In November 1994, the 18th CPA Regional
Parliamentary Seminar was held in Ottawa. One topic on the agenda dealt with
the Size of Legislatures. The following comments are from a number of
legislators including Emery Barnes and Fred Gingell of British Columbia,
Maynard Sonntag and Tom Keeping of Saskatchewan, Rose Marie MacDonald of Prince
Edward Island, Gerald Smith of Newfoundland, Ron Russell of Nova Scotia, and Greg
O'Donnell of New Brunswick.
Emery Barnes: When we make decisions about the size of
our elected bodies, cost should not be our first priority. To put this in
context the 1994-95 budget for the British Columbia Legislature is about $25
million. Estimated spending during this period by the executive branch for
government programs is $18 billion. So the cost of running the legislature
accounts for about one tenth of 1% of total public spending in the province, or
about one cent for every ten dollars. If this were represented on a pie graph
the portion devoted to the legislative branch would not even be visible. We
could eliminate legislative spending altogether and not make a noticeable dent
in our financial situation.
Arguments in favour of reducing the
size of the legislature for strictly financial reasons may be attractive to the
ears of some angry people, and may offer symbolic appeal. But it would be short
sighted of us to devote ourselves to doing this at the expense of many very
important democratic ideals. Reducing legislatures, while possibly saving small
amounts of money in the short term, will surely be counter productive in the
long term.
In British Columbia, for many years
our approach to electoral boundary reform and the question of how best to
compose the House were done in a very ad hoc manner. Royal commissions would be
appointed from time to time with inconsistent mandates. As a result, for years
we had an unbelievably complicated electoral map. We also had up to eighteen
dual member ridings at one point, which complicated things still further.
Finally, in 1987, a commission
headed by Judge Thomas Fisher was given a broad mandate to simplify the
electoral map on the basis of the principle of representation by population,
but also to take into account the realities of our irnmense geography and our
historical, regional and community interests. The commission recommended that
electoral districts' populations be permitted to deviate from the provincial
average by plus or minus 25% . Of particular note was the commission's
observation that to have a stricter deviation rule (for instance of just a few
percentage points) would have resulted in a considerable loss of representation
for the northern part of the province and the creation of some electoral
districts so large in area that contact between people and their representative
would become very difficult.
The commission also concluded that
"[Not] increasing the size of the legislature would have made it
impossible to meet the considerations of the mandate, particularly historical
and regional claims for representation and accessibility of electoral
districts".
The Fisher Commission's
recommendations were adopted. The number of members was increased from 69 to 75
members, dual member ridings were abolished, and a permanent Electoral
Boundaries Commission was created by statute (the Electoral Boundaries
Commission Act). A Commission will be appointed after every second general
election, and is required to follow the same guidelines established by the
Fisher Commission.
This is the formula currently in
place in British Columbia, and a similar deviation rule of plus or minus 25% is
in use by the House of Commons and some other provinces. If that were all there
is to the question, we could content ourselves with discussing formulas. But I
would like to push the discussion more in the direction of the functions and
value of the institution itself. Numerical formulas will not help us to decide
what effective representation is. What does effective representation mean? What
is the institution of parliament here for? What are the functions of its
members, both individually and collectively? These are value questions which
must be addressed before we know how best to address the technical question of
how big a representative body should be.
In his book The Parliament of
Canada, C.E.S. Franks argues that parliament carries out four basic functions:
to make a government, i.e. to
establish legitimate holders of power through the electoral process;
to make a government work, i.e. to
give the government the necessary authority and resources to govern the
country;
to make a government behave, i.e.
to be a watchdog over the actions of government;
to make an alternative government,
i.e. to enable the opposition to present its case to the public and become a
credible choice for replacing the party in power.
To these functions we can add
constituency work, otherwise known as the ombudsman function. The legislative
body must be large enough for the members elected to be able to perform all
these functions.
