Professor Peter Loewen and PhD Candidate Paul Thomas discuss the Fair Representation Act in The Ottawa Citizen

November 28, 2011

Fair Isn’t Always Equal

By Paul Thomas, Michael MacKenzie and Peter Loewen, The Ottawa Citizen

When introducing the government’s new Fair Representation Act recently, Minister of Democratic Reform Tim Uppal declared that it “moves every single province towards the principle of representation by population.” In introducing the Liberal party’s response Friday, Stéphane Dion has prioritized the same principle.

What Uppal and Dion did not mention is that while “rep-by-pop” is certainly one principle for representation in Canada, it is not the only one. In fact, Canada’s election laws state that constituency boundaries must deviate from rep-by-pop in order to ensure that communities of common interest, like regions, towns and neighbourhoods, are effectively represented in Parliament…

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