Hanes: Changes to Quebec’s electoral map shouldn’t be politicized

The road to power in Quebec doesn’t run through Montreal, so it has long been said.

And every couple of election cycles, that maxim becomes a little more true.

Whenever the independent Commission de la représentation électorale (CRE) revises the map of Quebec ridings, Montreal almost always loses another seat in the 125-member National Assembly — despite being North America’s only French-speaking metropolis, the province’s economic engine, and home to more than a fifth of the province’s population.

In 2001, the districts of Jeanne-Mance and Viger were merged, as were Bourassa and Sauvé — a subtraction of two.

Montreal was spared in the next redraft in 2011. But in 2017, Mont-Royal and Outremont were lumped together. A court challenge by citizens was dismissed.

Now the city’s clout in the National Assembly is set to shrink yet again. According to the latest recalibration, put forward by the CRE in 2024, three east-end ridings — Anjou–Louis-Riel, LaFontaine and Pointe-aux-Trembles — are going to be whittled down to two in time for the next election in October. They will be christened Anjou–LaFontaine and Pointe-aux-Prairies.

As Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada lamented last week: “Losing a riding also unfortunately means losing political weight.”

Montreal’s influence has been steadily eroding for decades as the CRE makes adjustments to ensure equal representation among different regions of Quebec based on population shifts.

But Montreal’s standing is not the main reason the National Assembly sought to override the CRE’s latest electoral map revisions with a law — a move that the Supreme Court of Canada last week invalidated and deemed unconstitutional, reaffirming an earlier decision by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

All parties in the National Assembly joined forces to keep the same distribution of seats for the 2026 election to save a riding in the Gaspé from elimination. It, along with the Montreal district, would have made room for two new seats: one in central Quebec and one in the Laurentians.

But after the Supreme Court ruling, newly minted premier Christine Fréchette said her Coalition Avenir Québec government will take another stab at halting the changes. And she appears to have the backing of other parties in the National Assembly — who were the ones most forcefully pressing the CAQ government to intervene in the first place.

To be clear, the political manoeuvring is not the kind of gerrymandering taking place in the U.S., where electoral districts are being redrawn to deliberately favour or disadvantage a particular party, group, community or constituency for nakedly partisan reasons.

Here, the concerns are preserving the Gaspé’s sway despite its falling population, as well as the difficulties that would arise for the next MNAs representing the vast remaining ridings. In a province where victory is clinched in the regions, making sure voters in the Gaspé feel heard has become orthodoxy every party considers in its interests.

The removal of another district from Montreal may be secondary to this extraordinary mobilization, but both cases nevertheless raise serious concerns that deserve to be addressed soon.

The problem here is how Quebec’s elected officials are going about it. In essence, legislators want to run roughshod over the processes and bodies they themselves set up to make impartial, if sometimes controversial or unpopular decisions, which is fundamental to democracy.

Not only did the initial law circumvent the mandate of the CRE, whatever politicians do next looks likely to skirt the Supreme Court, in spirit if not in substance. (The notwithstanding clause, the usual remedy, is not applicable in this case.)

This is a dangerous precedent to set in a democracy.

The CRE is an independent organization created and empowered to examine electoral boundaries every few years. Its mandate is to ensure effective representation, the equality of voters and the inviolability of natural communities. Its review is based on pre-established criteria that take account of demographic changes so that there are roughly 51,000 voters per riding.

The commission makes proposals, solicits feedback from MNAs, citizens, communities and groups — sometimes multiple times — and tweaks its plans before publishing a final map. It’s a juggling act and there are always winners and losers.

The procedure was designed to resist political interference. So shunting aside its work risks politicization, regardless of good intentions.

As the CRE said in a statement when the National Assembly announced it was going to suspend the new map: “The legitimacy of the process of revising the electoral map must be based on its independence and impartiality. … A stoppage of work would jeopardize the fair and equitable representation of voters for the next election.”

Sidestepping the Supreme Court decision is also problematic on political if not necessarily legal grounds. Let’s not forget that a group from the Laurentians, whose new riding MNAs are ready to jettison, went to court to defend their rights. They won. By acting to protect the Gaspé’s clout at the expense of the Laurentians, elected officials are telling some voters they matter less.

Since the National Assembly can’t very well do exactly what the Supreme Court just said it can’t (at least not if it wants to maintain a veneer of credibility), MNAs are now considering alternative methods.

Québec solidaire wants to add two new ridings and restore the two set to be abolished, raising the total number of seats in the National Assembly to 127. But upping the tally has its own repercussions that could dilute representation elsewhere.

Legislators could also review the CRE’s parameters, instituting an exception for the Gaspé as they did previously for Îles de la Madeleine to protect voters’ influence while ensuring the riding isn’t too geographically unwieldy to effectively represent.

(While they’re at it, they should look at criteria to prevent Montreal’s weight from being constantly diminished given its important status, though that seems less likely.)

But any such moves would be best accomplished outside the periodic review process — not rushed through a few months before the new map is supposed to come into effect and Quebecers head to the polls. It’s a bit late to be sending the CRE back to the drawing board.

Even if the concerns about the latest redistricting are reasonable and political parties are uniting behind intervention, there are important principles at stake that should be respected.

Maintaining the integrity of the independent process for setting electoral boundaries is essential to buttressing democracy — now and in the future.

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Allison Hanes

I started at The Montreal Gazette in 2000 as an intern. Since then I have covered the National Assembly and courts, worked on the assignment desk and written editorials, before debuting as city columnist in 2017.

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