Part of making a government work
involves ensuring that the party in power has enough members to draw on to form
a competent cabinet. The cabinet itself should be large enough to manage the
huge machinery of government. Experience and demonstrated capability are
necessary attributes for any cabinet minister. Inexperienced or poorly equipped
cabinet ministers are more likely to make costly mistakes. The elected chamber
should be large enough to allow for a cabinet of reasonable size, in which a
number of factors can be balanced: geography, gender, race and age, etc.
Furthermore, there must be ministers in waiting on the back benches who are
preparing in the event of a cabinet shuffle. Ideally, the talent pool from which
cabinet members are drawn will be large enough to provide for all these things.
Turning to the third function of
the House, it is clear that governments behave best when there is an effective
opposition. In British Columbia, there are currently 18 ministries employing
about 40,000 civil servants. It is left to the opposition to keep tabs on this
vast government enterprise. Voters, of course, vote to suit themselves. but
smaller houses may exacerbate the
problem of providing effective opposition to government policies.
And this is a very important point:
a majority government has a great deal of power to enact its program at the end
of debate, no matter how long it may take. But opposition scrutiny and critical
public attention will make the minister responsible think twice. This is the
value of letting sunshine into the process_it is the most effective means of
checking on the armies of civil servants working away from the public eye. The
legislature is really the only place where the entire government operation can
be subjected to rigorous criticism, which is essential if parliament is to work
as intended.
Let us turn now to the role of the
individual member. Depending on the situation, there can be serious limits on
the ability of an individual member to serve his or her constituency. We are
all forced to attend to constituency matters as well as to House business. The
larger constituencies become, the greater impact on a member's effectiveness in
some situations. In whose interest is it to reduce the number of members and
increase the size of constituencies? Larger constituencies mean more staff and
less opportunity for contact between the member and his or her constituents.
This can make elected representatives more and more remote from the people who
elect them.
Nothing would please me more at
this point than to reveal a magic formula for the size of legislatures, one
which would take into account all of the issues I hare just identified. But
there is none. (Emery Barnes, MLA)
Finally, the costs of shrinking a
legislature will not be shared equally. It is the rural areas that suffer when
the size of the legislative body is frozen or reduced to cut costs. Judge
Fisher in British Columbia noted that strict adherence to a population average
would force remote areas with sparser populations to become even more cut off
from the legislature and the politics of the province. During hearings, a
former northern MLA described how by flying his own airplane, it would still
take him a full week to visit the major communities in his riding. The less
frequently these people see or hear from their member, the less connected they
feel to the provincial political culture and the more disenchanted they become.
Each province, and certainly Canada
as a whole, is unique demographically and politically. Most provinces have a
few large urban centres and a vast hinterland. Some of us represent 20,000
people, some 50,000 and some federal members as many as 100,000. In British
Columbia, 75 MLAs represent 3.6 million. I think the system now in place in my
province works fairly well, taking into account the disparities I have
outlined. I certainly would not feel comfortable advocating that it be
decreased in size, especially not for reasons of fiscal restraint.
British Columbia's population is
the fastest growing in Canada. Stresses on our electoral system are bound to
increase, and urban/rural differences are likely to become even more apparent.
When deciding a question of this nature, we must keep in mind the different
challenges that face MLAs from urban and rural areas. We must make sure that
the House is large enough to perform the functions for which it was designed.
That should be our starting point. The challenge in British Columbia is for the
legislature to reflect our changing population and to ensure that members can
remain dose to the people they represent.
Maynard Sonntag: Can the number of seats be fixed or
reduced and who benefits and who suffers from keeping legislatures at their
present size or smaller. Is the present redistribution process satisfactory?
What really is this issue all about? Firstly, to maintain relative equity and
fairness by what ever standards we set for ourselves and secondly with
rationalization taking place world wide, governments are under public pressure
to do the same. In Saskatchewan we were faced with this issue early in our
mandate and chose to redistribute for these and other reasons. There were
imbalances of nearly two to one in the extreme cases when you look at some of
the constituencies and with an accumulated debt and annual deficit that
demanded attention we as a government were making reductions in every sector.
