Canada Federal Representation 2024

[Hatman 🍁]

Although putting Powell River with Skeena is tempting, in 2002 it was proposed and everyone thought it was a bad idea and recommended extending Skeena eastwards! Ken Carty might remember that.

Making three ridings for North Van/West Van/Powell River requires sending the northernmost riding of the three well over the Coastal Mountains. Experimentation with ridingbuilder required me not only including the Fraser Canyon but also going near to Kelowna and Kamloops! I can't see the Commission doing that.

CultySmother on Twitter made a pretty good map that adds the extra seat to Vancouver Island which allows a smaller Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding, and puts the Sunshine Coast into the North Island riding (North Island-Powell River-Sunshine Coast, basically).  This allows for the nuking of the Burnaby North-Seymour riding.

[Hatman 🍁]

ooh, first riding to begin with a lower case letter? Alas, that riding is preposterous, and wouldn't go over well.

[Hatman 🍁]

Good effort, but I have to be a stickler and list my complaints:

Not a fan of that Kiiwetinoong—Superior seat, it screams "left over" riding, and splits the Indigenous communities up in the NW part of the province. They should be kept together, which the current iteration of Kenora does nicely.

You've split the urban part of Sudbury in half, which seems unnecessary.

Putting South Algonquin in with the rest of Nipissing might  "make sense" in that it is geographically within Nipissing District, but in reality it is completely separated by it by Algonquin Park. It belongs in a Renfrew-Pembroke based district.

What have you done with Ottawa!!?? I think b/w me and Krago hashing it out, we have perfected the Ottawa map. So anything that goes against that I will oppose. But my biggest complaints here are that Stittsville panhandle looks ugly, crossing the greenbelt should be avoided at all costs (like your Kanata-Nepean riding does) and Sandy Hill should be in Ottawa-Vanier for COI and historical reasons. Though, politically I like the idea of putting it in Centre.

As for Kingston, I really hate that Quinte finger reaching into the city like that.

[Hatman 🍁]

Further to my prior posts about the City of Vancouver, (now I can post images/links, yay!), the distribution of Vancouver into federal ridings has always bothered me. Vancouver is very much a 'city of neighborhoods' and likewise, creates strong 'communities of interest' that should not be split unless otherwise necessary.

There are 22 neighborhoods in Vancouver which are bylaw/urban planning-determined, as well as special attention paid to the Downtown-Eastside community of interest.

Maps: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/neighbourhood-planning-projects.aspx

https://vanmapp1.vancouver.ca/gmaps/covmap.htm?map=csg_neighborhood_areas

Source - Pg. 50 - Vancouver City Plan, (1995),
https://guidelines.vancouver.ca/policy-plan-cityplan.pdf

The current Vancouver riding map prioritizes the use of major arterial roads to determine federal riding boundaries, which does a poor job of keeping communities of interest united.

Furthermore, ridings like Vancouver Quadra and Vancouver Granville, fail to account for the immense development/urban differences between northern and southern neighborhoods in their respective territory. Kitsilano-Fairview-University, is far more congruent than Kerrisdale-Fairview-Mount Pleasant.

I've created this map which splits only 3 neighborhoods, (2 based on East-West divides, 1 owing to population equity), which has all 6 ridings within 9% of the provincial population quotient, (116 318). and within 7% of the 'Vancouver riding' population quotient (113 698). I used naming conventions of either cardinal directions, or major arterial roads.

Logical Map of Vancouver Federal Ridings



Vancouver Centre: 107 225 (area of very high anticipated development/growth)
Vancouver Broadway: 120 145
Vancouver East: 114 774
Vancouver Southwest: 105 911
Vancouver South: 114 278
Vancouver Kingsway: 119 857

If the commission is an immense stickler for population equity as they seem to be this cycle, and insist that Vancouver does not have adequate population for 6 ridings, the logical amendment would be to move all of 'Marpole' into 'Vancouver Southwest' (new population: 119 269), pushing the 'Vancouver South' population down to 100 920.

I would assume 'Vancouver South' would take a part of Burnaby to meet population requirements - the last time a Vancouver riding bled into another municipality, was the 1995 Redistribution, which saw the creation of Vancouver South - Burnaby between 1997 - 2004.

Very interesting way of dividing the city. Probably preferable to the current map, though goes against the history of the ridings in the city. We may have missed the boat on this set up, as 2013 was the time to do it.  Anyway, is Vancouver Southwest the best name for that riding? Would it make sense to keep the name Quadra?

[Hatman 🍁]

Good effort, but I have to be a stickler and list my complaints:

Not a fan of that Kiiwetinoong—Superior seat, it screams "left over" riding, and splits the Indigenous communities up in the NW part of the province. They should be kept together, which the current iteration of Kenora does nicely.

You've split the urban part of Sudbury in half, which seems unnecessary.

