[LINK] "Ottawa moves to reshape the House"

[rfmcdonald]

Finally, greater democracy is coming to Canada's parliament.

Democratic Reform Minister Steven Fletcher is in the advanced stages of preparing legislation that would reshape the House of Commons, adding dozens of seats to the three fast-growing provinces that are now seriously underrepresented.

Legislation could be ready this autumn, said a government official speaking on background, or in the new year.

The new seats would most likely be concentrated in the burgeoning suburban and exurban ridings that ring Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Voters in these ridings – typically younger and multiethnic –would finally wield a political clout that has been denied them in previous elections in favour of voters in mostly white rural ridings.

“We never had a debate and said that new Canadians, visible minorities, people who live in the GTA [greater Toronto], Calgary, Edmonton and the Lower Mainland [of British Columbia], young people, gays and lesbians – that they should all have less representation,” observes Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, a new Toronto-based think tank that examines the impact of public policy on the province of Ontario. “If we had framed it that way, no Canadian would support it.

[. . .]

Adding so many seats to the Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta totals could transform the political map, potentially putting an end to this decade's chronic run of unstable minority governments.

The Conservatives could be expected to dominate any new Alberta seats, would be favoured in added British Columbia ridings, and would be competitive in many of the new ridings in Ontario, which may be why they are keen on redistribution. Being just 12 seats shy of a majority, they would have the best shot at winning a majority in an enlarged Commons.

Still, the Liberal Party is the party of cities. Apart from their Atlantic redoubt, the party's remaining strength is mostly concentrated in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The new ridings should offer fertile ground for Liberal victories.

But downtowns and older suburbs, where Liberals tend to dominate, are not the locus of population growth. Cities are growing at their edges, as new suburbs replace farmlands. It is no coincidence that Prime Minister Stephen Harper forsook the United Nations earlier this week for an event at Tim Hortons, or that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff spent Thursday in Burlington, in the Golden Horseshoe, decrying what he claimed were the inadequacies of the government's stimulus efforts.