Building a Bigger House

The Tories are set to increase the House of Commons by 30 seats. Whoever thought adding more politicians was a good idea?

One of the Conservatives' first orders of business will be to expand the number of seats in the House of Commons by 30 (18 more in Ontario, seven more in B.C., and five more in Alberta). The Toronto Star welcomes the expansion because the current arrangement makes votes in the Maritimes and Quebec worth more than those from areas with growing populations. “When a vote in suburban Toronto is worth half or a third of one elsewhere, something is seriously wrong,” say the editorialists. “The injustice is compounded because so many immigrants settle in those areas, effectively discounting the votes of large, urban visible-minority communities.”

The National Post's Lorne Gunter similarly appreciates the gesture, and bats away concerns that the redistribution is merely meant to pad Tory strongholds in Ontario, B.C., and Alberta. “The new seats will hardly be in Tory-friendly territory: Most will be added in large cities and multi-ethnic ridings,” says Gunter. “It's clear that they are adding seats for the good of our democratic equality, not their own electoral hopes.” Gunter hopes the Tories will take this goodwill one step further and repeal a law passed by Brian Mulroney's government that bases all seat calculations on the current population divided by the seat distribution in 1985. In effect, that law “makes the smaller provinces look less overrepresented than they are.” Finally – someone willing to take on that anti-democratic menace that is Prince Edward Island.

Not everyone is lining up to pat the Tories on the back. In a contrarian piece in The Globe and Mail, former MP Reginald Stackhouse says he believes the last thing the country needs is more politicians. “Why must Canadians smoke this propaganda drug that the more MPs we have, the happier we’ll be?” he asks. Despite declining populations in certain regions of the country, no politician would even dream of adjusting those areas' political representation downward, lest they lose support there, says Stackhouse. “In a time when cutting a gargantuan deficit has to be a government priority, reducing the cost of the Commons should surely come ahead of cutting health care – especially when its work could be done better by fewer rather than more MPs.” That this is coming from someone who spent much of his career in Parliament makes that claim all the more believable.