Page "Electoral district (Canada)" Paragraph 27

Conversely, pure representation by population creates distinct disadvantages for some Canadians, giving rise to frequent debate about how to balance the population size of electoral districts against their geographic size.

Whereas urban districts, such as Toronto Centre, Vancouver Quadra or Notre-Dame-de-Grâce — Lachine, may be as small as 50 km < sup > 2 </ sup > or less, more rural districts, such as Timmins — James Bay, Abitibi — Baie-James — Nunavik — Eeyou or Desnethé — Missinippi — Churchill River may encompass tens or hundreds of thousands of square kilometres in size.

Thus, while Canadians who reside in major urban centres typically live within walking distance of their federal or provincial representatives ' constituency offices, a rural politician who represents dozens of geographically dispersed small towns must normally incur much greater travel expenses, being forced to drive for several hours, or even to travel by air, in order to visit parts of their own district — and may even need to maintain more than one constituency office in order to properly represent all of their constituents.

In Ontario, for example, the highest annual expense budgets among members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario are consistently filed by the representatives for the province's two largest and northernmost electoral districts ; both must spend far more on travel to and from Toronto, travel within their own ridings and additional support staff in multiple communities within their ridings than any other legislator in the province.