Electoral Boundaries: Policy Innovation

Immigrant Communities Dept: The report, released days after speculation the government might delay its planned seat redistribution bill due to fears of a Quebec backlash, noted that the ridings with the highest populations were in urban settings with large and growing immigrant communities, according to Vancouver Sun. "The current system of electoral boundaries has the effect of treating Canadians unequally on the basis of race and ethnicity," says the analysis from the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto. "In the face of massive immigration, the dilution of some Canadians' votes and the amplification of others increasingly disadvantages Canadians from non-European backgrounds." The federal government must give fast-growing B.C., Alberta and Ontario more House of Commons seats or risk being found in violation of the constitutional rights of new Canadians from non-European backgrounds in those provinces, according to a report released Monday. That means MPs and their staff in those ridings have an increasingly heavier workload as they deal with constituents' issues in areas such as immigration and pensions. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.