Electoral district (Canada)

Originally, most electoral districts were equivalent to the counties used for local government, hence the French unofficial term comté.

The Constitution Act, 1867, which created the electoral map for Ontario for the first federal and provincial general elections, used the term "ridings" to describe districts which were sub-divisions of counties.

Rural constituencies therefore became geographically larger through the 20th century and generally encompassed one or more counties each, and the word "riding" became used to refer to any electoral division.

Alberta had three provincial districts that at various times returned two, five, six or seven members: see Calgary, Edmonton and Medicine Hat.

Any adjustment of electoral district boundaries is official as of the date the changes are legislated, but is not put into actual effect until the first subsequent election.

Thus, an electoral district may officially cease to exist, but will continue to be represented status quo in the House of Commons until the next election is called.

This, for example, gives new riding associations time to organize, and prevents the confusion that would result from changing elected MPs' electoral district assignments in the middle of a Parliament.

The number of electoral districts for first federal election in 1867 were set by the Constitution Act, 1867 on the principle of representation by population.

Some sources incorrectly state that a special provision guaranteeing a certain number of seats to Quebec is also applied.

After the 1981 census it was realized that adding an additional four seats to Quebec every ten years would rapidly inflate the size of the House of Commons, so that formula was abandoned in favour of the 1985 Representation Act.

[12][13] In 2008 the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposed an amendment to the process which would have given Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, the three provinces whose electoral districts have an average size larger than those in Quebec, a total of 32 additional seats by applying Quebec's average of 105,000.

[25] The act was introduced after a Bloc Québécois' motion calling for government action to protect the number of Quebec's seat after redistribution.

The urban core would have remained largely unchanged as Sudbury, while communities west of the central city would have been merged with Algoma—Manitoulin to form the new riding of Greater Sudbury—Manitoulin, and those east and north of the central city would have been merged with Timiskaming to create the riding of Timiskaming—Greater Sudbury.

In a deputation to the boundary commission, Sudbury's deputy mayor Ron Dupuis stated that "An electoral district must be more than a mere conglomeration of arbitrary and random groups of individuals.

Despite the opposition that arose to the 2003 process, however, virtually the same tripartite division of the city was proposed in the boundary adjustment of 2012,[29] although due to concerns around balancing the Northern Ontario region's population against its geographic size, the commission announced in 2013 that it would retain the existing electoral districts again.

[30] Similarly, opposition arose in Toronto during the 2012 redistribution process, especially to a proposal which would have divided the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, the city's primary gay village, between the existing riding of Toronto Centre and a new riding of Mount Pleasant along the length of Wellesley Street.

[31] In the final report, the northern boundary of Toronto Centre was shifted north to Charles Street.

For the 1999 Ontario general election, however, the government of Mike Harris passed legislation which mandated that seats in the provincial legislature would follow federal electoral district boundaries, both reducing the size of the legislature and eliminating the cost of the province conducting its own boundary adjustment process.

For the 2018 Ontario general election, further, two new uniquely provincial districts were added to increase representation for the far north of the province.

Because electoral district boundaries are proposed by an arms-length body, rather than directly by political parties themselves, gerrymandering is not generally seen as an issue in Canada.

However, in 2006 the provincial government of Prince Edward Island was accused of gerrymandering[36] after it rejected the independent boundary commission's report and instead proposed a new map that would have seen the cities of Charlottetown and Summerside each gain one additional seat, with two fewer seats allocated to rural areas of the province.

The unequal size of electoral districts across Canada has sometimes given rise to discussion of whether all Canadians enjoy equal democratic representation by population.

[15] For example, the four federal electoral districts in Prince Edward Island have an average size of just 33,963 voters each, while federal electoral districts in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia have an average size of over 125,000 voters each—only slightly smaller, in fact, than the entire population of Prince Edward Island.

Whereas urban districts, such as Toronto Centre, Vancouver Centre or Papineau, may be as small as 15 square kilometres (5.8 sq mi) or less, more rural districts, such as Timmins-James Bay, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou or Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River may encompass tens or hundreds of thousands of square kilometres.

Thus, while Canadians who reside in major urban centres typically live within walking distance of their federal or provincial representatives' constituency offices, a rural resident may not even be able to call their federal or provincial representative's constituency offices without incurring long-distance calling charges.

Further, a rural politician who represents dozens of geographically dispersed small towns must normally incur much greater travel expenses, being forced to drive for several hours, or even to travel by air, in order to visit parts of their own district—and may even need to maintain more than one constituency office in order to properly represent all of their constituents.

In Ontario, for example, the highest annual expense budgets among members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario are consistently filed by the representatives for Mushkegowuk—James Bay and Kiiwetinoong, the province's two largest and northernmost electoral districts; both must spend far more on travel to and from Toronto, travel within their own ridings and additional support staff in multiple communities within their ridings than any other legislator in the province.

Ontario and British Columbia have the largest number of ridings where visible minorities form the majority.