The Westmounter was among several individuals and groups who made presentations to the commission, which was in Montreal in June during a 23-stop tour of the province to investigate proportional representation.

Nutik argues that under the present electoral riding structure, it takes the weight of roughly three urban votes to equal two rural votes.

The population of ridings in Quebec is supposed to average out to about 50,000 electors each. However, until recently, the number had been allowed to vary by up to 25 per cent. Since many rural constituencies typically have fewer voters, while urban ridings have more, it was suggested that rural ridings had an unfair advantage.

A bit of trivia Nutik passes along in the process is that Quebec's counties, as they are often referred to, originally got the appellation of ridings, because they were based on the distance one could travel in a day of riding by horse.

But in this modern age of rapid communications and travel, he adds, "there is basically no valid reason that there should be any appreciable tolerance in the numerical size of almost any Quebec electoral district, except for one or two."

According to Nutik, disenfranchisement of voters and of their right to proper representation can take many forms, from unbalanced constituencies to gerrymandered boundaries. As just one example, he notes that the former riding of Westmount was once considered to be a representative English or minority constituency, which sent an identifiable and bilingual member to the National Assembly.

"No more," he told the electoral boundary commissioners. "Westmount has become so well gerrymandered over the years that it now shares its boundary with adjacent St. Henri, and no longer sends a minority representative to the legislature to speak for this heretofore clearly identifiable enclave of Montreal."

He maintains that this is an example of how some of Quebec's minority and cultural communities can be contained and concealed within the electoral system overall. He says careful action is required to safeguard the identifiable integrity of Quebec's minorities so that they may avail themselves, if they so choose, of secure constituencies in which to select representative members to speak on their behalf.