Canada Federal Representation 2024

[EastAnglianLefty]

Territories getting a seat of their own makes sense, but the malapportionment within provinces is bad enough on its own, let alone the various oddities between different provinces.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Would agree with that - it's much more defensible in northern Manitoba, for example, than it is in rural Nova Scotia.

[EastAnglianLefty]

What was the logic for the change from Kenora-Rainy River to Kenora?

[EastAnglianLefty]

I was asking because it strikes me that if you were to restore Kenora-Rainy River, you could have a compact Thunder Bay riding, rather than splitting the city in two and combining them with widely spread rural areas.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I was asking because it strikes me that if you were to restore Kenora-Rainy River, you could have a compact Thunder Bay riding, rather than splitting the city in two and combining them with widely spread rural areas.

Then you'd have a geographically monstrous Kenora-Rainy River riding, and the new Thunder Bay riding would be well over the Northern Ontario average (though, I'm not sure how much that matters)

I agree it would be monstrously large, but that seems equally true to me of the current Kenora riding - the Rainy River district is much smaller than Kenora and I can't see that there would be difficulties in representing it that aren't already experienced representing the far-flung reaches of the Kenora district.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I had mentioned before that Halifax county is entitled to almost exactly five ridings. This won't happen due to rural bias and difficulties making rural political geography work without bleeding into Halifax. In any case, here is five riding Halifax:





Red: Halifax
Blue: Halifax West
Green: Dartmouth-Eastern Passage
Yellow: Hammonds Plains-St. Margaret's
Purple: Sackville-Eastern Shore

The political barriers will still exist, but in terms of administrative sub-geographies it seems reasonably simple to assign six ridings to the rest of NS, which from an outsider's perspective look coherent:

Seat 1 - the Cape Breton Region Municipality (slightly more than 10% above the average, but only just)
Seat 2 - the rest of Cape Breton, Guysborough County, Antigonish County, Pictou County south of Pictou Harbour
Seat 3 - Cumberland County, Colchester County, the rest of Pictou County
Seat 4 - more or less the present Kings-Hants riding
Seat 5 - Luneburg County, Queens County, Shelburne County and the eastern half of Yarmouth County
Seat 6 - everything else

[EastAnglianLefty]

I thought I'd take a look at what the Ontario map might look like if you were to follow British norms for constituency reviews - ie concentrating on keeping municipalities together and ensuring that every riding is in quota, with no special circumstances.

First things first, here were the groupings I got:

South Western Ontario
Windsor: 2 ridings
Essex County-Chatham-Kent--Lambton County-Middlesex County-London: 8 ridings
Brant-Brantford-Norfolk County-Haldimand County-Elgin County: 3 ridings
Oxford: 1 riding
Perth County-Huron County-Bruce County: 2 ridings

Golden Horseshoe
Niagara region: 4 ridings
Hamilton: 5 ridings
Wellington County-Guelph: 2 ridings
Waterloo region: 5 ridings
Halton region: 5 ridings
Mississauga: 6 ridings
Brampton: 6 ridings
Toronto: 24 ridings
King-Vaughan: 3 ridings
Markham: 3 ridings
Richmond Hill-Whitchurch-Stouffville: 2 ridings
Rest of York region: 2 ridings
Pickering-Uxbridge: 1 riding
Ajax: 1 riding
Rest of Durham region: 4 ridings

Central Ontario
Grey County-Dufferin County-Caledon: 2 ridings
Simcoe County-Muskoka: 5 ridings
Kawartha Lakes-Haliburton County-Peterborough County-Peterborough: 2 ridings
Northumberland County-Quinte West-Belleville-Hastings County: 2 ridings

Eastern Ontario
Frontenac County-Kingston-Lennox and Addington-Prince Edward County: 2 ridings
Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry: 1 riding
Renfrew County: 1 riding
Ottawa-Leeds & Grenville-Prescott & Russell-Lanark County: 11 ridings

Northern Ontario
Kenora-Rainy River-Thunder Bay: 2 ridings
Cochrane-Timiskaming: 1 riding
Algoma: 1 riding
Manitoulin-Sudbury District-Greater Sudbury-Nipissing-Parry Sound: 3 ridings

There's a lot of pitchfork bait there, but I'll start with the most pitchforky bit - Northern Ontario.



The first thing to say is that the UK norm would generally be to keep smaller urban areas united whenever possible, so rather than splitting Sudbury or Thunder Bay between seats I've given them their own compact ridings. Very obviously this is not the Canadian way, but then again this isn't a serious proposal.

The second thing to say is that some of the municipal boundaries look quite odd, but the point of the exercise was to stick with them so I have.

