History can be really annoying in politics. Particularly, if you forget it exists. See, back when Mike Harris was the premier of Ontario, he introduced the entirely sensible idea of tying the size of the Ontario legislature to the size of Ontario's delegation in the House of Commons. Now, admittedly one of the reasons Harris did this to reduce the number of MPP's at Queen's Park. Another key reason was that it allowed Elections Ontario to avoid the time consuming and expensive work of drawing electoral boundaries that would end up being virtually identical to what Elections Canada had done. In other words, eliminate redundant government work. This was all part of the Common Sense Revolution Tim Hudak and the current crop of PC's at Queen's Park claim to love so much. Now the PC's are up in arms because McGuinty is talking about going back to the principle established by Harris and adding 18 new seats for the 2015 election to match the anticipated move in Ottawa. Damn that Mike Harris and his Liberal ways!
Side Note: The NDP probably haven't looked at population estimates lately or aren't very good at math. It is extraordinarily unlikely that any new seats would be added in Northern Ontario to "divide up some of the huge northern ridings in Ontario" as the article says.
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1 comment:
Agreed.
Population growth and extra seats should be viewed with less partisanship or political bias.
Will the Federal/Provincial gov't in power abuse or "gerrrymander" these results?
Where is the evidence of this from 2000 (301 - 308 in Parliament)
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