Not only were there legitimate cost savings but our constituents, the taxpayers
of Saskatchewan insisted that we to exercise some restraint.
Within our caucus it seemed
initially like a marvellous idea. Most of would agree with this statement,
however, probably with not as much enthusiasm. There is at times quite a void
between theory and application. In Saskatchewan we as elected members were told
many times that our government was too large. We currently have 66 sitting
members representing about 666,000 voters or just in excess of 10,000 voters
per MLA. We began by studying other jurisdictions. In Manitoba for instance, there
are 57 MLAs representing 12,500 voters per MLA. In Alberta, there are 83 MLAs
representing 18,685 voters per MLA. In British Columbia each MLA represents
about 25,500 voters. In Ontario each elected member has an average just under
50,000 voters to represent.
The bill that we passed in spring
1994 session reduced the number of seats from 66 to 58, or a 12% reduction. We
will now each be representing an average of 11,400 voters. This was the first
time since the Great Depression that the number of seats in our Assembly has
actually been reduced.
The decision was made to
redistribute and to reduce the number of seats. How would this be done? What
would be the parameters that we would use? The drawing of the new boundaries
has historically been surrounded with a great deal of suspicion as governments
of the day would take advantage of their position and draw a map that would
favour its chances of re election. In Saskatchewan, we attempted to circumvent
the public cynicism by establishing an independent commission to draw the new
boundaries. I believe we were successful in that respect. The new commission
consisted of three members. The Chairperson was nominated by the Chief Justice
of Saskatchewan and the other two members were appointed following consultation
with the Leader of Opposition and with the third party, the Liberal Party. The
Commission's mandate was relatively restricted. The act established that the
commission was to set boundaries based on the democratic principals of
effective and equal representation. The acceptable variations from the average
constituency population was set at plus or minus 5%. The new boundaries are not
effective until the writ is dropped for the next provincial election.
Currently, only 24% of our seats fall within the 5% limitation. The act makes
an exception for our two northern ridings which cover half of our province, and
are obviously very sparsely populated. To ensure that their representatives
were able to continue to represent the constituency effectively, it was decided
that these two ridings were to remain untouched.
As I was researching this
presentation, it was instructive to look back over the history of the British
parliamentary system to see how this principle of one person one vote developed.
Members maybe familiar with the rotten boroughs that existed in England before
the passage of the Reform Bill in 1932. The practice of creating boroughs of
insignificant voting strength in order to ensure the election of members who
would support the policies of the Crown appeared to go back as far back as the
rein of Henry VI in 1537. In 1793, 250 years later, it was established that 51
boroughs with a combine population of less than 15,000 electors were returning
100 members to the Commons at a time when they were only 340 seats in the
Commons. Almost 30% of the British House of Commons been elected by 15,000
electors in Britain!
In one notorious borough two
members of Parliament were returned by only 7 voters. The Reform Bill of 1832
was a milestone in the British Parliamentary history. In redistributed seats on
a more equitable basis, increased county representation, extended the franchise
and reduced election expenses. It placed us who believe in democracy on a road
to reform which has led us slowly and inexorably to the point of voter
equality. The principle of one person one vote must be the guiding and
fundamental principal of democracy. The Bill we introduced last Spring took us
another step that road . My riding was fortunately virtually unaffected, but
that of my colleague is now unrecognizable and I want him to tell you about
some of the practical problems of the application of one person one vote.
