Does Canada really need more members in Commons?

“Are there really Canadians out there who want to see more MPs added to the House of Commons?”

This is not an original question, nor even a recent one. Almost exactly 10 years ago, a Liberal backbencher named Justin Trudeau posed it during a Commons debate about adding 30 new seats to the chamber.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then — and a lot more desks have been built to accommodate the swelling ranks of elected representatives in Ottawa. Despite opposition from Trudeau and the rest of the Liberals at the time, 30 new seats were indeed added before the 2015 election, bumping the number of MPs from 308 to 338.

And late last week, yet another proposal was tabled to put more MPs in the Commons, raising the number from 338 to 342.

Granted, it’s not the dramatic increase that made the Liberals balk in 2011, but it is another occasion to measure how far Trudeau has moved from his old views on all things to do with electoral and democratic reform. Remember how 2015 was supposed to be the last election fought on the old, first-pastthe-post system?

Another flip-flop — or evolution in thinking, if you prefer — is on the horizon. This newest proposal gives extra seats to Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, provinces that gave Trudeau some significant help in keeping his grip on power on Sept. 20.

Three of the new seats are to go to Alberta and unless Trudeau and the Liberals have some kind of political death wish, they aren’t likely to come down on the side of less clout for the province in future Parliaments. Not right now especially, after adding two Alberta seats in last month’s election.

Meanwhile, this newest proposal would see Quebec losing a seat, which is a poke in the eye to a province highly sensitive to any type of provocation (see English-language TV debate in the last campaign). The Star’s Althia Raj reports that the Bloc Québécois is already opposed, and chances are that’s a nonstarter for Liberals too.

Even a decade ago in opposition, the Liberals were insisting that Quebec’s proportion of the seats in the chamber not be reduced, under any proposal. In 2011, Quebec got just over 23 per cent of the seats in the redrawn map. In this newest plan, that would drop to 22.5 per cent. “That just does not work,” Trudeau said of the 2011 proposal. Presumably something smaller wouldn’t work for him either.

Of course, rejigging the seats in the Commons never just boils down to an exercise in addition or subtraction. The real drama — and yes, there is drama — often involves complicated political calculations, as Raj outlined in a column last week, with MPs and strategists eyeing the map-redrawing as an opportunity to maximize their chances in future elections.

It’s not quite gerrymandering on the scale seen in the United States, but political parties in Canada have historically been highly attentive to matters such as urban-rural split in proposed new ridings, or suggested boundaries that divide traditional neighbourhoods.

Here’s where the whole exercise veers into sociology. Although one might think that only the nerdiest of political nerds cares about lines on the electoral map, the whole process can actually provide a fascinating glimpse into what defines a community in Canada.

This back-and-forth will get underway in a few months, once the commissions are set up in each province and territory to take a first run at redrawing the boundaries. Then the negotiations begin, with everyone from MPs to local activists involved, microscopically analyzing where dividing lines exist on the ground in this country.

During the last round of electoral map-drawing, I sat in on hearings into what was proposed for Toronto, and I believe I learned more about the city’s complicated geography and neighbourhoods in two days than I had in my years growing up in and around the city.

The 2011 version of Trudeau was probably correct — it’s never easy to sell Canadians on the need for more MPs. It may be especially true now, after an election in which politicians were told repeatedly to just do their jobs and stop annoying the good citizens of this nation.

But a year and a half of pandemic living has also given Canadians, both inside and outside politics, a chance to consider what defines their local communities and neighbourhoods, where they have had to spend a lot of time. A new, post-pandemic electoral map of Canada could contain some important clues of what was learned.