From: CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CZ94)
Newsgroups: can.politics,can.general
Subject: 95 % rep by pop (was Re: Joe Clark's Session ...)
Date: 25 Sep 92 22:30:41 GMT
Organization: McGill University

In article <_cx--2#@engin.umich.edu> marky@engin.umich.edu (Mark Anthony Young) writes:
>CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CZ94) writes:
>>>
>>I don't suppose Clark bothered to define what he meant by strict
>>rep by pop.  I don't have the 1996 census figures handy at my
>>terminal, so I've had to work with 1991 figures.  Let's define
>>strict rep by pop to mean that seats in the House of Commons are
>>allocated to provinces and territories in such a way that there is as
>>little variation as possible in the population of ridings.  Yukon,
>>with 27797 people, is guaranteed one seat, so we have to make all
>>the ridings as close to this size as possible.  For 1991 populations,
>>this gives the following number of seats:
>>
>[Numbers reproduced below]
>
>For the benefit of those who are truly confused by what Clark meant,
>here is what I believe is going on.  I've reduced Tom's numbers by
>a factor of three to better represent the size of the House.
>
>      (a)    (b)    (c)     (d)
>Nfld  20      7      7      103
>PEI    5      2      4      235
>NS    32     11     11      101
>NB    26      9     10      113
>Que  248     83     84       99
>Ont  363    121    121       98
>Man   39     13     13       98
>Sask  36     12     12       98
>Alta  92     31     31       99
>BC   118     39     39       97
>NWT    2      1      2      293
>Yuk    1      0      1      293
>----------------------
>     982    329    335
>
>Column (a) is Tom's.  Column (b) represents a House one third that
>size.  Column (c) is calculated from column (b) by observing the
>following minimums:
>
>  1)  The Senate minimum rule (PEI and NB)
>  2)  Current representation for the territories
>  3)  Quebec's 25% guarantee.
>
>Column (d) shows what percent of rep-by-pop each province gets.
>It is calculated by dividing the percent of population (here I
>used Tom's 1000-seat House as a stand in, which is close enough
>for the precision I give) by the percent of seats in the House.
>
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