From: marky@engin.umich.edu (Mark Anthony Young)
Subject: Re: H of C seats (was Re: I was going to vote ....)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 17:10:14 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA (CZ94000) writes:
>I posted a half-finished version of what is below a few minutes
>ago.  Here's the complete version.

I should never have doubted you :-).
>>
>As I've shown in my correction, BC was better off than Quebec in 1971.
>
I retract the statement that BC was ever worse off than Quebec.

>>The next table gives the distribution of the House under the next election, as
>>called for by the Cha'town accord.
>
>I don't see how they can get the new riding boundaries drawn in time
>for the next election, so this may not come into effect until the
>election after that one.

True.

>>The next table gives Tom Box's estimates for the post-96 House.  He used the
>>1991 population figures together with the rules given in the Cha'town accord
>>to come up with these estimates. The Cha'town accord calls for the '96 figures
>>to be used, but we obviously don't have those yet.
>
>I was trying to follow the wording of the Ch'town accord rigorously
>in coming up with these numbers.  The politicians will probably
>use some silly rounding off conventions that will result in different
>numbers, so don't take my figures as gospel.
>
I have faith in you.  That doesn't mean I'm taking these numbers as Gospel -- 
I already noted that we used the wrong census.

>Oddly enough, the legal text doesn't give details on how this 1996
>redistribution is to be carried out.  The Quebec 25 % floor and
>the small provinces' fixed floors are there, but not the 95 % of
>rep by pop promised to BC and Alta (and Ont).  I guess the H of C
>will be free to work out the details later.

Good thing they have that promise that nothing's going to change from
the draft to the legal text....

>>Here is how that chart might look in 2041.  These numbers are based on the
>>growth in each province since 1971.  Taking a longer base leads to larger
>>populations, a shorter base to smaller, but the percent of total population is
>>fairly constant over many bases.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>I calculated these numbers as follows:
>>
>>    a) Start with the 1996 size House (358 seats).
>>    b) Reserve 25% of the seats for Quebec (leaves 268 seats).
>>    c) Reserve three seats for the territories (leaves 265 seats).
>>    d) Distribute these seats to the nine remaining provinces according to
>>       population.
>>    e) Raise the representation of any province that does not meet its fixed
>>       floor (this gets all the Atlantic provinces).
>>    f) Raise the representation of any province that has less seats than a
>>       smaller province (this gets Manitoba and Saskatchewan).
>
>The small provinces' floors are to be higher than this.  They will
>be the numbers from the redistribution following the 1971 census,
>i.e. Nfld 7, PEI 4, NS 11, NB 10, Man 14, Sask 14.  Also, if NS
>overtakes Sask, it too will get pushed up to 14.
>
Even better!  I only used the Senate floors.  Here we go:

2041    Seats   Population  RepByPop    Gain
----    -----   ----------  --------    ----
Nfld       7        702         5        +2
PEI        4        189         1        +3
NS        14      1 251         9        +5
NB        10      1 005         8        +2
Que       99      9 653        73       +26
Ont      124     19 780       149       -25
Man       14      1 402        11        +3
Sask      14      1 166         9        +5
Alta      49      7 787        59       -10
BC        57      9 075        69       -12
YT         1         85         1         0
NWT        2        205         2         0
-------------------------------------
Can      395     52 300       395

This House is just totally screwy.  The problems with the smaller provinces
can be straightened out by adding seats -- it would only take about two
hundred more seats to get Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan up past their fixed 
floors.  At that point Quebec would be over-represented by forty seats.

Even if we boost Quebec's population by 2500 people (to near 22%), it would 
still be over-represented by twelve seats (eighteen in the larger House), 
and Ontario under-represented by nineteen.  Quebec doesn't have to drop all 
the way to 20 for there to be major distortions in the House.

...mark young
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada