User:The Tom/Electoral district (Canada)

Redistribution of federal electoral districts
In Canada, the term redistribution is used to refer to the combination of two related processes that are undertaken to reflect population changes after each decennial census: the process by which the number of representatives are re-apportioned between the provinces and territories; and the subsequent process by which the electoral district boundaries within each province are re-delimited.

Any changes to electoral district boundaries are confirmed as of the date a Representation Order is submitted by the Chief Electoral Officer to the government, but are not put into actual effect until the first subsequent election a minimum of seven months later. 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.

Depending on the significance of a boundary change, new names for the successor electoral districts may be selected. On some occasions (e.g., Timiskaming—French River, Toronto—Danforth), a riding's name may be changed without a boundary adjustment. This usually happens when it is determined at a later date that the existing name is not sufficiently representative of the district's geographic boundaries. This is the only circumstance in which a sitting MP's riding name may change between elections.

Apportionment of seats between provinces
Apportionment of the House of Commons follows the broad principle of representation by population; however, as a result of special provisions in the apportionment rules, a degree of degressive proportionality is assured as an outcome. In all recent reapportionments, Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta have been under-represented in proportion to their populations. The other seven provinces (Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador), which are either smaller or have experienced a relative decline in their share of the national population over time, are over-represented.

The apportionment provisions for the House of Commons are defined by Sections 51 to 52 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and have been amended on multiple occasions, most recently in 2011.

Boundary review of federal ridings
When the province's final seat allotment is determined, an independent election boundaries commission in each province reviews the existing boundaries and proposes adjustments. Public input is then sought, which may then lead to changes in the final boundary proposal. For instance, the proposed boundaries may not accurately reflect a community's historical, political or economic relationship with its surrounding region; the community would thus advise the boundary commission that it wished to be included in a different electoral district.

For example, in the 2003 boundary adjustment, the boundary commission in Ontario originally proposed dividing the city of Greater Sudbury into three districts. 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.

Due to the region's economic and transportation patterns, however, "Timiskaming—Greater Sudbury" was particularly opposed by its potential residents — voters in Sudbury were concerned about the weakening of their representation if the city were divided into one city-based riding and two large rural ones rather than two city-based ridings, while the Timiskaming District is much more strongly aligned with and connected to North Bay, to which it has a direct highway link, than to 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. Districts should, as much as possible, be cohesive units with common interests related to representation. This makes a representative's job of articulating the interests of his or her constituency much easier." Instead, in the final report that was passed by the House of Commons, the Sudbury area's existing ridings of Sudbury and Nickel Belt were retained with only minor boundary adjustments, while the Timiskaming riding was merged with Nipissing. 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, 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.

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

Once the final report is produced, it is then submitted to Parliament for approval, which is given by voting on the report as a piece of legislation known as a Representation Order. From Canadian Confederation, the boundaries were defined by the Constitution Act, 1867. Boundaries for one or more electoral districts were updated in 1872, 1882, 1892, 1903, 1914, 1924, 1933, and 1947. Subsequent changes are known as Representation Order, and occurred in 1952, 1966, 1976, 1987, 1996 and 2003. Such changes come into force "on the first dissolution of Parliament that occurs at least one year after its proclamation". For example, the 2003 Representation Order was deemed to be effective 1 January 2004, and came into force after dissolution of the 37th Canadian Parliament on 23 May 2004.