Northwestern Ontario: 116200
Thunder Bay: 118524
Cochrane-Timiskaming: 108011
Sault Ste. Marie: 114510
Manitoulin-West Nipissing-Sudbury Outer: 109760
Parry Sound-North Bay: 112552

Those riding names are an unholy mash-up of UK and Canadian norms - if you committed one way or the other you could no doubt do much better.

I've mapped out Southern Ontario, Niagara and a few other regions, and I'm working on others. Will post them as I go, or at least until I annoy you all enough that you ask me to stop.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Moving on to Eastern Ontario, there are 15 ridings here (treating the western boundary as Lennox & Addington/Prince Edward County and ignoring the fact that both of those are currently grouped with Hastings County.) Ottawa could be assigned 9 ridings on its own, but it's a little on the small side for that and doing so would mean you couldn't treat Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry on its own. Given the Ottawa municipality includes a fair amount of rural areas, I instead elected to let SDG stand alone (and Renfrew) and to combine Ottawa with areas both to its east and west.




Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry 114637
Prescott-Russell 119838
Orleans 125268
Ottawa South 114435
Ottawa-Vanier 119112
Ottawa Central 121969
Ottawa West-Nepean 112453
Barrhaven 116678
Nepean-Kanata West 116988
Kanata 112992
Renfrew 106365
Lanark 115761 - there should probably be something in this name to acknowledge the bits of Ottawa, but I have no idea what that should be.
Leeds-Grenville 117238
Frontenac-Lennox & Addington-Prince Edward 109932
Kingston 122734

I suspect this map may not be terribly pleasing to Ottawa natives, not least because Ottawa South is a fairly obvious leftovers seat, but in my defence I have no idea what I'm doing.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Oh man, basically looks like an anti NDP gerrymander

The Eastern Ontario one or the Northern Ontario one? I wasn't aware the federal NDP really had any vaguely competitive seats in eastern Ontario these days.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Rather than sharing more bad Ontario maps, I've taken a look at BC, where I think there might be some value in considering alternatives to Krago's map.

The big difference is that rather than combining Mission with Similkameen and the Sunshine Coast with the Fraser Canyon, I kept the Sunshine Coast with West Vancouver and created a riding stretching from Squamish to Lake Shuswap. Which is undoubtedly extremely ugly, but does allow for some reasonably neat seats in the SE of the province.

I also had seven seats entirely on Vancouver Island, created an entirely urban Abbotsford seat and separated Surrey and Langley.

South East BC



Kootenay-Columbia 109092
Okanagan-West Kootenay 110300
West Kelowna-Penticton 113637
Kelowna 126782
Vernon-Kelowna 121945
Squamish-Lilloet-Thompson 117012
Kamloops-North Thompson 118045

I quite like West Kelowna-Penticton and think not having a riding crossing Lake Kelowna is an improvement, but YMMV. As discussed, Squamish etc. is a bit unwieldy. Possibly it could be made less so with a split of Kamloops, but that doesn't seem desirable in the abstract.

North BC



Cariboo-Prince George 108872
Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies 117495
Skeena-Bulkley Valley 98087 - only riding more than 10% from the quota

Not much change here - just a few minor tweaks to create what look to me like stronger boundaries, but probably don't to a local.

Vancouver Island





North Island 127237
Alberni-Parksville-Nanaimo 109303
Nanaimo-Ladysmith 110137
Sooke-Langford-Cowichan Valley 121311
Esquimalt-Saanich-Colwood 116731
Victoria 125302
Saanich-Gulf Islands 125619

In theory I suppose North Island could take in the bits of Mt Waddington and Strathcona across the strait. Shuffling the ridings north could also avoid splitting Nanaimo.

Metro Vancouver







Delta 110721
Richmond East-Queensborough 110149
Richmond West 110771
Vancouver South 109339
Vancouver Kingsway 108717
Vancouver East 104874
Vancouver Granville 123155
Vancouver Quadra 118658
Vancouver Central 117447
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Powell River 110634
North Vancouver 125061
Burnaby North-Seymour 116907
Burnaby West 108028
New Westminster-Burnaby 116398
Port Moody-Coquitlam 123628
Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam 123229
Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge 110416
Fleetwood-Port Kells 122381
Surrey Central 115731
Surrey Newton 126009
Cloverdale-Sullivan 113924
South Surrey-White Rock 112449

I think it may technically possible to get two ridings out of Richmond which are both within 10%, but I figured treating Lulu Island as a unit wasn't that bad and made things much neater. I quite like my Vancouver Central, which is everything north of False Creek and west of Main Street. Not convinced I got the boundary right between Quadra and Granville. Cloverdale-Sullivan may very well be a terrible name. Apologies if so.

