We’ve addressed the issue of vote dilution early last year on this site.

Errol Mendes of UofO Law elaborated on the problem in an opinion piece in The Star today.  He covers a bill that would effectively increase the number of seats in the West, while proportionately reducing the number in Ontario.

One in ten Ontario citizens would be affected, but the worst off would be 1.1 million immigrants, most visible minorities who have arrived in the past 5 years.

Mendes continues,

Indeed, the gross lack of effective representation that would have resulted from Bill C-54 may well have called into question its constitutional validity. The Supreme Court in Attorney-General of Saskatchewan v. Roger Carter ruled that while Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not guarantee total equality of voting power, it does guarantee the right to “effective representation,”

The court continued: “Relative parity of voting power is a prime condition of effective representation. Deviations from absolute voting parity, however, may be justified on the grounds of practical impossibility or the provision of more effective representation. Factors like geography, community history, community interests and minority representation may need to be taken into account to ensure our legislative assemblies effectively represent the diversity of our social mosaic. Beyond this, dilution of one citizen’s vote as compared with another’s should not be countenanced.”

While the ruling could justify smaller populations for rural ridings, the court also clearly stated that effective representation must also increase the number of seats to reflect population increases in urban areas…

Within a decade, one in three citizens in Ontario will be visible minorities, the majority living in ridings that would have been negatively affected by Bill C-54. That could be grounds for a constitutional challenge to future redistribution legislation based on Section 15 (1), the equality guarantee of the Charter.

We might well ask if Bill C-54 was a deliberate attempt to dilute the votes of visible minorities in the vote-rich areas of southern Ontario.

If that was the case, then not only was the bill in violation of Sections 3 and 15(1) of the Charter and, therefore, unconstitutional, it also was a despicable attempt to undermine the democratic foundations of this country.

Ontario residents should keep this in mind as they head to the polls today.