Jack Layton, On Why Residents of Quebec Are More Important Than Other Canadians.

Believe in democracy as the idea of "one person, one vote", and that this is a sacrosanct part of Canadian government?  Jack Layton doesn't.  Consider this exchange from his interview with the Globe and Mail's editorial board:

Mr. Geiger: We have a couple of questions from readers. I just received a Tweet from Caroline Hayward. She’s asking, Do you support additional seats for Ontario and Western Canada? You favour abolition of the Senate, which is one way in our parliamentary system that regional voices can be aired. If you are going to do that don’t you need to have better representation in the rep by pop chamber, which required reform of the house?

Mr. Layton: Yes we do support more seats for Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia. We also support retaining the current weight of Quebec in the seat calculation and we think it is possible to find our way to both of those objectives.

You mentioned the Senate. Imagine appointing candidates to the Senate, Members of Parliament who were defeated by the people of their region, and then you put them in the Senate. This to me completely undermines any argument that the Senate constitutes regional representation.

I clearly am very unhappy with what is happening with the Senate. The Senate has now become an activist entity. Overruling decisions that have been made by the elected house of commons. Other countries would not tolerate this and yet we somehow find it acceptable.

Mr. Geiger: If you have more seats to western Canada and Ontario, how do you maintain that historic balance with Quebec? They either get proportionally more seats or they don’t. Are you suggesting that all regions get more seats?

Mr. Layton: There would be additional seats allocated in Quebec as well.

Mr. Geiger: Even though it is not justified by population?

Mr. Layton: Well it justified by the historic political weight of Quebec in the federation. There is a solution that can be found here. It’s not an easy thing to do but it is one that we need to work for.

But we absolutely support additional seats for Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. They are under represented at the moment and that needs to be addressed.

Mr. Stackhouse: And more seats for Quebec?

Mr. Layton: There would be an adjustment vis a vis quebec.

Mr. Geiger: So in other words, they wouldn’t have proportionally more seats.

Mr. Layton: Yes they would. Well, they would have more seats. Significantly more.

Mr. Geiger: But not proportionately more?

Mr. Layton: Well, it would begin to redress the very significant dis-proportionality we see.

In Canada we have a representative democracy, based on the idea that a given number of Canadians are grouped together in ridings to be represented by one Member of Parliament in our government. While the reality has always been that some ridings are more or less populous than the ideal, the objective has always been a basic level of equality.

But as the populations of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario continue to grow at a much faster rate than those of the other provinces, if seats in the House of Commons aren't redistributed to reflect this, or more added for those three provinces (and to others if similarly necessary) we run the risk of the ideal of "one person, one vote" becoming nothing more than a memory.

This is what Jack Layton has proposed.  He would guarantee Quebec's current percentage of seats in the commons in perpetuity, regardless of it's population relative to other jurisdictions.  So Quebec, which now has 75 seats, or just over 24% of the seats in the Commons, and is over-represented relative to ON, AB, and BC already (ON has 106 seats, AB 28, BC 36 - and based on even distribution, QC would have 68) would be locked in at that percentage.  Even if down the road Quebec's population were to merit only 20% or less of the seats in the House, they would still be guaranteed 24%.

Now, you ask, are there not other provinces much more over-represented than Quebec?  Yes - the only provinces NOT over-represented are, in fact, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.  But with an adjustment to the number of seats, this can be dealt with.  No province is guaranteed a fixed percentage of the seats in the House of Commons in perpetuity.  Yet.  Layton, in his quest for votes, is bribing Quebec with the promise of just such a guaranteed percentage.  This means that, as Quebec's share of Canada's population continues to shrink (projected to drop to 21% by 2026, with Ontario rising to 41% from the current 38.5%) the three currently under-represented provinces will see themselves even further discriminated against. As other provinces grow, this could become an issue for them as well.

The roots of the term democracy lay in the Greek demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning power.  It is understood that the first examples of Athenian democracy were a literal  gathering of all citizens (not including slaves, women, etc - it was not an overly egalitarian society, to say the least).  Today, we realize a gathering of every Canadian of voting age in one place would be difficult, to say the least, and so we have a representative democracy.  This means the country is supposed to be divided into equally populated areas, each of which sends a representative to Ottawa.  While we don't in effect have this now, for a variety of (basically constitutional) reasons, the growth of the nations population, or the ability to add seats to the Commons, means we could see this problem eventually disappear.


But not if Quebec is guaranteed a permanent 24% of all seats in the House of Commons.  If we do, Canadian citizens outside of Quebec will have a new name.  Second class.

* - in particular those in Prince Edward Island (due to a constitutional requirement that no province have fewer MPs than Senators) and the north are underpopulated, while many urban ridings are overpopulated

Jack Layton, on the record - The Globe and Mail