Fraser Valley



Langley-Walnut Grove 127751
Abbotsford 122308
Mission-Aldergrove-Fort Langley 113498
Chilliwack-Hope 122593

I like the version of Abbotsford I came up with, but I suspect Canadians would rather bisect it to improve the Mission seat?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Delta 110721
Richmond East-Queensborough 110149
Richmond West 110771
Vancouver South 109339
Vancouver Kingsway 108717
Vancouver East 104874
Vancouver Granville 123155
Vancouver Quadra 118658
Vancouver Central 117447
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Powell River 110634
North Vancouver 125061
Burnaby North-Seymour 116907
Burnaby West 108028
New Westminster-Burnaby 116398
Port Moody-Coquitlam 123628
Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam 123229
Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge 110416
Fleetwood-Port Kells 122381
Surrey Central 115731
Surrey Newton 126009
Cloverdale-Sullivan 113924
South Surrey-White Rock 112449

I think it may technically possible to get two ridings out of Richmond which are both within 10%, but I figured treating Lulu Island as a unit wasn't that bad and made things much neater. I quite like my Vancouver Central, which is everything north of False Creek and west of Main Street. Not convinced I got the boundary right between Quadra and Granville. Cloverdale-Sullivan may very well be a terrible name. Apologies if so.

Fraser Valley

Langley-Walnut Grove 127751
Abbotsford 122308
Mission-Aldergrove-Fort Langley 113498
Chilliwack-Hope 122593

I like the version of Abbotsford I came up with, but I suspect Canadians would rather bisect it to improve the Mission seat?

I've been waiting for someone to do a deeper analysis of BC, (my home province), awesome job! - I was born and raised in Richmond, and think treating the entirety of Lulu island as an entity is feasible, (we also have a provincial riding of Richmond - Queensborough)

The one riding that has always upset everyone, is Burnaby - North Seymour, due to the complete lack of a community of interest. Though, it's very difficult to create a map that avoids the creation of this constituency - you'd have to play around with the Port Moody/Coquitlam/Maple Ridge area, per Krago's original proposal.

And yes, I doubt there would be the creation of an 'urban Abbotsford' seat - The current City of Abbotsford was amalgamated in 1995 from the District Municipality of Abbotsford, and the  District of Matsqui - the current borders between Abbotsford and Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, reflect pre-amalgamation Abbotsford.

Yes, Burnaby North-Seymour seems like a terrible riding, particularly since the bridge connecting the two halves isn't even in the riding at the Vancouver End. I left it be to avoid disrupting everything else, but it is clearly not good.

North Van, West Van and the Sunshine Coast is 234277 people, which is ideal for 2 ridings. Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam and Anmore are 563915 people without Queensborough or 574898 with. That's doable for 5 ridings, so I'll look into that and see what can be done without disrupting literally everything else.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Delta 110721
Richmond East-Queensborough 110149
Richmond West 110771
Vancouver South 109339
Vancouver Kingsway 108717
Vancouver East 104874
Vancouver Granville 123155
Vancouver Quadra 118658
Vancouver Central 117447
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Powell River 110634
North Vancouver 125061
Burnaby North-Seymour 116907
Burnaby West 108028
New Westminster-Burnaby 116398
Port Moody-Coquitlam 123628
Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam 123229
Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge 110416
Fleetwood-Port Kells 122381
Surrey Central 115731
Surrey Newton 126009
Cloverdale-Sullivan 113924
South Surrey-White Rock 112449

I think it may technically possible to get two ridings out of Richmond which are both within 10%, but I figured treating Lulu Island as a unit wasn't that bad and made things much neater. I quite like my Vancouver Central, which is everything north of False Creek and west of Main Street. Not convinced I got the boundary right between Quadra and Granville. Cloverdale-Sullivan may very well be a terrible name. Apologies if so.

Fraser Valley

Langley-Walnut Grove 127751
Abbotsford 122308
Mission-Aldergrove-Fort Langley 113498
Chilliwack-Hope 122593

I like the version of Abbotsford I came up with, but I suspect Canadians would rather bisect it to improve the Mission seat?

I've been waiting for someone to do a deeper analysis of BC, (my home province), awesome job! - I was born and raised in Richmond, and think treating the entirety of Lulu island as an entity is feasible, (we also have a provincial riding of Richmond - Queensborough)

The one riding that has always upset everyone, is Burnaby - North Seymour, due to the complete lack of a community of interest. Though, it's very difficult to create a map that avoids the creation of this constituency - you'd have to play around with the Port Moody/Coquitlam/Maple Ridge area, per Krago's original proposal.