Tom Keeping: We have downsized our Government over the
last three years, in several ways. We cut actual spending on Government
programs by 7%, Agriculture services, Highways, Education, Health Care, almost
every department of Government has been cut or amalgamated in one way or
another. The numbers of people appointed to boards and commissions have been
reduced, and so have the dollars spent in that area. This reduction was done to
reduce cost, but also because of public expectations. People told us early in
our mandate that now was the time to downsize ourselves. Public scepticism was
high. Was it the right thing to do? I think that only time will tell but we
believe it was the proper thing to do. Who wins and who loses depends on ones
point of view. I suppose its fair to say that initially or immediately the
taxpayers could be said to be a winner because they will be paying for a
smaller government. Another winner could be the voters from the two larger
urban centres in Saskatchewan that represent almost half the population. The
population within this group has been growing in Saskatoon and Regina and
because of that there was no reduction in the number of constituencies within
those boundaries. All the reduction was borne by rural Saskatchewan. Many of
these urban voters have felt for sometime now that it was unfair that their
vote only counted for half as much as that of a rural person's vote.
Just as larger urban voters could
be said to be winners, I think is true that the rural voter could be said to be
the loser. Not only will they lose the advantage they had of being over
represented in the Legislative Assembly, but they will also lose in another way
because they will have further to travel to access their member in person.
Rural voters argue that unlike an
urban MLA the rural MLA has the concerns of many more local governments, school
boards, agriculture boards, health boards and so on. In addition, there are
many strictly rural concerns, such as highways, provincial parks, and forestry.
I believe there is a general
feeling in rural Saskatchewan that the duties of a rural MLA are more onerous
then those MLA's representing large urban centres, particularly those
representatives in the capital. (Tom Keeping, MLA)
People of this view conclude that
the task of being a rural MLA is more diverse and more burdensome than
representing a larger urban constituency. Add to these factors the amount of
time spent just driving and it is felt by the rural voters that they cannot be
as effectively represented as urban voters. Therefore, the population variance
of only a plus or minus 5% is being questioned as too restrictive. It was this
variance factor that caused the rural constituencies to lose 8 seats.
I might just add as a personal
view, and probably because I represent a large rural constituency that I share
this view. On the other hand, there is the side that believes that the 5%
population variance is the right balance because of the one person one vote
principle.
We were encouraged in Saskatchewan
somewhat by the Federal Boundaries Commission to which operated recently in
Saskatchewan at the time of the last distribution and even though they were
directed by statute to create 14 seats in our Province they had a possible
variance of 25% under federal law. When the Commission came in the distribution
was all done within plus or minus 1% in our province. I guess we thought if it
was good enough for the federal voters, that same argument could be made
provincially. We believe in a single community of interest and that
Saskatchewan is a single community of interest and there is nothing to be
gained by making a distinction between rural and urban constituencies. We
believe in one person one vote, we also believe in effective representation.
Rural and urban people in our province share the same interest in our province
and we must all work together with a singularity of purpose.
Rose Marie MacDonald: Our province has a population of 130,000
and at the present time is represented by 32 MLAs. Responsible government began
in 1733 when the Legislative Council was first set up by the Governor at that
time. It was a bicameral system of government with an Upper and Lower house.
The first house had 18 members elected from across the colony. They were
elected by adult males only. That increased to 30 members in 1856 and the
franchise was given to Roman Catholics males. It was not until 1921 that women
received the franchise, but we made great strides since that time.
In 1892 both the House of Assembly
and the Legislative Council passed the Legislative Assembly Act creating a 30
seat Legislative Assembly and a unicameral system of government. This created a
Councillor and an Assemblymen position and the unique dual member ridings that
we now have. Until 1966, there were 30 members. That was increased by 2 to give
the city of Charlottetown more representation.
Recently a court challenge was
mounted by a gentleman in Charlottetown. He argued that his vote was not as
heavily weighted as the voters of Fifth Kings, the district I represent. He
live in Fifth Queens where there were about 12,000 voters. In my district there
are about 2,000 voters. I still feel that in a rural area the work is certainly
different but, in any event, because of this court challenge we recognized that
the time had come to review the situation. There had been no change in the past
100 years and it was time to do something about downsizing. Reform had taken
place in all sectors of government and it was time to reform the House itself.
