Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: A thought on rep by pop
From: emd@ham.almanac.bc.ca
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 92 19:03:35 PDT
Distribution: can
Organization: Robert Smits

pascal@nextasy.physics.mcmaster.ca (Pascal Gaudette) writes:

> 
> 
> Well, people have been complaining (for a change :-) here about
> various things:
> 
> - The proposed 25% floor of representatives to the House of Commons
> for Quebec violates (?) the rep by pop principle.
> 
> - But the House of Commons isn't rep by pop anyway, the party
> that wins an election is over-represented, and small parties
> have a hard time getting any seats, even if they get 5-10% of
> the votes. Also, electoral ridings don't all have the same
> number of people in them.
> 
> - And what about the EEE Senate? That also goes against
> the principle of rep by pop.
> 

What EEE Senate? It's 1 1/2 E at best! Equal, somehat Elected and 
UnEffective!

> Soooo, I remembered a little idea that we discussed a long
> time ago when I took a political science course in CEGEP,
> and I thought I'd submit it to you (not that it's incredibly
> original, but hey, I'm *not* a political science
> student! :^). 
> 
> Instead of going for a EEE Senate, do you think it would've
> been a good idea for our politicians to turn the Senate
> into a chamber elected "a la proportionelle directe"?
> (by direct proportional representation?) That is, all parties
> entered in the federal election submit a list of N names,
> where N is the total number of seats in the new "Senate".
> If they get 40% of all votes (nationally), then they get
> 40% of the seats in the new Senate (the first 0.4N people on
> their list get "elected").
> 

Actually, this would probably be more workable at the provincial level - 
i.e. have proportional representation by party in the Senate. You could 
have a Senator for about every 16% of the vote - so if you had a result 
like NDP 32%, Liberals 26%, Reform 20%, Conservatives 14%, Greens 6%, 
others 2%, you could have 2 NDP, 2 Liberal, 1 Reform and 1 Conservative 
Senator from that province. 

> This would mean that
> a) Small parties would have an easier time getting some
> members into parliament
> b) Although a government may have a good majority in the House
> of commons with 40% of the votes, it might have to be a lot
> more careful in its actions because it may not have a majority
> in a joint seating...
> 
> Of course, one still has to decide how many seats in this
> new Senate, what powers it has, etc, etc. But the goal
> is to try to strive a bit closer to rep by pop (esp. for
> small parties), while still maintaining a manageable system
> (ie one in which most government have a majority of seats).
> 
> Comments?
> 

I was under the impression that the gang of 17 had already divvied up the 
power between the HOC and the Senate, leaving only the business of how 
each province was to select the Senators up to the individual province. 
While I rather like the idea of proportional representation in the Senate 
it has some drawbacks. The main one I see is that you give up control 
over the choice of individual senators to the party he represents. It 
will be much more difficult to get rid of an unpopular Senator if he is 
supported by his party, and conversely, to elect a popular Senator if his 
party doesn't do well in the polls. I would, however, like to see the 
Senate elected for a fixed term of office, instead of at the same time as 
the HOC. 

emd@ham.almanac.bc.ca  (Robert Smits, Ladysmith B.C.)

The way to get things out of a government is to back them to the wall, 
put your hands to their throats, and you will get all that they have. 
- Agnes McPhail