And yes, I doubt there would be the creation of an 'urban Abbotsford' seat - The current City of Abbotsford was amalgamated in 1995 from the District Municipality of Abbotsford, and the  District of Matsqui - the current borders between Abbotsford and Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, reflect pre-amalgamation Abbotsford.

Yes, Burnaby North-Seymour seems like a terrible riding, particularly since the bridge connecting the two halves isn't even in the riding at the Vancouver End. I left it be to avoid disrupting everything else, but it is clearly not good.

North Van, West Van and the Sunshine Coast is 234277 people, which is ideal for 2 ridings. Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam and Anmore are 563915 people without Queensborough or 574898 with. That's doable for 5 ridings, so I'll look into that and see what can be done without disrupting literally everything else.

EDIT: Looks like it comes down to a question of what to do with the qathet RD. You could put it with Vancouver Island for 7 large ridings, or add it to Skeena-Bulkley Valley to get the latter within 10%. I take it a commission would be unlikely to consider the latter?

[EastAnglianLefty]

EDIT: Looks like it comes down to a question of what to do with the qathet RD. You could put it with Vancouver Island for 7 large ridings, or add it to Skeena-Bulkley Valley to get the latter within 10%. I take it a commission would be unlikely to consider the latter?

Hmmm - the main issue with electoral redistribution in Canada is that we try to achieve three objectives:

1. Keep all ridings close to the same population quotient
2. Ensure sparsely populated rural ridings are of manageable size for elected legislators
3. Keep the number of elected legislators in the chamber to a reasonable number

The challenge being, a country like Canada has densely population urban areas near the American border, and huge expanses of rural territory everywhere else --- We can only realistically expect to achieve 2/3 of these objectives, and oftentimes, keeping ridings to the same population quotient is abandoned. (I'd personally rather see Canada greatly expand the number of House of Commons seats, but that's unlikely to happen).

To complicate things further, there is a commission convention of 'collective rights' that protect ridings with concentrated indigenous populations (ex. Skeena - Bulkley Valley), and official language minority communities in certain provinces, (ex. English in Quebec, French in Ontario/Manitoba/New Brunswick/Nova Scotia). What also might be seen soon, is the extension of protected seats towards visible minority communities at large (ex. see 'Preston' in the recent Nova Scotia provincial redistribution).

Regarding 'Qathet RD,' it would make sense for it to be added to Skeena-Bulkley Valley to bring it closer to population equity. However, both Qathet RD and the Sunshine Coast RD, (which collectively create the 'Sunshine Coast'), are not accessible by outside road from the BC interior/north, and can only be accessed through ferry from West Vancouver and/or Vancouver Island.

Another challenge is that Skeena - Bulkley Valley is already incredibly difficult to represent, due to numerous remote fly-in communities, and the lack of transportation infrastructure for an elected MP to be accessible (aside from videoconferencing).

My gut feeling would be to put Quathet RD/Powell River, back in the North Island district, and allow Skeena-Bulkley Valley to remain below quotient, considering high population growth on the North Shore/Sunshine Coast. However, this might have unintended consequences on Vancouver Island - it would be unfortunate if the Courtenay-Comox community of interest was split again, like it was in the 2012 redistribution.

FYI, a BC that is allotted 43-45 ridings is much easier to split up across communities of interest
[/quote]

Qathet RD, Powell River, Mt Waddington RD, Strathcona RD, Comox Valley RD, Courtenay and Comox is a little over 150000 people, so unfortunately that means you can't really avoid splitting Courtenay from Comox.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I've moved on to taking a look at Quebec, from a viewpoint of trying to keep regions and MRCs together whilst staying within 10% as much as possible. I've assumed 78 seats and gone with the following basic groupings:

Abitibi-Temiscamingue/Nord-du-Québec: 2 ridings
Outaoauis/Laurentides: 9 ridings
Lanaudière/Mauricie: 7 ridings
Saguenay-Lac St. Jean/Côte-du-Nord/Capitale-Nationale : 10 ridings
Laval: 4 ridings
Montreal: 19 ridings
Montérégie: 13 ridings
Estrie/Centre-du-Québec/Chaudière-Appallaches/Bas St. Laurent/Gaspesie: 14 ridings

Transferring an extra riding to Montreal from the north-east whilst staying within 10% could I think be avoided if you were so minded, but I figure central Montreal is growing much faster so you might as well bite the bullet now.

