Will Ontario keep its extra ridings in the North?

Ontario has a choice to make: how many MPPs should it have in the North?

The federal government redistributes ridings across Canada every decade after the census delivers updated population numbers.

Today, Ontario uses federal riding boundaries for provincial elections except in northern Ontario, where it has 13 provincially drawn ridings, instead of the federal 10.

The federal non-partisan commission overseeing Ontario's redistribution has released a proposal that, if adopted, would see the number of federal ridings in the North go down to nine from 10, with two added in the growing South.

But, importantly, when federal riding boundaries are updated, nothing changes automatically at the provincial level. Lawmakers at Queen's Park can ignore the federal redistribution completely, adopt all of it or adopt parts.

Assuming a version of the hybrid system we have now, though, the legislature would expand modestly from 124 seats to 126, and boundaries would change south of a line roughly between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River.

That's how Kiiwetinoong MPP Sol Mamakwa would like it to stay. It would mean the ridings in the North have fewer people than those in the South, but he argues that's justified, in part by the huge distances involved.

"It’s so vast," he said. "The cost of travel, the limited access — there are limited scheduled flights in and out of the communities. You cannot do a day trip into a community. There are places that if you need to go there, you have to stay overnight."

As well, he sees it as a counterbalance to the wealth and power of the province's South.

"Southern Ontario does not know who we are or what we're about, but southern Ontario is where the decision-makers are.

"When I fly to see First Nations in the North, I see how rich we are. I see the land, I see the lakes, the rivers, the creeks, the trees. We’re so rich, yet when you travel to the community, it's a different story.

"You see the poverty, you see the … I don't call it chronic underfunding. I call it strategic underfunding because that's how oppression and colonialism works. If they wanted to fix it, they would fix it."

Retired University of Western Ontario political scientist Andrew Sancton would also keep the hybrid arrangement.

"I actually think it's a pretty good system — it does make it simpler for voters. And it saves the trouble and bother of doing another redistribution for the provinces in the South. I don't think it would work in any other province."

Like Mamakwa, Nipissing University professor David Tabachnick refers to the huge distances northern members must cover to visit their communities.

"The North is a massive geography, holding all of these resources that Ontario's economy relies on to some degree, and this should be recognized.

"If we just look at representation by population, we lose something fundamental about what our representatives are supposed to do. They're supposed to be representative of those communities. And when you create ridings the size of France, how is that possible? Outside of the practicalities (of) travelling and meeting your constituents, how can one person truly represent a community in a geography that size distributed over such a vast area?"

On the federal level, other than the seat cut, the most obvious change in northern Ontario is an enormous new riding called Kiiwetinoong-Mushkegowuk, which stretches south from Ontario's northern saltwater coast, from Quebec to Manitoba.

Drawing boundaries in the North is problematic, Tabachnick points out — if you create ridings with a critical mass of people, they cover an unmanageable area, but if you define communities in a coherent way, they don't have many people.

Sancton argues that northern Ontario is effectively a have-not province but without the bump in representation (at the federal level) that many official have-not provinces have.

"Northern Ontario is just different. I mean, it's got urban areas like Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. But it's not keeping up with the rest of the province.

"And they really are upset because they say the smaller provinces get protected. We're like a small province, but we're not protected in any way. We're treated the same as southern Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia, and it's not fair. And I have a great deal of sympathy for their argument."

Some northern Ontario members of Parliament are also raising concerns about the proposed federal plan. According to a report by TBnewswatch, Patty Hajdu, the Liberal MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, and Marcus Powlowski, the Liberal member for Thunder Bay-Rainy River, have written to the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for Ontario.

We reached out to Doug Ford's office with questions about the premier's position on northern representation but did not receive a response.

The decision would have political consequences.

To look at what they could be, Mainstreet Research's Alex McPhee plugged the poll-by-poll results of the 2022 election into the proposed federal boundaries.

In the South: the NDP would lose two seats, the Liberals would gain one and the PCs three.

Why? It stems from the PCs' success in the GTA's suburbs in 2022, McPhee explains — that's where population growth has been, so riding geography follows that. Whether that would carry forward to a future election is another question.

"The PCs sweep the entire GTA and have reduced their opposition to scattered regional bases of support, vulnerable to being split by boundary changes," he wrote. "All those new condos in NDP territory, although conspicuous, aren't nearly enough to turn the tide of suburbanization."

And if the proposed federal ridings were adopted in North? The PCs would stay even at five seats — but in slightly different areas — and the NDP would go down from seven to four.

Mainstreet Research is a shareholder in the ownership of iPolitics and QP Briefing.