An Electoral Boundary Commission
was set up in 1993. It consisted of four government backbenchers, a Chairman,
and it also included the Leader of the Opposition and three well known and
distinguished Island residents. Its report recommended a variance of plus or
minus 15%, but the effect of this report on Kings County would cut our
representation from ten to five.
One of the King's backbenchers
brought in a private Member's Bill during the last session, which proposed to
reduce the overall number of seats from 30, as proposed by the Boundary
Commission, to 27 on the theory that it would be better to have 5 members out of
27 than 5 members out of 30. There was a great deal of lobbying on this bill
and eventually there was free vote. In the end Bill 100 passed, however, the
City of Charlottetown has indicated that they will be challenging as there is a
variance in that Bill of plus or minus 25 %.
Greg O'Donnell: We have just gone through the process of
redesigning our Electoral Boundaries and reducing the number of seats from 58
to 55. We appointed a panel on which each political party had a member and we
appointed 2 judges who were former MLA's from different parties. They reported
back to a committee of the Legislative Assembly with their findings. That
committee was made up of all political parties in the province. We have a
Legislative Assembly made up of Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and a
political party called the Confederation of Regions (COR) which at the time was
the official opposition in the province.
We had some members with 20,000
voters and others with as few as 4,000. My riding is both urban and rural. I
would say 90% of constituency work comes from the rural section and 10% comes
from the urban centres. When we did the redistribution we used the plus and
minus 25% but in the urban ridings we gave a higher percentage than we did in
the rural ridings. For example if the provincial average was 10,000 voters we
aimed for somewhere between 8 and 9 thousand in the rural ridings and between
11 and 12 thousand in the urban ones.
We then had public consultations
and a series of in camera sessions before the report was signed by all
political parties. It was not a matter of the governing party having re
adjusted the figures to their advantage. All parties had representation and
felt quite comfortable with where the divisions were made and why. The result,
I believe, will be a much equitable legislature.
Gerald Smith: As in other provinces the thinking in
Newfoundland is that we have to downsize government. People automatically
assume that where the downsizing should be done is the area of elected
representatives .
I have only been a member of the
legislature since May 1993 but I was shocked to find out shortly after being
elected that there was a commission going to bring in a report to put me out of
job without giving the people who gave me the job initially the opportunity to
make that decision. The report that we will be dealing with shortly is looking
at downsizing our Legislature from 52 members to the area of 46.
We are looking at a total voting
population of about 530,000 people. I was interested in hearing the reference
to the experience in British Columbia and the argument with regards to the
savings that might be accrued. I have difficulty in trying to understand where
there would be a lot of savings when I look at my own situation. I represent a
riding that has 8,500 people and under this redistribution the new district
would pick up an additional 5,000 people. Can I represent that district with
the same resources that I now have available? I do not think I could respond
adequately to the demands of the constituency. I would need additional support
resources in order to meet the extra demands that would be placed on me by my
constituency. That seems to contradict the argument for savings. It would only
add to the bureaucracy. The last thing my constituents want is to add to the
bureaucracy.
I wonder when the man in the street
talks about downsizing if he necessarily means that we should be reducing the
number of elected officials. Surely they know that we are accountable to
someone. (Gerald Smith, MLA)
The commission was given a fairly
dear mandate to bring back a report calling for a reduction in the number of
seats. But, in the hearings that were conducted throughout the province there
was very little support from those people who intervened, for reducing the
number of elective representatives. Most people argued for the status quo and
indeed there were some who put forward the idea that rather than reducing, we
should be looking at increasing the number of representatives.
The argument about one person one
vote is more difficult to counter. It is at the root of democracy but at the
same time there are certain other extenuating circumstances that we must not
lose sight of. I represent a basically rural riding and in the House I sit next
to a colleague who represents an urban riding with about 14,500 constituents.
But the demands on his time are much less than they are in mine, because of the
nature of the riding itself and the kind of problems there are. If we accept
the principle of one person one vote then we are certainly going to be creating
some additional problems in the rural areas. There are going to be people who
are not going to be happy with the level of representation that we are going to
be able to provide.