Starting with the north-west:

Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou 88295
Abitibi-Témiscamingue 103735

No changes to either of these two seats, even though the former is oversize. In theory you can fix that by giving the former the Abitibi MRC and giving Abitibi-Témiscamingue the Pontiac and Vallée-de-la-Gatineau MRCs, but the only road connecting them to Rouyn-Noranda goes via Val d'Or. Alternatively you could extend Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou, but I think when a seat stretches from Ottawa to the Hudson Strait you are officially taking the piss. So I thought it best to leave well alone (though if anybody is a big fan of discontiguity by road, it does allow you to then neaten things up in the Laurentides.)



Pontiac-Haute-Laurentides-Papineau 117299
Buckingham-Aylmer-Les Collines 110941
Hull-Aylmer 115834
Gatineau 117923

This is more radical than you necessarily need, but given that Les Collines d'Outaoauis is effectively suburban Gatineau and that it and Gatineau are the right size for three ridings, I thought I'd give it a go.



Argenteuil-Les Pays d'en Haut 111492
Rivière du Nord 111645
Mirabel 119563
Rivière des Mille Iles 117577
Thérèse-De Blainville 120103

The first of these seats is something of a leftover, I'm afraid. Rivière du Nord gains St. Colomban and loses St. Hippolyte and St. Sophie, which makes it more coherent but makes Mirabel less so. Thérèse-De Blainville is just under 10% above the average.

Increasingly I do wonder if I should have kept Montreal at 18 ridings and added the extra seat here instead, so I'll probably go back and take a look at that later on.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Not a fan of that suburban Gatineau wrap around seat. Buckingham and Aylmer don't belong in the same seat.  You've also divided up the disparate Anglo communities between Pontiac and that wrap around riding. Places like Wakefield and Chelsea should be in Pontiac if at all possible. And Aylmer has a sizable Anglo population as well, so not a problem digging into it to shore up the population.

On the numbers, you could swap Buckingham, Masson-Angers and L'Ange-Gardien for Pontiac and La Vallée de la Gatineau MRCs. Would that fix the issue?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Mauricie/Lanaudière



St. Maurice-Champlain 116115
Trois Rivières 117657
Berthier-Maskinongé 103259
Joliette 104737
Montcalm-Mascouche 118746
Repentigny 119204
Terrebonne 119944

Comparatively limited changes here required to conform to MRC boundaries. The last three seats are entirely unchanged, except I renamed Montcalm given that Mascouche is getting on for half the electorate.

Berthier-Maskinongé pulls out of suburban Trois Rivières, which means it needs to gain electors from Joliette. I've taken them from the north, you could alternatively take them from Joliette's outskirts.

North East Quebec



Louis-Hébert 113946
Québec 116684
Beauport-Limoilou 108986
Charlesbourg-Haute St Charles 110713
Louis-St Laurent 118542

Beauport-Limoilou expands so that Quebec City is now divided between only five ridings rather than 5.5.* Otherwise relatively minimal changes.

*Doing this means you can't treat Capitale-Nationale as its own sub-region for 7 ridings. YMMV.



Portneuf-Jacques Cartier 114775
Côte de Beaupré-Ile d'Orleans-Charlevoix-La Baie 108634
Saguenay 116109
Lac Saint Jean 107719
Manicouagan-Le Fjord du Saguenay 105492

In general the changes here get more radical as you move north and east. Fundamentally, Saguenay-Lac Jean is too small for three ridings and I don't believe special geographic circumstances can be said to apply to either Jonquière or Chicoutimi-Le Fjord. You could make a case that they should apply to Manicouagan, but you don't have to go that far beyond its borders to get within 10%.

I've gone for unifying Chicoutimi and Jonquière in a single riding. I would imagine this would be quite unpopular?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Laval

Alfred-Pellan 113163
Marc-Aurèle-Fortin 104646
Vimy 108773
Laval-Les Iles 111784

There's a minor adjustment of the boundary between Alfred-Pellan and Vimy, the other two ridings are unchanged.

Montreal

Pierrefonds-Dollard 109497
Lac-Saint-Louis 110093
Dorval-Lachine-La Salle 111171
Saint-Laurent 102104
Mont-Royal 113092
Outremont 104279
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount 101227
LaSalle-Emard-Verdun 101838
Point-Saint-Charles-Saint-Henri--Île-des-Soeurs 115534
Ville-Marie-Laurier-Sainte-Marie 102728
Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie 103640
Plateau-Mont-Royal 103903
Papineau 104671
Ahuntsic-Cartierville 99613
Bourassa 105637
Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel 103605
Hochelaga 108055
La-Point-de-l'Ile 102263
Honoré-Mercier 101315

Having chosen to add an extra riding on the island, you need somewhat more extensive changes than if you stick at 18, but I've tried to concentrate those in the centre as much as possible, with the outer ridings seeing minimal changes. Italicised ridings are entirely unchanged.

