Thursday, October 27, 2011

Federal seat redistruction

The federal government is introducing legislation to balance the seat distribution in the House of Commons by adding 30 seats:

+15 Ontario
+  6 Alberta
+  6 B.C.
+  3 Quebec

It's a very small step in the right direction, but it's also way off.  One problem is that no province can have fewer MPs than it has senators, so for Nova Scotia, which has 10 senators, it has 11 MPs.  This is greatly flawed and doesn't reflect a true, equal and fair democracy. 

Below is a table and graph I have compiled based on current 2011 Stats Can population numbers.  Here's you'll see just how unbalanced it continues to be.  The key number here is the Seats/Pop ratio column. I've graphed it to show the differences between the current situation, new legislation, modified, and my "Hatrock" proposal, but with provinces only.

As well, by 'Modified', I mean that if the gov't continued with its current logic in the new legislation and maintained the current (MPs >= Senators) formula, it would have to drastically increase the size of the Commons to 368 seats.

Updated Nov. 2/'11:  Corrected Alberta at 36 to 34 seats under new legislation.






















Provincial Seat/Pop. Models Chart
 (Based on above numbers.)


2 comments:

jeppo said...

In your table, under New Legislation, you list Alberta as having 36 seats and a total H. of C. of 340 seats. Actually, Alberta will only get 34 seats (out of 338) under the new legislation.

Mike B. said...

Thanks Jeppo. I've made the correction and updated.