Some see it as a plot. Then again, some people think everything is a plot. But the fact is, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposal to add 33 seats to the current 308 House of Commons seat total is long overdue.

And much fairer to Ontario than the current situation.

Mind you, when Harper first suggested redistribution last year - a proposal which mercifully died on the order paper - he wasn't being fair to Ontario, a reality which is essentially par for the course when it comes to representations on behalf of Canada's largest province.

He had only proposed that Ontario get an extra 10 seats, well below what our population growth demanded, a proposal which - much to his credit - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty immediately raged against.

Oddly at the time, Peter Van Loan, an Ontarian, and the federal minister for democratic reform, dismissed McGuinty's as "the small man of Confederation," an insult which should have been applied to himself and the Harper troops and not to McGuinty who, in this particular instance, really was representing the best interests of Ontarians.

Van Loan should have been ashamed of himself. Actually, it appears he was.

Why? Because McGuinty made so much noise over the half-baked redistribution proposal that the Tories decided to enter talks with the premier and eventually agree that this province deserves 21 extra seats, not just 10, along with seven more for British Columbia and five additional seats for Alberta. Critics see it as a nefarious plot by Harper to use redistribution to finally get the majority government he pines for.

After all, Quebec wouldn't get any additional seats - they're already over-represented as it is - and since the Tories don't do that well there, and do prosper in the west, it's seen as a plot.

In Quebec, they elected one MP for every 105,000 people. In Ontario, that same MP represents 115,000. Don't even get me started about Prince Edward Island, which has four MPs for 140,000 people, or roughly one MP for each 37,000 people. But most of the additional seats in Ontario would be in and around Toronto which, last time we checked, isn't necessarily the strongest part of the universe for federal Tories either.

Whatever ultimately happens, it's not going to be happening any day soon.

The actually have to wait for the next census results and then appear before the various Boundary Commissions - independent bodies set up by each province to sort out the various machinations of adding new seats.

Which means that it likely won't happen until 2014 in any event.

Even with Harper's plan, of course, we're still a long way from a pure representation by population basis on our Commons' seats. But given the size and unique demographic breakdowns in Canada, there has to be some give an take.

For example, the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunuvut have one MP each, but if you combine their total population of 107,000, that's less than an Ontario MP has to represent.

But you have to consider the size of the territories and, however remote they may be, clearly they deserve to be represented in Ottawa. The big sticking point, as always, is Quebec.

If Quebec politicians and commentators see redistribution as a way to make their province less powerful in Ottawa, it's not hard to imagine the politicians getting cold feet and deciding to give Quebec more seats even though, given its' fairly static population growth (and its current numbers) it doesn't deserve more.

But B.C. and Alberta clearly are growing and deserve to be heard more in Ottawa.

Indeed, between 2004 and 2008, those provinces where first and second in total population growth, yet they continued to be underrepresented in the Commons and grossly underrepresented in the unelected Senate.

(Each has 10 senators, the same number of Senators that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have, even though their combined population is slightly more than 20 percent of the two western provinces with an equal number of Senate seats.)

But Senate inequality is another story for another column.

Right now, Canada's three fastest growing provinces deserve more MPs - they also deserve better ones, but nobody can guarantee that - and the longer the current situation exists, the larger the democratic deficit for Ontario, B.C. and Alberta voters.