The Commission on Electoral Representation of Quebec has tabled a project to reform the boundaries of Quebec’s electoral districts in order to allow each vote cast to carry equal weight. This is a noble principle that we support. However, in the flattening proposed by the Commission, we see a riding in the east of Montreal disappear.
This reduction in the political representation of this territory of the city of Montreal, which has already suffered from territorial inequity for years, is very bad timing. Now is not the time to reduce political representation within the National Assembly. You only need to look at what is happening in the areas of public transport, housing or land left fallow for years to understand the extent of the gap which now separates the west and east of the island.
We only have to think in particular of the lands of the oil company Esso, whose refinery activities ceased in 1983, leaving land of more than 10 million square feet contaminated and undeveloped for the east of Montreal. This part of the island needs more voices to support its development in its quest for greater social and economic equity.
When we examine the Commission’s proposal, we see that it is based on a disconcertingly simple algorithm. The number of voters is decreasing in the east of Montreal, so we are reducing representation proportionally. That’s it, it’s settled! However, the apparent depopulation that the Commission’s proposal purports to suggest hides, in reality, strong population growth.
Let’s draw an imaginary line at Papineau Avenue and take a demographic look towards the far east of the island. In each eastern constituency, thousands of people have taken up residence, with variations from the smallest, Pointe-aux-Trembles, to the most imposing, Sainte-Marie–Saint-Jacques and its neighboring areas.
This is what the 2021 census tells us, distributed according to federal ridings by Statistics Canada. In 2023, an evolving update of 2021 data, again by Statistics Canada, indicates that the number of people who are neither Canadian citizens nor permanent residents had almost doubled since 2021.
Surprise ! There are therefore twice as many people now occupying the eastern territory as there have been people who have left it in recent years. In short, we can estimate at just under 200,000 the number of people who, east of the island of Montreal, go under the radar of the Electoral Representation Commission.
And for good reason: they are either immigrants without Canadian citizenship, or non-permanent residents. Not having the status of registered voters, these people are invisible to the commissioners. However, all these “real” people, newly arrived or temporarily settled in Quebec, work, pay taxes and exert, through their numbers, pressure on all public services: daycares, schools, hospitals, police services, transport public, etc. They suffer, more often than not, the harmful consequences of the housing crisis and simply fuel it through the mass effect.
We will agree that this reinforces the incongruity of the Commission’s proposal. It is also relevant to add that across Quebec, the number of deputies in the National Assembly has been at 125 for almost 40 years. This mark was established in 1985. In the forty years preceding , the National Assembly went from 91 seats (1944 general election), with 1.8 million registered voters, to 125 seats in the 1985 general election, with 4.4 million registered voters.
At the 2022 general election, there were 6.3 million registered voters and still 125 seats, despite growth of almost two million registered voters. This is another incongruity which deserves a little more consideration during the work of the Commission. The question is not to open up the right to vote in all directions to set the record straight for democratic representation. There are other issues here that deserve pause for reflection.
However, with the voters that can currently be counted in the east, there is a territory that is struggling to develop to its full potential. This territory needs as many, if not more, voices to combat devitalization and to carry out the development projects necessary to turn the tide. This territory needs representatives who take up the cause of our public institutions, our infrastructures, which struggle to meet the needs of a new population kept in the shadows since they escape electoral inventories.
Parliamentary life, the adoption of support programs, budgetary discussions and the distribution of public resources cannot be done for the sole benefit of voters. This same voter, honored by the sacred right to vote granted to him, is not insensitive to the difficulties of his neighbor who is not registered on the electoral list. With the number of immigrants and non-permanent residents who live east of Montreal, up to four new ridings could be created. This gives the measure of the phenomenon.
Of course, the territorial distribution of these people would perhaps not give exactly four constituencies; but this is an image for our purposes. However, we instead propose removing one. Something is wrong. Commissioners have little room for maneuver under the law. Perhaps then it would be necessary to modify its scope in order to take into account real demographics and not just electoral demographics, without affecting the right to vote itself.
Excluding such a large mass of people from the public and political debate that will crystallize in the ballot box helps neither the National Assembly nor the voters — and even less our territory.