The new seat is Plateau-Mont-Royal, with everything else having a reasonably obvious successor. I'm moderately happy with this, but here are a few niggles in no particular order:

• I'm not wild about that division of LaSalle. You can avoid it by putting Côte Saint-Luc in with Dorval instead and shuffling things round, but that feels a little disruptive
• I get the impression Parc-Extension isn't a good fit with Mont-Royal
• Similarly, Papineau's western extension somehow looks off
• The tail of Plateau-Mont-Royal is probably a bit awkward.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Montérégie can have 13 seats, with four for Longeuil and environs, five for the west of the region plus Napierville and four for the east.



Vaudreil-Dorion-Saint-Lazare 112217
Salaberry-Beauharnois-Soulange 106808
Châteauguay-Haut-Saint-Laurent  117150
La Prairie 114968
Brossard-Saint-Lambert 114286
Longueuil-Saint-Hubert 109285
Longueuil-Vieux-Longueuil 103792
Montarville-Boucherville-Longueuil Nord 109422
Pierre-de Saurel-Varennes 110168
Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot 105086
Beloeil-Sainte-Julie 110607
Chambly-Saint Jean Est 117614
Saint Jean Ouest-Napierville 115075

I had wanted to have two ridings west of the St. Laurent, but whilst that's possible it makes it more difficult to respect MRC boundaries to the west.

In Longeuil, I went for a major rearrangement to allow the ridings to match the borough boundaries. In practice, I suspect that's deeply unlikely to happen but I do think it's pretty neat.

Not entirely wild on all the riding boundaries in the west of the region. Given I'm also a little unhappy with some of the ridings in the eastern regions, it might be that it would be worthwhile to consider Montérégie along either Estrie or Centre-du-Québec.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The final region for my Quebec proposals is the east, made up of Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Bas St. Laurent, Chaudière-Appalaches, Estrie and Centre-du-Québec. At the moment there are 14.5 ridings within this area and I'd propose cutting this to fourteen.

That seems like a relatively minor change, but at present the ridings in the east are drastically undersized - Avignon--La Mitis--Matane--Matapédia is 34% below average, Gaspésie--Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine is 30% below, Rimouski-Neigette--Témiscouata--Les Basques is 21% below and Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup is 11% below. So evening things up does shift things westwards and towards more urban seats.





Gaspésie-Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine-Amqui 101861 - Gaspésie is a little undersized on its own and I'm not sure it's isolated enough to be left undersized, but if you did want to do so then Amqui can just go to the following seat
Rimouski-Neigette-La Matanie 102396
Rivière du Loup-Témiscouata-Kamouraska-L'Islet 102608
Montmagny-Bellechasse-Les Etchemins-Lévis 119620 - if you have an undersized Gaspésie then you can mathematically fit in three more ridings east of Beauce and Lévis, but doing so forces you to split Rimouski. Given that Lévis is too big for a single riding, I think this is a superior option
Lévis 107471 - the parts of the municipality west of the Chaudière and north of the Trans-Canada Highway
Beauce 110625 - adds St. Lambert-de-Lauzon to align with MRC boundaries
Les Appalaches-L'Erable-Lotbinière 100257
Victoriaville-Nicolet-Bécancour 105999 - the problem with this alignment is that you have to split the Arthabaska MRC to get vaguely sensible ridings. This isn't an ideal split, but I think it's good enough
Drummond 107967 - unchanged
Mégantic-Compton-Val-des-Sources 100220 - thinly populated rural areas without a great deal of coherence
Sherbrooke 105049 - shaves off Fleurimont
Richmond-Rock Forest-Fleurimont 99452 - the Richmond MRC and the parts of Sherbrooke not in the eponymous seat. If you want you could put the outer bits of Sherbrooke with Compton and Richmond with Mégantic et al., which is closer to the present arrangement but doesn't match up as well to MRC boundaries.
Brome-Missisquoi 100629 - basically the current seat, but I'm not sure why the present name doesn't mention Magog at all
Shefford 104153

[EastAnglianLefty]

The option without an additional seat in Montreal is to assign four small seats to the Outaoauis and six to the Laurentides. Best I can come up with for that is this:



Thérèse-De Blainville 106013 - unchanged
Mirabel 118727 - all of Mirabel and the rest of the Thérèse-De Blainville MRC
Deux Montagnes 103754 - the eponymous MRC
Argenteuil-Rivière du Nord 100928 - also contains part of Les Pays-d'en-Haut MRC.
Rivière du Nord 99961 - this splits Saint-Jérôme. If that bothers you, you can swap it for Prévost and Saint-Hippolyte, which puts this riding 3 people under the 10% mark (and you could always St Anne-des-Plaines if that bothers you.)
Laurentides-Labelle 108702 - has the rest of Les Pays-d'en-Haut MRC.



