Politicians and concerned citizens are launching a legal challenge to Quebec's electoral map.
In addition to the inherent unfairness of creating a riding with more people than the provincial average, the group says it is concerned about the loss of a voice for several ethnic communities.
In March Elections Quebec announced it was merging the ridings of Mont Royal and Outremont to create a new larger riding, and enlarging the riding of D'Arcy McGee.
Montreal city councillor Marvin Rotrand said this would shrink the electoral voice of anglophones.
"We go from three ridings, Mont Royal, Outremont, and D'Arcy McGee, to two."
Under the new map D'Arcy McGee and Mont Royal-Outremont will have about 15 percent more voters than the average.
D'Arcy McGee: 56,265 voters, 14.9 percent above average
Mont Royal-Outremont: 56,390 voters, 15.2 percent above average
With 90 percent of the province's English-speaking population living in Montreal, people are also concerned the English community will lose a voice in the National Assembly.
Former MP Marlene Jennings said this will diminish the voting impact of anglophones.
"We have many natural communities on the island of Montreal. The Supreme Court of Canada and our own electoral law say that natural communities should be protected. What's one of the natural communities? The English-speaking minority," said Jennings.
This new citizens' committee also says it's fighting to maintain the voice of the Jewish, Filipino, and other communities in the three ridings whose vote will also be diluted by the electoral map change.
The citizens' committee has hired constitutional lawyer Julius Grey to contest the decision.
He believes the changes are not reasonable.
"It doesn't observe the minimum and maximum deviation from the norm in terms of how many electors there should be in any riding," said Grey.
"It reduces the weight of Montreal when in fact Montreal is already below the appropriate representation in the National Assembly."
Grey added the specific changes fail to take into account the interests various community groups.
Beryl Wajsman, editor of The Suburban, is among those fundraising for the group to support the legal challenge.
"We've got $8,000 in commitments already, that's aside from Hampstead and Cote St. Luc. Of that $8,000, $1,500 has come in already in $100-contributions already in one week since we decided on a lawyer. That's participatory democracy from the ground up," said Wajsman.
The group says the legal challenge will be a sign their communities cannot be ignored.
Extreme deviations
When Elections Quebec came up with its new map it merged two rural ridings into the supersized riding of Laviolette-Saint Maurice, which will have 57, 701 voters.
Meanwhile it created two ridings and redistributed three others, leaving four ridings much smaller than the norm: Les Plaines, Masson, Prevost, and Rousseau all have between 39,258 and 44,659 voters.
Under Quebec electoral law there can be 122 to 125 ridings in the National Assembly, and the number of people in each riding should not be 25 percent more or less than the average.
The exception is the Iles de la Madeleine, which is considered one electoral district no matter how few people live there.
The average riding should have about 48,500 voters.
That said, there are seven ridings that fall well under the 25 percent cutoff.
- Abitibi-Est: 33,779
- Abitibi-Ouest: 35,281
- Bonaventure: 35,814
- Gaspé: 30,048
- Iles de la Madeleine: 10,670
- René Levesque: 33,563
- Ungava: 27,423
Likewise there are eight ridings, many near Trois Rivieres, that exceed 20 percent more voters than the average, and several others that approach that level.
- Arthabaska: 60,262
- Champlain: 58,862
- Gatineau: 58,560
- Johnson: 58,870
- Nelligan: 58,692
- Papineau: 59,336
- Richmond: 59,366
- Saint Hyacinthe: 58,242
- Saint Jean: 60,180
- Saint Jerome: 58,796
- Vercheres: 59,077