I think we also have to allow for
certain peculiarities in a province. For example there was an effort made to
allow the one Labrador riding that is primarily comprised of aboriginal
peoples, to remain with a much smaller seat to ensure that they would have a
voice. In my district there is a significant francophone population of some
1,500 people and the argument was put forward that basically for these people
there is a concern that there has been a struggle to maintain their language
and culture. To increase the district by an additional 5,000 people would
reduce the effect of their lobby and make it even more difficult for them to
try to get recognition for their language and culture. Unfortunately we were
not able to convince the commission that the same argument could be applied.
Ron Russell: The member from Newfoundland raised some
issues I do not believe we have addressed - linguistic, ethnic and aboriginal
representation within the legislatures.
In 1991, we appointed a Commission
for Electorial Boundary Revision and the mandate given to that commission was
almost impossible to fulfil. They had to remain within 15% of a median of
population and still maintaining 52 seats within the province. They had to
maintain seats for three acadian communities, which were allowed to fall below that
15% of the median. They had to establish a seat which would give the black
community within the province a chance of electing a black person to the
legislature. Lastly, they were given the task of finding a formula for a
guaranteed seat that would ensure we had Micmac representation within the
legislature.
They fulfilled parts of their
mandate even if it took a little bit of gerrymandering. The matter of
aboriginal representation was left for future discussion with the native
community. The idea is a worthy one but it is very difficult because we have
Micmacs on reservations and some of the reservations are very small. We also
have Micmacs off reservation spread throughout the province. It has been very
difficult to determine exactly how many Micmacs there are. There is some
disagreement within the native community themselves as to how this election for
a native member would take place. The last representation was that they should
have two guaranteed seats within the legislature. There is a system in place in
New Zealand where aboriginals have four guaranteed seats within the parliament.
It is done simply by according the Maori the opportunity to vote with the
general population or else to vote specifically for a Maori candidate. I do not
know if that kind of a system is a solution in Nova Scotia but I would suggest
that all across this country where we have sizeable aboriginal communities
there is going to become a real need to study this.
Perhaps a paper could be generated
by the Canadian Branch of the CPA as to how we can give an adequate voice to
the aboriginal people and yet keep within the one person one vote rule that we
are trying to maintain. (Ron Russell, MLA)
Fred Gingell: I really do not think this issue is a
matter of money. I do not think there are great savings to be made because the
first thing that MLA's need to fulfil their responsibilities is more resources.
As our Speaker said, we only spend
something like 13 cents of every 100 dollars on running the legislature. Nor as
other speakers have noted is there one size that fits all. We all have to deal
with the circumstances that are peculiar. Someone from Newfoundland said he
gets 25 to 30 calls a day. If he works 250 days a year that is a call from
every single constituent. My constituency is an urban rural one with a majority
of the population living in the urban area. It has a population of around
50,000 people. I am able to respond to all my phone calls, I am able to look
after my constituency work, but I certainly could do a better job with more
resources.
Another issue we need to think
about is the role of MLAs in the total government scheme. I only got elected in
1991, I am in my first term There is a lot of talent in the legislatures and we
should all play a much more meaningful role. Whether we are in opposition or in
the government side. Our building was designed to fit comfortably about 55 to
60 MLAs, 75 is a real squeeze. It seems to me that to reduce the size of our
legislature from 75 to 60 would still allow us to look after our
responsibilities, would allow us to have more resources each and would also
reflect the need that I think all Canadian legislatures face in recognizing
that we are not going to solve that deficit until we recognize the government
itself has to shrink. This is not just the number of people in the legislature
but the number of roles and responsibilities that provincial governments take
on. We simply cannot afford in the future the size of government that we had in
the past In 14 years, we have gone from spending something like 14% of gross
provincial product, to spending almost 22% to deliver the same services. There
is a major problem there and I think redefining the role of MLAs, making their
work more meaningful, giving them more responsibility, giving them more
resources is a step in the right direction.