Seat redistribution in Canada

[Antonio the Sixth]

So, instead of trying to make things fairer and more proportional to actual population, Harper has added another damn clause ?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, I know about the clauses. They are silly and ideally should be abolished, but indeed the provinces will never give up those seats...

Far more simply, raising the seat number to 400 or 450 almost neutralizes any distortion. Instead, by guaranteeing Québec a "fair share" of seats, the new clause results in Alberta, BC and Ontario having an even less fair share of them.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, I know about the clauses. They are silly and ideally should be abolished, but indeed the provinces will never give up those seats...

Far more simply, raising the seat number to 400 or 450 almost neutralizes any distortion. Instead, by guaranteeing Québec a "fair share" of seats, the new clause results in Alberta, BC and Ontario having an even less fair share of them.

Abolition of those clauses would screw Atlantic Provinces, which would be really, really mad. Danny Williams showed to Harper, in 2008. Or in 1997, when NDP beated high-profile Liberals ministers there, because of anger around reform of Employment Insurance. Liberals took most of the seats back in 2000, but, the message of Atlantic was clear.
It is all the difficulty of Canadian politics. You must find an equilibrum between the very different parts of the country without favorising one nor angering one.

As for adding 100 seats, voters won't like at all.

Why ? The more seats there are, the more a single voter's influence on the election's outcome increases. And it also makes MPs closer to their constitutents (which should be the point of uniniminal voting).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, I'd be all for reducing the MPs' pay by 1/3 if we multiply their number by 1.5...

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, thank you Teddy. Too bad the Canada apportionment has gotten even messier than what it was before.