Inevitably, following an election as unusual and dramatic as this one, Canadian political discourse will focus on electoral reform and the perceived unfairness of the results, of the Trudeau promise to change the electoral system, and the need to throw the strategic voting baby out with the democratic bathwater by adopting Mixed Member Proportional.
For all of us who feel irrelevant, please share this message. This is the voters fighting back and will give local relevance to every riding in Canada. We will all have a place in politics.
The problem stems from 1867 when from Quebec Eastwards, provinces were guaranteed a numbered quantity of seats, Consequently because Canada expanded Westwards provinces from Ontario westwards are under-represented in parliamentary seats. It takes far fewer votes to win a seat from Quebec eastwards, Added to that is the gerrymandered nature of Quebec's seats it takes more votes to win a seat in the Anglophone Montreal west ridings than in the rural French ridings. We need to return to the idea of "one man one vote"(apologies to feminists) and to give tiny Provinces such as PEI some sort of power in the Senate to review laws from the House if Commons. This redistribution will kill off the Bloc Quebecois who are a menace to a genuinely national perspective in Canadian life.
Sam Allison said, “provinces were guaranteed a numbered quantity of seats”
Is it possible you are mixing the Senate with the House of Commons? While together they make up the legislative branch (the executive and legal branches being the other two), the makeup of the upper and lower house is very different.
Quebec was guaranteed a minimum number of House of Commons seats, and that has led to determining the size of parliament based on taking the population of Quebec, dividing it by those seats, and then rolling it out across the rest of the country. Provincial boundaries can't be crossed by an electoral district, and seats are rounded up such that even a territory without sufficient population to get a whole representative according to that formula will get a full representative.
I hear people saying that Canada’s current parliament somehow cheats the north or the south on a representation-by-population basis, but I've yet to see evidence of it. (Note: 60-70% of the Canadian population is south of the 49'th. There is a real north-south political diversity to consider more than than the grievance culture claiming it is an east-west issue)
The reality is that the further north you go, the more different politics becomes from the southern population concentration. The whole idea of having pan-Canadian political parties is extremely divisive and that culture (it isn’t required by actual law) should be ended. Canada should never be contemplating assigning top-up seats based on pan-Canadian parties, nor ever promoting the myth that Canada has a party-based "popular vote".
All that said, I have a very different opinion on what should be done with the Senate
For all of us who feel irrelevant, please share this message. This is the voters fighting back and will give local relevance to every riding in Canada. We will all have a place in politics.
The problem stems from 1867 when from Quebec Eastwards, provinces were guaranteed a numbered quantity of seats, Consequently because Canada expanded Westwards provinces from Ontario westwards are under-represented in parliamentary seats. It takes far fewer votes to win a seat from Quebec eastwards, Added to that is the gerrymandered nature of Quebec's seats it takes more votes to win a seat in the Anglophone Montreal west ridings than in the rural French ridings. We need to return to the idea of "one man one vote"(apologies to feminists) and to give tiny Provinces such as PEI some sort of power in the Senate to review laws from the House if Commons. This redistribution will kill off the Bloc Quebecois who are a menace to a genuinely national perspective in Canadian life.
Sam Allison said, “provinces were guaranteed a numbered quantity of seats”
Is it possible you are mixing the Senate with the House of Commons? While together they make up the legislative branch (the executive and legal branches being the other two), the makeup of the upper and lower house is very different.
Quebec was guaranteed a minimum number of House of Commons seats, and that has led to determining the size of parliament based on taking the population of Quebec, dividing it by those seats, and then rolling it out across the rest of the country. Provincial boundaries can't be crossed by an electoral district, and seats are rounded up such that even a territory without sufficient population to get a whole representative according to that formula will get a full representative.
I hear people saying that Canada’s current parliament somehow cheats the north or the south on a representation-by-population basis, but I've yet to see evidence of it. (Note: 60-70% of the Canadian population is south of the 49'th. There is a real north-south political diversity to consider more than than the grievance culture claiming it is an east-west issue)
The reality is that the further north you go, the more different politics becomes from the southern population concentration. The whole idea of having pan-Canadian political parties is extremely divisive and that culture (it isn’t required by actual law) should be ended. Canada should never be contemplating assigning top-up seats based on pan-Canadian parties, nor ever promoting the myth that Canada has a party-based "popular vote".
All that said, I have a very different opinion on what should be done with the Senate
https://r.flora.ca/p/hill-times-letter-indigenous-great-council