Putting South Algonquin in with the rest of Nipissing might  "make sense" in that it is geographically within Nipissing District, but in reality it is completely separated by it by Algonquin Park. It belongs in a Renfrew-Pembroke based district.

What have you done with Ottawa!!?? I think b/w me and Krago hashing it out, we have perfected the Ottawa map. So anything that goes against that I will oppose. But my biggest complaints here are that Stittsville panhandle looks ugly, crossing the greenbelt should be avoided at all costs (like your Kanata-Nepean riding does) and Sandy Hill should be in Ottawa-Vanier for COI and historical reasons. Though, politically I like the idea of putting it in Centre.

As for Kingston, I really hate that Quinte finger reaching into the city like that.

I see that Hatman considers Ottawa to be his personal fiefdom:)

Yes.

As for Kiiwetinoong... do you have anything better?

I think I made my plan earlier. Keep Kenora as is, add some suburban areas to TBRR from TBSN, and wrap TSSN all the way down Lake Superior until Sault Ste. Marie.

[Hatman 🍁]

Saskatchewan's proposal is out... and all I can say is whoa, whoa, whoa! The NDP will be pleased; if they can't win Saskatoon Centre, they can't win anything. Also, Churchill River is at -43.72%(!!!). I didn't think any Commission would go down to that point, least of all a Prairie one!

https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/sk/prop/othaut/int_e.aspx

That Saskatoon Centre riding will easily go NDP. Weird how Saskatoon gets an urban central district, but Regina doesn't.

Will be curious to see the transposed numbers in the Churchill River riding. As long as it still contains Meadow Lake, it will be tough for the NDP to win it, though.

[Hatman 🍁]

For COI reasons, this Saskatoon Centre makes more sense than using the river as a boundary. I mean, crossing a narrowish river isn't that big of a deal anyway. Ottawa-Vanier crosses the Rideau for example.

[Hatman 🍁]

Well done! Too bad it's pay walled. You'd think the NB native himself who designed ridingbuilder would get some love?

[Hatman 🍁]

For clarity sake ---  the new riding (#43) you are proposing is called Fraser Canyon--Coquihalla--Sea-to-Sky Country ?

Yes.  I am open to suggestions for a better and shorter name.  (Sea-to-Sky-to-Canyon-to-Coquihalla?)

If I'm so smart, why did it take me so long to come up with something so obvious?

Perhaps you were hesitant to Squamish, 100 Mile House and Princeton in the same riding. I don't mind personally, but I can see that being a difficult sell.

My bigger beef with your map is Kelowna (I don't like the idea of crossing Lake Okanagan, just like I don't like crossing the Burrard Inlet) and that Surrey--Cloverdale--Fraser Heights wrap around riding.

[Hatman 🍁]

The best point in favour of the new sprawling interior riding is that it improves representation in all the areas it touches.

I'm not a big fan of the Cloverdale--Fraser Heights seat, but a Fleetwood North and Fleetwood South alternative would be worse.

Kelowna is too big for one riding.  Having the second seat include West Kelowna rather than Vernon would seem a positive thing to me.

That being said, what do you think of this?

I like it!

[Hatman 🍁]

You have not crossed Fish Creek in any of your maps, so I'm happy. I'll be very disappointed if the commission does.

Not sure if Calgary Ogden is the best name of the riding, but I would also say Calgary Heritage is a terrible name, and they still went with that.

[Hatman 🍁]

Not sure if Calgary Ogden is the best name of the riding, but I would also say Calgary Heritage is a terrible name, and they still went with that.

Calgary--Weaselhead Flats


The federal commissioners try not to duplicate provincial riding names in Calgary.

I know. Limits the choices considerably.  Heritage could easily be Glenmore.

[Hatman 🍁]

I have to insist that for any Calgary map that no riding cross the Airport in the northeast. I know the current set up does that, but it doesn't make sense to include the Country Hills area and the McCall area in the same riding, when they're separate by a large expanse like that.

[Hatman 🍁]

I'd rather a riding cross the Bow than the Airport. The airport is much bigger than the river, and therefore is a greater barrier. Plus, the areas on both sides of the Bow are similar demographically, aren't they? More urban/dense. Of course, I'm not from Calgary so I could be off base here.

[Hatman 🍁]

Funny we were talking about Alberta, considering the commission for Alberta has released their map:

https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/ab/prop/index_e.aspx

They did not use the airport as a boundary

[Hatman 🍁]

It strikes me that it might be useful to think in terms of the population in the particular bits of Calgary, taking account of what Njall has said about where connections are and aren't good.

