieces of legislation introduced into the House of Commons in the last 10 years. It is so important because it ensures compliance with a fundamental constitutional principle, and that is representation by population in this chamber.
The idea in the Constitution is that this is the people's chamber and this principle is fundamental to democracy and an essential element of the Canadian Constitution. Representation by population is the notion that all Canadian citizens are equal and they all should have an equal say in who governs our country.
It is fundamental to our system of government. It is a founding principle of Confederation. In fact, it was the war cry of George Brown, who was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1857, and post-Confederation, to 1873. He fought for that principle in the United Province of Canada and subsequently in Confederation. It was on that agreement, in part, that Confederation was forged.
Today, however, we have gone a long way from that founding constitutional principle. The gap between how many voters an MP represents in a fast-growing province, such as Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, has never been bigger. The gap today is bigger than at any other point in our country's history since 1867.
Under the current formula by which the seats have been distributed in this very chamber, we have reached a point where the difference between the fast-growing populations in provinces such as Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario and the slower-growing regions has undermined the very principle of representation by population. For example, an MP in the House from Ontario, B.C. or Alberta represents, on average, 26,000 more Canadians than an MP from any of the other 7 provinces.
I acknowledge two other constitutional conditions on representation by population: the senatorial floor and the grandfather clause. The senatorial floor ensures that there must be at least as many members in this chamber from a particular provincial division as there are senators represented in the next chamber. The grandfather clause in section 51 ensures that in no circumstance can the number of MPs in any provincial division fall below the number of MPs that the provincial division had in place in 1986.
While the Constitution contains these two conditions on representation by population, the essential element is there and the essential element is clear and overwhelming that this chamber should be representative of the population of each provincial division.
The current situation may very well be unconstitutional. In 1991 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on proposed changes to the electoral boundaries in the provincial division of Saskatchewan. The court stated:
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.
When MPs from faster and larger-growing provinces represent tens of thousands more constituents than their colleagues from smaller provinces, it is a violation of the fundamental constitutional principle of representation by population. It is also a denial of a voice for new Canadians and for visible minorities. That fact is when we look at the 30 most populous ridings in the country, more than half of them have greater than 25% visible minority populations. The fact is these 30 largest ridings are disproportionately from Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Those ridings are disproportionately made up of new Canadians and visible minorities.
Denying these rapidly-growing regions new seats is to deny new Canadians, and visible minorities in particular, a voice in this chamber. The new Canada is growing, the new Canada needs a voice and the new Canada wants in. This is where the democratic representation act comes in.
By bringing faster-growing regions closer to representation by population in the House, Bill C-12 would restore the balance in this chamber. By adding seats to faster-growing regions, the gap in average riding populations in the country will be reduced.
For my New Democrat and Liberal colleagues, the longer we wait to make these changes, the more difficult, the more politically tenuous, they will become. The longer we wait to address this inequity, the more difficult it will be to achieve politically, because the gap will only continue to grow.
Population projections confirm this. The GTA, the region which I represent, has eight million people. It is going to grow by 50% in the next 20 years. The greater Toronto area will go from 8 million Canadians to 12 million Canadians by 2031. The same story can be told of Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
The number of visible minorities in the country will also continue to grow. In fact, Statistics Canada recently released a report that said by 2031, one in three Canadians would be a visible minority, up to 14.4 million citizens.
The effects of this imbalance are very real. They are real for Canadians in faster-growing provinces whose voices are not in this chamber, whose voices are not represented here and whose voices are not heard as strongly as they should be. By allowing under-representation to continue, we are sending a signal to these Canadians that their interests are not as important as those from other regions of the country and that they somehow count for less.
This act would strike a good balance between providing fair representation for those slower-growing provinces and recognizing the galloping heterogeneity of the new Canada. It would recognize the demographic realities in faster growing regions of the country.
I encourage my Liberal and New Democratic colleagues to support the bill, to defeat the amendment in front of us and to restore the fundamental constitutional principle, representation by population.
Provinces like Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario have experienced significant population growth and that trend needs to be reflected in the makeup of the House. Under this bill, all other provinces and territories would have their seat counts protected and would continue to enjoy better representation than the three faster-growing provinces. They would continue to be better represented in the House than the three faster-growing provinces.
This act strikes a good balance between the different interests across the country and restores a fundamental constitutional principle.