Bill C-20 will bring a significant addition of seats to the House of Commons, with the net impact that BC will receive 6 more seats, Alberta will receive 6, Ontario will receive 15 and Quebec will receive 3.
If you live in a province that is not on this short-list then your relative power in Ottawa will decline accordingly.
The interesting part of the new formula is that provinces can not lose seats beyond what they have currently, but they can lose seats in the subsequent redistribution in 2021 and beyond if their population fraction declines accordingly.
That said, the legislation will bring the provinces that have higher population percentages relative to seat count closer in line to the average.
One large complaint is that this will cost more in terms of paying MPs and their budgets, and also the cost to hold an election. This indeed is true. I believe the costing will be about $15M/year more for the 30 MPs and their budgets, and about $12M for an election.
One group that should be oddly in support of this change are the proportional representation fans – the more seats you have in a FPTP system, the more proportional the results become.
I am wondering what the following government model would look like:
1. One MP for every 5,000 people (this would be about 6,900 MPs country-wide);
2. The job of an MP is acknowledged to be a part-time endeavour, with part-time pay, UNLESS if you are in cabinet;
3. MPs vote electronically and do not have to show up to Ottawa every time to vote and are not expected to vote on every proceeding, hence you do not need to be in Ottawa too often;
4. Cabinet cannot vote in the House of Commons.
Obviously this system will have flaws, but it is interesting to see how it would evolve.