The title of course is referring to the comment that Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan made about Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty when the Premier protested about the unfairness of Albertan and BC getting seat redistribution that would accurately reflect representation by population for them, while Ontario got shortchanged of seats.
I have said prior that this was nothing more then a gerrymandering exercise to get more seats in provinces that the Cons have a better shot of winning then in urban Ontario, and it appears via Impolitical, the Premier of Quebec and the Premier of Manitoba agree with Dalton’s position on this.
I am willing to bet you won’t hear Premier Charest getting called a “small man of Confederation” by Van Loan - not in a province where they need to make a breakthrough if they have any hope of forming a majority government. I also doubt Premier Doer will get insulted either; he’s a popular premier out that way, and it’s another swing province where the Cons must maintain the seats they have to help form a government the next time an election rolls around.
As you can guess, I’m amused that Van Loan’s stupid comment (and the Cons. weak not-very-transparent attempt to isolate Ontario on this issue) has utterly blown up in his and the Cons. face and failed.
You know I was always under the impression that an independent body made these decisions about how many and the borders of ridings in Canada. I have courses GIS and I have used apportionment to distribute ridings based on population. I had thought we had adavnced to that point. Software should be used to assign ridings, not humans. Humans have bias. Its very simple if you know how to use the software. You type in the number of people per riding and voila and few minutes later ridings have been created that are represented by exactly the same population.
PVL is full of shit and a liar.