Also, I'm generally in favor of a very large legislature, for similar reasons of limiting the influence of a few strong personalities, and for increasing the "cost" to special interests to lobby.
In a system where campaign spending isn't regulated by law, sure. But in Canada, only people can give money to political parties (not corporations or unions), and they can only give so much per year (1000$ in Québec), and the parties then have spending limits during election campaigns. This was done to counter lobby groups who could basically own some politicians. So say you theoretically double the number of MPs, you would need to half what each candidate can spend during elections (seriously limiting their budget and inciting illegality), or you'd end up with the MPs totaling twice the spending limit. Not to mention you pay twice as much in salary and various advantages. And when you consider that the parties hold basically absolute authority over their MPs, I think you could shrink or quadruple the number of MPs and see no difference in the national assembly.
You also then get stuck with the fact that there is more posts than people seriously interested in getting elected there. Of course all the major parties have candidates everywhere, but some barely, and this is often managed by having random nobodies sent in regions they don't expect to win anyways. More ridings = more nobodies = more sheople. You'd also get more !@#$%^&s like the independant André Arthur, who spoke a total of three sentences (or was it three words?) in a whole parliamentary session, and who missed 95 of the 311 votes 'cause he was too busy with his job as a bus rider to go to parliament...
When I was young and idealist, I used to think that I'd rather a strong government than a weak one, so that at least he could push an agenda completely and get something done without endless compromises which ruined the policies' effectiveness. Now, having seen what political parties do when they have absolute power (or pretty darn near), I'd rather they lack the power to do anything at all unless they find endless compromises with the opposition.