Buckingham-Papineauville-Cantley 101239 - all of Papineauville MRC, the bits of Les Collines-de-l'Outaouais east of the Gatineau River and outlying bits of Gatineau.
Pontiac 100947 - the rest of rural Outaouais and outlying bits of Hull and Aylmer. I suspect it's probably possible to only take bits of Aylmer, but I couldn't find a decent map of the old city boundaries.
Gatineau 98671 - very very narrowly within quota
Hull-Aylmer 104634

[EastAnglianLefty]

I reckon there's a much simpler solution to that Fraser Canyon--Coquihalla--Sea-to-Sky Country riding. I'm not going to map it out, because it's not terribly revelatory, but here's a brief description:

• Assign 26 seats to the general Vancouver area - 2 for N Vancouver/W Vancouver/Sunshine Coast; 6 to Vancouver; 5 to the Burnaby/New Westminster/Coquitlam area; 2 to Richmond; 1 to Delta; 5 to Surrey; and 5 to everything from Langley City to Hope and the Fraser Valley. Plenty of ways of doing all that
• Assign 5 seats to the Kootenay/Okanagan region, as at present
• Assign 2 seats to Peace River/Cariboo/Prince George, as at present
• Combine the Squamish-Lilloet and Thompson-Nicola districts with Kamloops and the bits of Columbia-Shuswap not currently in East Kootenay. That's exactly the right size for two districts - easiest solution looks to be to make one out of Kamloops and and the areas north of the Thompson River, though other arrangements are possible. It's a bit awkward, but much less so than stretching a riding from Squamish to Princeton.
• Advance Skeena-Bulkley Valley a bit further south to take in the Central Coast
• That gives the current North Island-Powell River the leeway to take the bits of Courtenay north of the river. There's a bit of urban separation between the two halves of Courtenay and the northern half shades into Comox, so it doesn't look like the worst thing in the world
• The remaining 6 ridings on Vancouver Island then shuffle along with fairly minor changes to ensure they're all within 10%

[EastAnglianLefty]

I reckon there's a much simpler solution to that Fraser Canyon--Coquihalla--Sea-to-Sky Country riding. I'm not going to map it out, because it's not terribly revelatory, but here's a brief description:

• Assign 26 seats to the general Vancouver area - 2 for N Vancouver/W Vancouver/Sunshine Coast; 6 to Vancouver; 5 to the Burnaby/New Westminster/Coquitlam area; 2 to Richmond; 1 to Delta; 5 to Surrey; and 5 to everything from Langley City to Hope and the Fraser Valley. Plenty of ways of doing all that
• Assign 5 seats to the Kootenay/Okanagan region, as at present
• Assign 2 seats to Peace River/Cariboo/Prince George, as at present
• Combine the Squamish-Lilloet and Thompson-Nicola districts with Kamloops and the bits of Columbia-Shuswap not currently in East Kootenay. That's exactly the right size for two districts - easiest solution looks to be to make one out of Kamloops and and the areas north of the Thompson River, though other arrangements are possible. It's a bit awkward, but much less so than stretching a riding from Squamish to Princeton.
• Advance Skeena-Bulkley Valley a bit further south to take in the Central Coast
• That gives the current North Island-Powell River the leeway to take the bits of Courtenay north of the river. There's a bit of urban separation between the two halves of Courtenay and the northern half shades into Comox, so it doesn't look like the worst thing in the world
• The remaining 6 ridings on Vancouver Island then shuffle along with fairly minor changes to ensure they're all within 10%

The proposed Fraser Canyon--Coquihalla--Sea-to-Sky Country is comprised of parts of five regional districts:

• Cariboo -- 13,898
• Fraser Valley -- 12,768
• Okanagan-Similkameen -- 10,540
• Squamish-Lillooet -- 50,496
• Thompson-Nicola -- 20,250

My understanding is that you want to:
move Cariboo to the Prince George ridings,
move Fraser Valley to the Mission/Abbotsford ridings,
move Okanagan--Similkameen to the Okanagan/Kootenay ridings,

and replace them with Columbia-Shuswap [40,772] and Thompson-Nicola [3,726] from North Okanagan--Shuswap.  Is this correct?

