Part II – Proposal – Quebec
From 2011 to 2021, the population of Quebec grew from 7,903,001 to 8,501,833, an increase of 7.6%. However, this growth was far from consistent throughout the province. In 22 electoral districts, the population increased by 10% or more. In one of those districts (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs), the rate of increase reached 30.5%. On the other hand, six electoral districts experienced a decrease in absolute figures, and in one of those districts (Manicouagan) the population decreased by 6.6%.
In fact, the distortion index (the measure of inequality in an electoral division) increased in 10 years from 0.0292 to 0.0415 today.footnote 1 This is a significant deterioration, and only a major revision of the electoral map would correct these inequalities.
Subsection 15(2) of the Act provides that, except in extraordinary circumstances, the deviation between an electoral district's population and the electoral quota (108,998) may not be greater than 25%. In other words, no electoral district should have a population under 81,748 or greater than 136,247.
Given the importance of the principle of parity among citizens ("one person, one vote"), the Commission considered it appropriate that, save for justified exceptions, the population of each of Quebec's electoral districts should fall within a maximum positive or negative deviation of 10% in relation to the provincial electoral quota. The Commission was careful to avoid turning the quest for that ideal into a purely mathematical exercise which would strip the fundamental rules of redistribution of all meaning.
The Commission's Proposal was made public on July 29, 2022.
The Commission proposed leaving the current boundaries of 17 electoral districts intact, removing a seat (in Gaspésie) and creating a new electoral district (in the Laurentians). The Commission also proposed changes to the boundaries of 60 other electoral districts, to varying degrees, in order to bring their populations closer to the new electoral quota and, in some cases, to correct errors in their technical descriptions.
Under the initially proposed division, no electoral district deviated from the average by more than 25%, whereas at the beginning of the exercise three districts exceeded that limit. The number of electoral districts deviating from the average by 10% or more was reduced from 23 to 6. Lastly, the distortion index fell from 0.0415 to 0.0198.
In short, all the indicators confirmed a reduction in the deviations, greater parity in the electoral power of the population of the various electoral districts and, last but not least, greater equality among citizens in terms of political weight.
The proposed name changes for 12 of the 78 electoral districts of Quebec, as well as the name for the newly created electoral district in the Laurentians, were in keeping with the guidelines for selecting federal electoral district names issued by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.
Most of the name changes were driven by the Commission's determination that the electoral map reflects the presence of all the recognized Indigenous peoples in Quebec: namely 10 First Nations and the Inuit Nation.
Footnotes
Return to footnote 1 The Commission used the Loosemore Hanby index, which consists of dividing by two the sum of the differences, in absolute value, between the percentage of the total population residing in each electoral district and the percentage of seats allocated to it. The result is an index ranging from 0 to 1. The higher the index, the more unequal the division.