KAREN HOWLETT

Globe and Mail Update

December 17, 2008 at 12:12 PM EST

TORONTO — Ontario will no longer be shortchanged under the Harper government's plan to add new seats to the House of Commons, says Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has agreed to revise his proposed legislation, which is designed to reflect population growth across Canada by adding 22 seats to the 308 currently in the Commons, Mr. McGuinty said on Thursday.

“I spoke to Harper about this, and I think we fixed it,” Mr. McGuinty said at a year-end news conference.

He did not elaborate on exactly how many seats would be added in Ontario under the proposed changes but said, “we will get the necessary proportionality.”

The changes will allow Ontario and Ottawa to bury the hatchet on an issue that sparked a new round of bickering between the Harper and McGuinty governments. The tensions took a nasty turn in November, 2007 when then federal Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan accused Mr. McGuinty of being “the small man of Confederation” after the Premier appealed to his federal counterparts for help fighting the proposed legislation.

It is not clear whether Mr. Harper intends to add even more seats to the Commons than the 22 in the initial legislation or rejig the proposed allocation among the provinces. Ontario was to get 10 of the 22 seats under the initial proposal. Mr. McGuinty had complained that the proposed legislation to change the formula for seat distribution would leave Ontario the most unrepresented province in Canada. The proposed legislation would give every province, with the notable exception of Ontario, enough ridings to match the size of their population. All of the new seats would be in fast-growing Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Mr. McGuinty said on Thursday that Mr. Harper had a change of heart after the two met privately in Ottawa last Friday to discuss a Canadian bailout package for the ailing auto sector. During the one-hour meeting in Mr. Harper's office, Mr. McGuinty also raised the seat legislation.

He said Mr. Harper reiterated his traditional argument that Ontario would be better off than it was with the addition of new seats. “I said, ‘that's not the point. The point is, we should be working toward fairness and over time we would have continued to fall behind.'”

The legislation was written in such a way that Quebec's ratio of voters to MPs became the benchmark. But any provinces larger than Quebec - Ontario is the only one - would not enjoy the full benefits. Ontario's share of the national population will hit 40.4 per cent in 2021, while its share of seats in the Commons will be 35.6 per cent, an under-representation of 4.8 per cent. according to the government's projections.

About time the provincial populations of the country were more accurately reflected, good on you Harper, if you follow through that is

   

Why add seats? Why not cut the number of seats to 300 and re-structure them so they fit the new demographics of Canada? Far be it that government actually gets a little smaller and those pension payouts cut back a little...

   

I'll drink to that

I was recently reading an article that went into the number or people per MP based on province. Surprise surprise the west had nearly twice as many people per mp as PEI and Ontario.

How about we restructure things so we have one mp per 100,000 people or something to that extent.

   

Because over a third of all Canadians call Ontario home perhaps?

   

I believe he was thinking cut the total number of seats and disperse them appropriately based on population.
Unlike now where PEI has way to much say with such little input. Yes, I know it's part of the constitutional agreements of these provinces so it will never change without constitutional reform.

   

Yes that's what I was attempting to get at. Shrinking government while adjusting for changes in population. Doesn't make sense to just toss 22 more seats into the mix to me at all.

   

What little history knowledge I have includes that the regions are always afraid of the centre in political unions so they are always given some extra representation. Canada, the EU and the USA are examples of this. In the USA the Senate is 2 seats per state regardless of size and this keeps the centre from running the show. I see Harper has a better idea.

   

And so Quebec at last fades into irrelevance.

   

I see what you're saying Rids, but the small provinces like PEI have to have a certain number of seats. If we cut from everywhere else, they'd be over-repesented.

   

Harper is doing this simply because he doesn't want to see Quebec have the power they do in the house. By adding 22 eats, he is helping to work towards his dream of a majority government. Too bad he'll piss of the Francs even more, and will only push them closer to the Bloc. Harper will be national leader when he starts to care care of Quebec and Newfoundland.

   

I seem to remember a lesson in history class about Stalin's 'Grand gift to the Russian Soviet Duma' - which was to double their seat count so as to provide more power to the Parliament. What this actually did was to create a 500-some-odd member House, who couldnt get a damn thing done.

Of course, Im just joking with the comparison of Harper to Stalin, but it seems that this is a needless endeavor with an already divisive and large parliament. Has anyone ever watched the UK Parliamentary sittings? They have 500 members of the Commons and it is absolutely nuts! If you think the bickering in Ottawa is bad... man...

But another thing to think about is just where are these ridings going to pop up? I know that Harper isnt going to start splitting up Metro-Toronto Liberal safe seats. Thats a death wish. He wont be going to Northern Ontario NDP strongholds...

Another historical example is when the Republicans gained control of the census department (something Obama is trying to bring into the Whitehouse too, btw) and drew the districts is snake like figures across the country so they could maximize the conservative voters and group them into winnable groups. Dangerous precedents here, my friends...

   

Ah, okay, I didn't quite grasp that. My bad.

And you're right, that probably won't change, but there should be restructuring in order to better fit demographics.

Trust me, many of us here in Ontario are sick of both levels of government being rather Toronto-Centric. >_<