From: marky@engin.umich.edu (Mark Anthony Young)
Subject: Re: 95 % rep by pop (was Re: Joe Clark's Session ...)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 16:39:19 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CZ94) writes:
>In going from (b) to (c), you neglected a provision in the Charlotte-
>town Accord that no province will lose seats in the 1996
>redistribution.  This increases the Que, Man and Sask numbers to
>93, 14, and 14, respectively.
>
>This increases the total size of the House, so the Ont, Alta, and
>BC numbers have to be increased more to meet the 95 % of rep-by-pop
>requirement.  In fact, the process of giving out extra seats to
>meet this requirement doesn't converge very rapidly.  Give an extra
>seat to Ontario to get it over the 95 % threshold, and you reduce
>the relative weight of Alberta's representation, so you have to give
>it another seat.  Then BC merits an extra seat, etc.  Even NS and Nfld
>get into the act.  Man gets an extra seat because of another provision
>that a province having achieved rep-by-pop can't fall below 100 %
>(not 95 %) of rep-by-pop.  When everything finally converges, you have
>
>Nfld  8   71059   107.3
>PEI   4   32441   235.0
>NS   12   74995   101.7
>NB   10   72390   105.3
>Que  93   74150   102.8
>Ont 126   80039    95.3
>Man  15   72796   104.7
>Sask 14   70638   107.9
>Alta 32   79549    95.9
>BC   41   80050    95.3
>NWT   2   28825   264.5
>Yuk   1   27797   274.3
>    ---
>    358
>
>where the columns are the number of seats, the average riding population
>and the percentage of full rep-by-pop this number of seats represents.
>
>All this is with 1991 census data.  By 1996, BC, Alta, and Ont will
>likely have grown more relative to the national average, so they'll
>need even more seats to catch up to 95 % of rep-by-pop.
>
>Note that the Quebec 25 % rule does not come into play.  As I've
>said several times before, Quebec's biggest gain is not this 25 %
>minimum, it's the 18 extra MPs it gets right away.
>
>Tom Box
>CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA

Sorry about that glaring error in my chart.

The agreement mentions a "fixed floor".  This is the number of Senators
each province had in 1982.  This floor will be retained.

The "rising floor" of the 1867 BNA Act is to be repealed.  Is this the
provision that no province will ever lose seats through redistribution?
If so, then those 18 seats will disappear after 2001, and Quebec will
only have the 25% guarantee.  If not, the House will grow to such a
size that the 18 seats are swamped by the 25% rule.

In any case, the 25% guarantee will become more and more important as
the next century progresses.  By 2041 Quebec will have dropped to about
20% of Canada's population.  By that time the House may have swelled to
more than 400 members.  Quebec's 25% guarantee would then be getting it
at least 20 extra seats in the HoC.  

As Canada continues to grow and Quebec to shrink as a proportion of the
total, this disparity will only get worse.

Had the agreement simply given Quebec an extra 18 seats and made this
number its new "fixed floor", the result for Canada would not have
been so bad.  As it is, it could lead to HUGE disparities in the next
century.

...mark young
Newsgroups: can.politics