The redesign of the electoral map risks creating two categories of representatives, regrets the Parti Québécois, which wants to fight against the disappearance of a constituency in Gaspésie.
• Also read: Revision of the electoral map : Montreal and Gaspésie will lose a race
“There will be two types of deputies in the National Assembly,” thundered Pascal Bérubé at a press conference in parliament on Wednesday morning.
The PQ MP assumes that on the one hand there will be “those who will be exhausted” because they have to represent constituencies that are too large, and “those who will have a smaller task in the transport sector”.
Mr. Bérubé’s riding is directly affected by the electoral map redistribution proposed by the Electoral Representation Commission. In eastern Quebec, Gaspé and Bonaventure would merge, but the MRC of Haute-Gaspésie would join Mr. Bérubé’s riding, Matane-Matapédia.
“I would reduce it to 50 municipalities, which is the highest number in Quebec,” responded the PQ elected official. In his opinion, no district should lie in two administrative regions because, among other things, the health network and school networks differ from region to region.
Redistribution of the electoral map is intended to ensure the relative equality of votes among voters in each constituency, so that the weight of a vote in each constituency is approximately the same.
The Commission’s proposal is based on the principle that there should be no difference of more than 25% between the number of registered voters in a constituency and the provincial average.
However, for the PQ elected official, other factors should be taken into account, such as the “ability to represent his constituency well” or even “natural belonging” to a neighborhood or region.
On Tuesday evening, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon also said he was “shocked and surprised” by the proposal to redistribute the electoral map and in particular by the disappearance of the Anjou-Louis-Riel county in Montreal, a message published on social networks.
“My ride through Camille-Laurin would lose the entire Longue-Pointe sector while adding Anjou to the county. The realities there are different and the citizens of Camille-Laurin have the right to cohesion and clear representation. Redistribution that does not take these realities into account is undesirable; We do not govern on street corners, but for populations whose problems are shared,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
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