Calgary as a whole: 1306784 (11.31 quotas)
South of Fish Creek: 115238 (1.00)
North of Fish Creek and southwest of the Bow: 375841 (3.25 - 'group 1')
North of the Bow River and west of Deerfoot Trail: 415774 (3.60 - 'group 2')
East of the Bow and Deerfoot Trail: 399931 (3.46 - 'group 3')

So you can't get an integer number of ridings out of group 3, which means you either need to add other areas of Calgary or you need to add Airdrie. Assuming you're doing the former and you're ruling out crossing round the airport, that means either pairing with group 2 along the Trans-Canada Highway (so group 1 could stand alone for three large ridings) or you're pairing with group 1 across the Bow (presumably in the Ogden area) in which case groups 1 and 2 also need to be paired.

Krago's suggestion of putting group 3 with the bits of group 1 east of Macleod Trail gives you 457550, which is pretty much dead on for four ridings and you can then get 7 largeish ridings out of group 2 and the rest of group 1.

If on the other hand you're pairing along the Trans-Canada, then it looks like that naturally draws a riding which is made up of the eastern half of Confederation and the northern or western half of Forest Lawn. I defer to Njall on whether that works on a community level, but it certainly looks ugly on a map.

TLDR - yeah, crossing the river seems like a far superior option.

After playing around in the riding builder a little bit, here's what I would likely consider to be the optimal way to modify the map based on that initial division of Calgary into four sections as you outlined above, in order to create new sections with more sensible quotas:

1. Move the part of group 3 south of 50 Avenue SE to group 1. In practice, this would allow you to create the Calgary McKenzie riding from your maps above, and would leave the communities of Douglasdale/Glen, Riverbend, and Ogden to be joined with communities on the west side of the river.

2. Move the following communities from group 2 to group 1: Bridgeland/Riverside, Renfrew, Crescent Heights, Rosedale, Sunnyside, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill, St. Andrews Heights, Parkdale, Point McKay, University of Calgary, University Heights, University District, Montgomery, and Varsity. This allows you to take advantage of the numerous central river crossings as well as the crossing between Bowness and Montgomery.

3. Move the following communities from group 3 to group 2: Vista Heights and Mayland Heights, plus the McCall, North Airways, South Airways, and Mayland industrial areas. This move is the least ideal of all that I've listed, but it works because of the cross-Deerfoot connections offered by 16 Avenue NE, 32 Avenue NE, and McKnight Boulevard, as well as the fact that Vista Heights and Mayland Heights are cut off from other northeast communities by industrial areas, and so the residential communities on the west side of Deerfoot are actually closer to them. This crossing of Deerfoot south of McKnight can also be seen in the current boundaries of the provincial riding of Calgary-Klein.

After making those changes, you end up with the following groups, populations, and quotas:
Group 1: 588,900 (5.10)
Group 2: 356,935 (3.09)
Group 3: 245,711 (2.13)

I don't think step 3 is really needed - there's room for those communities to go with Forest Lawn by my reckoning. On the other hand, whilst the boundary between group 1 and group 2 you suggest sounds sensible, I think in practice you would probably need to keep Varsity in group 2 if you don't want the Ogden riding stretching west of Macleod Trail.

I was annoyed at the map that the actual commission came up with so I made a mock-up of what the boundaries could be using the groups that I outlined previously. Here's what I came up with:



Non-grouped:
Red: Calgary Midnapore: 115,238 (-0.2%)

Group 1:
Blue: Calgary Shepard: 115,118 (-0.3%)
Green:  Calgary Deerfoot Meadows: 116,743 (+1.1%)
Yellow: Calgary Glenmore: 119,422 (+3.4%)
Magenta: Calgary Centre: 118,241 (+2.4%)
Turquoise: Calgary Bowness: 119,108 (+3.1%)

Group 2:
Pink: Calgary Nose Hill: 122,353 (+5.9%)
Orange: Calgary Crowfoot: 117,275 (+1.5%)
Grey: Calgary Northern Hills: 117,307 (+1.6%)

Group 3:
Blue: Calgary Forest Lawn: 123,196 (+6.7%)
Gold: Calgary Saddletowne: 122,783 (+6.3%)

This is a very good map, though I may have tried to avoid crossing the Bow in the Varsity area (though, the dominoes from such a move may result in a worse map)

After looking at the Edmonton map, I was unhappy with the new Winterburn riding as it kind of lumps a bunch of disparate neighbourhoods that are separated by large industrial tracts. I've tried to fix that situation with the following map:



The only real "issue" with this map is it splits the downtown up. But it helps shore up Desjarlais, and cracks a Liberal riding, so I'm not complaining

[Hatman 🍁]

My Saskatchewan 14-seat proposal has been completely revised.

I've left the northern riding as proposed by the Commission, as well as the Battlefords--Lloydminster, Prince Albert, and Yorkton--Melville ridings.  I've created three seats entirely within the City of Saskatoon, and three seats in the combined Moose Jaw/Regina area.  The remaining four ridings were adjusted to balance populations.

