Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's remarks with interest, but I have to disagree with him. The fundamental constitutional principle of the House is representation by population.
Prior to Confederation, it was not. In fact, between 1840 and 1867, under the Act of Union that created the Province of Canada, the principle was not representation by population. The legislature of that day was divided into two equal halves, administratively, between Canada East and Canada West. Each of those regions had 50% of the seats in the House, and as Ontario, or Canada West at the time, moved from being a very sparsely populated area to being a much more heavily populated area, the representation for Canada West went from being over-represented to underrepresented. That was perfectly acceptable in the context of the Province of Canada, for which this building and the original Library of Parliament was built.
In 1867, because the leader of the Liberal Party, George Brown, had argued for decades for representation by population, we went to a federal system of government with two sovereign orders of government. In the upper order of government, in the chamber that we sit in, it would be representation by population as a fundamental constitutional principle, and that has been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in numerous rulings.
I encourage the members opposite to reconsider their position on giving any one provincial division a specific percentage of the seats in this House, because that violates this very important constitutional and democratic provision in the Constitution of Canada.