🚀 go-pugleaf

For better an equal representation, cut some seats from other provinces 
that are over-represented.

Then divide the total in half, and reduce the Parliament by equal numbers 
(half), so MP represent larger areas and earn their money by working 
harder.

*************************************************************************


NDP leader slams Tory plans to add seats to House of Commons

By Peter O'Neil, Postmedia News August 17, 2011
 
The Harper government's plans to re-draw the federal riding map of Canada 
is 'divisive,' says interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel.

OTTAWA � Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plan to give B.C., Alberta and 
Ontario fairer representation in the House of Commons divides the 
country, interim New Democratic Party leader Nycole Turmel said 
Wednesday.

Turmel, filling in during Jack Layton's battle against cancer, said the 
party agrees that the three provinces are under-represented in the House 
of Commons.

But she said the NDP supports further study of the issue, in particular 
so consideration can be given to adequate representation of rural 
regions, the north and First Nations.

"The approach of the Harper government is really divisive right now. It's 
not constructive, it's not nation-building," she told Postmedia News in 
an exclusive interview.

Turmel, whose past membership in the Bloc Quebecois raised questions this 
summer about her own commitment to federalism, also slammed the Harper 
government over its announcement Tuesday that it would add "royal" to the 
names of the Canadian navy and air force.

"This is really a divisive approach," she said, arguing that the 
government should be providing the military with better equipment rather 
than return to identities abandoned in the late 1960s.

"We need to talk about equipment. It is sad that we're . . . moving back 
40 years."

The federal Conservatives, who have twice previously introduced 
legislation to redistribute House of Commons seats, promised during the 
election campaign to bring forward a bill to ensure that fast-growing 
provinces are adequately represented in the Commons.

"We are committed to reintroducing legislation to restore fairness in 
representation in the House of Commons through a principled formula fair 
to all provinces," according to Kate Davis, spokeswoman for Edmonton Tory 
MP Tim Uppal, minister of state for democratic reform.

"Canadians have given us a strong mandate to move forward in this 
regard," she wrote in an email Wednesday.

Some analysts have argued that the legislation is particularly important 
in urban areas with large immigrant populations, since MPs serving those 
ridings have heavier workloads due to the disproportionately higher 
number of people they represent.

The government proposed legislation in 2010 that would expand the 308-
seat chamber with 18 new Ontario seats after the next scheduled 
redistribution, which would be based on the 2011 census, giving it 124 
MPs. B.C., which had 36 seats, would get seven more seats, while Alberta 
would go from 28 MPs to 33.

The current formula, according to the Tories, would give Ontario only 
four more seats, B.C. two and Alberta just one.

The Bloc Quebecois has since the 1990s demanded that Quebec be guaranteed 
a minimum of 25 per cent of Commons seats, a proposition offered to the 
province in the 1992 Charlottetown accord. That constitutional deal was 
vehemently opposed by Quebec sovereignists and ultimately defeated in a 
national referendum.

The province is now slightly overrepresented, since its 75 seats 
represent just over 24 per cent of the total, while Quebecers make up 
just over 23 per cent of the Canadian population.

Layton, in a letter to then-Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe in 2010, countered 
with a proposal that denounced the Harper government's attempts to 
"marginalize the Quebec nation." Layton called on Harper to drop any 
legislative step "that would lead to the reduction of Quebec's political 
weight in the House of Commons."

The NDP was already faced with a tough balancing act following a historic 
electoral breakthrough that saw the party win 103 seats, 59 in Quebec, to 
earn official opposition status.

That job got harder when it was revealed last month that Turmel, a 68-
year-old rookie MP and the former head of the Public Service Alliance of 
Canada, held a Bloc membership for the five years leading up to her 
decision earlier this year to run for the NDP.

A self-proclaimed committed federalist who said she voted against 
sovereignty in the 1980 and 1995 referendums, she said she took out the 
membership as a favour for a friend who had supported public sector 
labour causes � former Bloc MP Carole Lavallee.

Turmel said she's confident that Canadians outside Quebec, including 
British Columbians and Albertans, aren't questioning her credibility as a 
federalist leader.

"I went west, I went east," she said of her travels after earning the 
interim leader post.

"People are more concerned about their jobs, they are more concerned 
about the economy, as well as about health care and . . . pensions."

She noted that the political views of many Western Canadians have 
changed, "from the Reform to the Alliance to the Conservatives."

One analyst said Turmel's party will struggle on issues where the opinion 
in Quebec diverges sharply from the national consensus, such as Commons 
seat redistribution and the Harper government's plan to scrap the gun 
registry.

"This is the double-edged sword of the NDP victory in Quebec: advance 
Quebec's interest to placate its strengthened Quebec caucus, but risk 
alienating supporters in the rest of Canada," said Chaldeans Mensah, a 
political scientist at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, in an email.

Six New Democrat MPs voted with the Conservatives in an unsuccessful 
government bid last year to kill the registry, though more had previously 
expressed opposition to the program that has always been more popular in 
Quebec than elsewhere in Canada.

Turmel said Wednesday the caucus will discuss its position on the gun 
registry at a meeting prior to the resumption of Parliament next month.