The federal government intends to add 30 seats to the House of Commons, a change it says is necessary to account for growth in Canada's most populous provinces.

Half of the new seats will go to Ontario, while Alberta and British Columbia will each receive six seats each.

Quebec will be allocated three more seats, to prevent the province from being underrepresented in a newly swollen Parliament.

The government believes the "Fair Representation Act" will help ensure that Canadians in provinces with fast-growing populations get better representation.

Tim Uppal, the minister of state for democratic reform, said the government wanted to maintain the existing seats in Parliament, while addressing the seat imbalances that have resulted from population growth.

"It delivers on our commitment to maintain the seat counts of smaller provinces and to ensure that no province that is currently overrepresented will experience representation less than what is proportionate to the population," Uppal said Thursday in Brampton, Ont.

Should the changes come into effect, the number of MPs in the House of Commons would jump to 338, an increase of almost 10 per cent from the current 308 elected members.

But the changes amount to more than what might be described as a mere "numbers game," as they will permanently influence the distribution of power in Ottawa, CTV's Chief Political Correspondent Craig Oliver said Thursday.

"It's about power. It's about what areas of the country, what people get to influence the kind of decisions we make in our national Parliament," Oliver told CTV News Channel from Ottawa.

Prior attempts at reform

The government had tried to pass through a similar measure in the previous Parliament that would have given 18 new seats to Ontario, five to Alberta and seven to British Columbia.

But that bill died in the last Parliament.

This time around, the Conservative government has majority control in the House of Commons, which suggests that the changes are likely to be passed into law.

Liberal critic Stephane Dion suggested Thursday that while the government believes it has found "a balance" on how to distribute the forthcoming seats, its caucus should be prepared to have parliamentarians take a hard look at the details of the plan.

"Democratic reform is not a game and must be done in co-ordination with the provinces," Dion said in a statement.

"Now that a proposal is before Parliament, the Conservatives must commit to allowing Members of Parliament and Senators the time to fully study the impacts of the bill."

The increased representation for Quebec has ruffled some feathers within the Conservative caucus, CTV's Power Play host Don Martin said Thursday.

"There's some pushback in the caucus from this," Martin told CTV News Channel from Ottawa.

"Some Conservative MPs say: ‘We shouldn't be capitulating necessarily to Quebec on this.'"

Oliver said that from the point of view of some Quebecers, there may be a feeling that their influence is waning in Ottawa.