Canada: Urban Country, Rural Governance

"This week's census told us what we already knew: Canada, the world's second-largest land mass, is an urban country. Actually, Canada is increasingly a suburban country, since the suburbs of the large cities are growing faster than the urban cores.

Beyond suburbia lies what planners call exurbia: cities within striking distance of the big ones, connected to them by highways and sprawl. Taken together, "peripheral municipalities" (the Statistics Canada term) grew by 11 per cent from 2001 to 2006, compared with 4.2 per cent for central cities. Put another way, the periphery grew by about 900,000, central cities by 500,000.

The drift to urban/suburban/exurban areas mocks the electoral system. Legislatures remain weighted toward rural areas or, in the case of Parliament, toward Atlantic Canada (and Saskatchewan), where the population remains steady while other areas grow.

Some day, someone will bring a Charter of Rights argument against the existing electoral maps. They will claim that the maps discriminate (as they clearly do) against urban/suburban voters by according them less representation than equality merits. You might think a court would refuse to hear the case on the ground the issue is political. Under the Charter, courts are wont to rule on just about anything."