House of Under-Representatives

Canada's electoral system is so skewed, it fails to meet international norms.

As Canada approaches its third federal election in five years, Canadians are more skeptical than ever about their democracy. In the last election, more than 40 per cent of the voting population didn’t even bother recording their opinion at the polls. At 58 per cent, 2008 marked the lowest voter turnout in parliamentary history.

While it’s tempting, I’m not going to lay blame for declining levels of civic participation on Stephen Harper’s autocratic leadership style, or his government’s manipulation of parliamentary process, or even his being found in contempt of Parliament. And, while equally tempting, I’m also not going lay blame entirely on the polarized environment created by a minority Parliament and the growing intensity of party politics that forces representatives to draw party lines before defending their constituents – though they are certainly contributors.

But ultimately, party politics and an election campaign full of mud-slinging and reputation-crushing attack ads are not unfamiliar to Canadians. No, what I believe to be compromising Canada’s democracy and the willingness of Canadians to participate in it is much more fundamental.

The premise of a democratic governing system is that all citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. One citizen = one vote. In 1867, Canada’s Constitution decided on a minimum number of seats per province, though no maximums – theoretically to allow representation in the House of Commons to expand alongside population growth. The Constitution also determined that each province would have at least as many seats in the Senate as it does in the House.

We’ve known for some time that as Canada’s population shifts toward urban concentration, the population distribution among electoral ridings has become skewed. But how skewed? According to a 2010 report by the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation – an independent, non-partisan public-policy research centre at the University of Toronto – so skewed that Canada’s electoral system no longer meets international democratic norms. No kidding. If you thought American politics is messed up, you’ll be interested to know that the relative equality of a Canadian vote deviates seven times more than in the U.S.! That means that the inequality experienced by Canadians is more than seven times as great as that experienced by Americans.

According to the Mowat report, a whopping 61 per cent of Canadians are underrepresented in the House of Commons. The report explains that the allocation of House representatives by population is what determines the overall “fairness” of a democracy. Canada’s current formula is not only substandard to international norms, but it violates the standard outlined in the Canadian Constitution.

Current rules state that provinces must have an equal number of House and Senate seats, and no province can have fewer seats than in did in 1985 – presumably protecting the voice of declining rural populations in Canada. The Mowat report notes that these rules have created “serious distortions in representation across the provinces.”