Tory plan would create 22 new ridings, but nobody knows just where

A federal government bill introduced Wednesday would add 22 seats to the House of Commons — 10 in Ontario, seven in British Columbia and five in Alberta — but would not dictate where the new ridings go within those provinces.

Where they show up may change political fortunes, but it won't happen until well into the next decade, after the 2011 census and an elaborate boundary-drawing process.

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan introduced the redistribution proposal in May, but it died when Parliament was prorogued in September. It was tabled again on Wednesday.
(Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

By law, redistribution is handled by a three-member Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission set up for each province. The chairman is usually a judge appointed by the provincial chief justice; the other members are appointed by the speaker of the House, currently Liberal Peter Milliken.

The commissions hold public hearings, pore over maps and redraw boundaries across each province in an effort to balance riding populations. If the past is a guide, few of the 308 existing ridings will emerge without changes.

An Elections Canada official, John Enright, stressed on Wednesday that the commissions are independent of the government. MPs can comment on the lines drawn, but the commissions have the final say, he told CBC News Online.

Even so, there will be intense political interest in whether new ridings show up in strongholds of a particular party — in suburban and rural areas where the governing Conservatives tend to do better, for example, or in downtown neighbourhoods where Liberals and New Democrats have more support.

The commission process is Canada's attempt to avoid what is called gerrymandering, or carving out safe seats. The abuse is named for a 19th-century Massachusetts governor, Elbridge Gerry, who created a district so intricate it was said to resemble a salamander.

Target date for changes is 2014

If all goes as planned, the job will be done by about 2014 and will take effect in the first general election after that, increasing the number of seats from 308 to 330.

The bill tabled Wednesday would change a mathematical formula that determines how many seats provinces get. It revives a proposal the Tories introduced in May but left in limbo when they cut short the last parliamentary session in September.

The last redistribution, in effect for the 2004 general election, raised the number of seats by seven, giving Ontario three and B.C. and Alberta two each because of their growing populations.

The next one was expected to add about seven more — four for Ontario, two for B.C. and one for Alberta.

The new formula is considerably more generous to the growing provinces. In May, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan said it takes Quebec as a benchmark, aiming to bring other provinces as close as possible to Quebec's average riding population.

In practice, this means that people in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta would move toward the Quebec level of voting clout. Under a law passed in 1985, no province can lose seats in a redistribution, even if its population shrinks. The territories are guaranteed one riding each, giving their small populations disproportionate voting power.

Michael White, Van Loan's communications assistant, said the plan has not changed since May. Although nobody can say exactly where a new riding might show up, "basically it's going to go where the population goes," he told CBC News Online.

"There are a number of factors, right, but it's based on population, representation by population."

Representation by population

Under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, which dates from 1964, the boundaries commissions are instructed to keep riding populations within 25 per cent of the provincial average except in extraordinary cases.

But they may also take into account:

• The community of interest, community of identity or historical pattern represented by a riding.
• The need for a manageable geographic size of ridings in sparsely populated, rural or northern regions.

The arguments have already begun.

New Democrat Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins-James Bay, laments that the new Ontario seats most likely will go to the Toronto area and other southern regions.

He says one seat should go to the North, considering that some of the ridings there are larger than some countries.

"When you talk about representation, it's not just population. Representation really has to take into account the ability of people to meet their members of Parliament," Angus said.