See it here: https://bit.ly/Canada343

The NDP is not going to be happy with how you split Regina.

[Hatman 🍁]

My Saskatchewan 14-seat proposal has been completely revised.

I've left the northern riding as proposed by the Commission, as well as the Battlefords--Lloydminster, Prince Albert, and Yorkton--Melville ridings.  I've created three seats entirely within the City of Saskatoon, and three seats in the combined Moose Jaw/Regina area.  The remaining four ridings were adjusted to balance populations.

See it here: https://bit.ly/Canada343

The NDP is not going to be happy with how you split Regina.

The Regina NDP hasn’t been happy for the past thirty years.


Would this alternative make them happier?

88,224 -- Moose Jaw--Regina East
86,971 -- Regina North
89,029 -- Regina Wascana





Does anyone know a simple way to move labels in QGIS?

This map is much better for the NDP, but lumping the east end of Regina with Moose Jaw is ridiculous

[Hatman 🍁]

You didn't find anything wrong to what they did to the south end of Edmonton? Mill Woods should remain whole for COI reasons in my opinion, even if it's a tad over-sized.

[Hatman 🍁]

The problem with arguing for a different arrangement of seats is that you need to convince them twice - first that their arrangements are wrong, and secondarily that your individual seats are better than theirs. Whereas if you accept the arrangement, you only need to convince them once.

Agreed. I'm a big supporter of not using hybrid ridings if it can be avoided anyway, though I don't mind having St. Albert or Sherwood Park be lumped into Edmonton if necessary.

Speaking of Edmonton, I much prefer ridings that follow borders that separate communities of interest (i.e., rivers, creeks, expressways, industrial corridors, railways, powerlines, etc). Here's a good map made by Alex McPhee that shows where the industrial corridors are pretty well:



Here's Calgary:



You can really see how bad the new Skyview riding is on that map.

[Hatman 🍁]

Do the proposed new boundaries in Edmonton make Blake Desjarlais’s seat any more or less safe for thé NDP?

I think it's bad news for him. The riding gains the Castle Downs area which voted Conservative in 2021 (though lost some Conservative leaning areas in the process). Castle Downs did vote NDP in the provincial election, so if he can win over those voters, he should be able to keep the seat.

The NDP in Alberta should be pushing for my map though, which I think makes his riding safer (though that fact is purely a coincidence )

[Hatman 🍁]

Proposed maps are now available for Manitoba (https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/mb/med/jun1622_e.aspx) and New Brunswick (https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/nb/med/jun1622_e.aspx)

Highlights include the newly re-named Winnipeg West riding reaching out into the rural hinterlands for some reason, and splitting Saint John in half!

[Hatman 🍁]

Ahh, the old Derry/Foyle approach. Another name for the Moncton area is just "Codiac", which might work.

Eventually a commission in the future is just going to have to bite the bullet vis-a-vis the hard Miramichi/Beasejour border as it's going to be impossible to keep Miramichi big enough without crossing over.

[Hatman 🍁]

Not many changes proposed, and all the changes make sense except they decided to re-name three of the ridings for some reason.

Bonavista—Burin—Trinity becomes Terra Nova–The Peninsulas 🤮 The thinking here I guess is that now that all of the west coast of Conception Bay is in the riding, the old name doesn't represent the district anymore. Bonavista—Burin—Trinity—Conception is too long, I get it. Bonavista—Burin—Bay de Verde might make more sense, as it includes the names of all three peninsulas in the riding, where most of the population lives.

Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame becomes Notre Dame–Bay d'Espoir. This is an improvement as I hate the fact that they just threw in the name "Central" there. Central what? I'm not sure if Bay d'Espoir or Coast of Bays is a better name for the southern part of the riding, so not sure if that is an improvement. The Central part of the riding should be covered in the name though, as that's where most of the population lives. Coast of Bays—Exploits—Notre Dame might do this, though it leaves out Gander (though Bonavista—Exploits was the name of the riding in 2004, and it included Gander, but it was quickly re-named Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, probably because Gander was excluded).  Once upon a time Gander—Grand Falls was the name of the riding before it included Bay d'Espoir or the Baie Verte peninsula, though throwing that in there would make the riding name too long, and I'm sure people in Windsor would be upset.

St. John's South—Mount Pearl becomes Cape Spear 🤮 This is the most useless change. It would be a good name if there were no alternatives, but I see nothing wrong with the current name.

[Hatman 🍁]

The orientation of St. John's is weird, but it's always been divided this way, more or less. The east end of the city looks more north on maps, but people call it the east end (if you look at the provincial map, it kind of makes more sense, you kind of have to think about where the population is, especially before suburbanization). They attempted to re-name the riding St. John's North in 2004 (at the same time, St. John's West became St. John's South), but I assume there was opposition, because it went back to being called St. John's East (though, St. John's South has kept its new name ever since).