Pandering and democracy when "numbers are implacable"

With the Turmel affair behind us, for now at least, the first substantive Quebec-Canada clash in our new post-Bloc Québécois dispensation is set to begin: the Harper government will add House of Commons seats for Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, while maintaining the number of Quebec seats constant. As Susan Riley writes in The Ottawa Citizen: "This overdue rebalancing will lessen Quebec's clout, not as a hostile strategy, but as the byproduct of simple math. Quebec now has 24 per cent of the seats in the 308-member Commons, and 23 per cent of the population. Because its population has not been growing as quickly as that of other provinces, its influence should, inevitably, wane. Numbers are implacable." (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Scratching+wounds+Quebec/5276019/story.html#ixzz1VUQhuutX) But the NDP is resisting this rebalancing, which leads The National Post's Lorne Gunter (among others) to denounce the New Democrats as - you guessed it - "pandering" to Quebec and undermining democracy (http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Putting%2Bpandering%2BQuebec%2Bahead%2Bdemocracy/5275650/story.html).
There is a real issue here, which won't go away by ignoring it or by calling it "old-style thinking" (a reader comment on The Toronto Star website, about my article on the Turmel affair). The House of Commons is an institution that is supposed to obey "Representation by population" criteria, and so it makes sense to reduce Quebec's relative weight as its population becomes relatively smaller. But if Quebec is a nation (or, as the House of Commons put it a few years ago, Quebecers form a nation) within Canada, it would also make sense for this characteristic to find its institutional expression(s) in the country's political-constitutional system. Canadian democracy as we know it is a complex multi-institutional construct, in which the federal government, the House and the Senate, the Supreme Court, and provincial institutions interact according to their own logics. (On top of this, civil society organizations and citizen involvement do much to breathe life in the institutions.)
The question is this: as the House of Commons rebalances Quebec downwards, how is Quebec's distinctiveness as a the national home of Quebecers to be expressed and protected in the system as a whole? This is essentially the question that the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords tried to answer a generation ago. Their failure, combined with the result of the 1995 referendum, put the question in abeyance. And it could stay there as long as no-one fiddled too much with the existing balance within and among the institutions. But, as Riley writes, "numbers are implacable:" the House eventually has to be rebalanced.
(Ironically, Paul Martin's prime-ministership was destroyed in its infancy by the sponsorship scandal because he felt it necessary to recall Parliament in early 2006 in order to pass re-districting legislation that had been put in limbo by Prime Minister Chrétien's unexpected prorogation in late 2005. Chrétien wanted to pre-empt the release of the Auditor General's report to Parliament until after he retired. Martin thought that, for the sake of democracy, re-districting was necessary before an election - in which he was hugely favorite to win a majority - and so he re-opened Parliament. This allowed the presentation of the AG's report, and the rest is history.)
Quebecers will not accept that their province's "influence should, inevitably, wane" (Riley). "Influence," however, is the wrong word: Quebecers don't care very much how Manitoba or British Columbia are governed, they don't seek to influence that. What they will not accept is that the representation of their interests, in federal institutions, be eroded. Hence, in the short term, the NDP's attempt to forestall the change in the House. But this cannot be a long-term solution. The House is properly a "rep-by-pop" institution, and therefore the continuing expression of Quebec's distinctiveness must be found elsewhere. This means some sort of constitutional change. And if Canadians outside Quebec cannot countenance this, if they - largely through their politicians and media pundits - can only denounce "pandering," they will guarantee the return of the sovereigntist movement, with a vengeance.
I know that many people hear this kind of talk as a threat: do what we want, or else... And I understand how it can sound like this. But it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Quebec's perspective. Quebecers know, as a basic fact of their political life, that they want to have the means to express, protect, and enhance their nationhood. And they are open to a variety of means to achieve this goal. So far, the majority believes that it can be accomplished within Canada. But if it comes to believe that it cannot, well, all bets are off. This is not a threat to Canada. It is, in fact, a remarkably open way of dealing with something that can become an existential threat: how do we ensure our continued existence as a people (a nation, dixit the House of Commons), given our small population - a population that is getting proportionately smaller every day?