Yes. One riding would be made up of the following:

• The entirety of the Squamish-Lillooet district
• The portions of Thompson-Nicola district south of Kamloops
• The Columbia-Shuswap district, except for Revelstoke, Golden, Columbia-Shuswap A and Columbia-Shuswap B, which continue to go with East Kootenay

The other riding would then comprise:

• The entirety of Kamloops
• The portions of Thompson-Nicola district north of Kamloops

[EastAnglianLefty]

Looking at the numbers, it's just about possible to two ridings out of Squamish-Lillooet, North Vancouver, West Vancouver and Bowen Island. They're both near the upper limit, but it's doable. I leave it to somebody local to say whether you can do that whilst respecting community identities in North Vancouver.

The Sunshine Coast and Powell River and then go with either Campbell River, Mount Waddington and Strathcona (for a neat-looking option which unfortunately lacks a ferry link) or with Comox and Courtenay (which is more coherent but means the seat taking North Island has to skirt round Courtenay.

That then means you need to put Kamloops and Thompson-Nicola district with Cariboo, Prince George and Peace River for three ridings (looks simple enough) and squeeze five ridings out of Okanagan, Kootenay and Columbia-Shuswap (mathematically feasible, but rather tight so some of the ridings may be a bit awkward.)

It might be an easier sell to a Commission in terms of avoiding an obvious leftovers riding, but at the cost of the remaining ridings all being slightly less coherent than would otherwise be the case.

[EastAnglianLefty]

For Alberta, I know that it's been mentioned that you can do Calgary with 11 ridings, but it strikes me that you can just as easily do Edmonton with 9 ridings (without St. Albert) and that this leaves the rest of the province almost exactly the right size for 17 ridings.

Here's what I got, aiming to follow broadly the outlines of the present ridings, with a bit of minor tidying up to improve connectivity:

Edmonton



Edmonton South 108743 - the Edmonton bits of the present Edmonton--Wetaskiwin. The name isn't great, but I couldn't find any alternatives that fit for the whole seat. East-west connectivity might be improved if it swapped territory with Riverbend?
Edmonton Mill Woods 125592 - unchanged.
Edmonton Riverbend 107962 - as much as possible, tries to use Whitemud Creek as the boundary with Strathcona.
Edmonton Strathcona 116403
Edmonton Highlands 107338 - successor to Griesbach, but no longer contains Griesbach. Almost certainly there's a better name than this, but the biggest central feature I could see on a map was the Yellowhead Corridor and even a Canadian commission isn't daft enough to use that as a name.
Edmonton Centre 115762 - is it still central enough for the name to be suitable?
Edmonton West 115329
Edmonton North 106667 - again, the name is basically a placeholder.
Edmonton Manning 106703

Rest of Alberta




Sherwood Park--Fort Saskatchewan 126313 - unchanged
St. Albert--Sturgeon River 107781
Lakeland 119497 - swaps Athabasca for Cold River to improve the following seat
Fort McMurray--Westlock 109836 - I'm happy with including Athabasca, I worry that including Westlock may make this riding a bit too disparate
Lac. Ste Anne--Mackenzie 123767 - similar to the current Peace River--Westlock, but it no longer includes the latter and the former is on the riding's edge.
Grande Prairie 113893 - loses the far north
Parkland--Yellowhead 125062 - I'm not wild about a constituency which is 80% Edmonton suburbia stretching to the BC border, but I couldn't think of anywhere better to put Yellowhead
Wetaskiwin--Leduc 121764 - in addition its half of Edmonton Wetaskiwin, also takes in Brazeau County
Battle River--Crowfoot 110212 - minor changes
Lacombe--Sylvan Lake 111050 - placeholder name
Red Deer 105997 - how do Canadian commissions usually feel about doughnut seats?
Banff--Cochrane--Clearwater 119756 - Looking on a map, internal connectivity via road seems OK, but this may or may not be true
Airdrie--Mountain View 110946
Bow River 112197 - just donates a few thousand electors to Battle River
Lethbridge 123847 - unchanged
Medicine Hat--Cardston--Warner 108391 - unchanged
Foothills 105954

Calgary



Calgary Midnapore 115238 - everything south of Fish Creek
Calgary Heritage 124430 - or another name of your choice. The arm north of Glenmore trail is only there for population equality reasons.
Calgary Centre 126563 - at the upper end of the allowable range because I wanted to avoid crossing the river. I accept this may not be to everybody's tastes.
Calgary Signal Hill 124848
Calgary Confederation 124064 - unchanged
Calgary Nose Hill 112705 - could probably be improved if you did swap territory with Confederation
Calgary Rocky Ridge 112792 - feels like a leftovers riding
Calgary Skyview 124363
Calgary East 109459 - placeholder name
Calgary Ogden 117388 - could also call this Shepherd or Forest Lawn, as they're both in the riding
Calgary McKenzie 114934 - name is a placeholder, picked as there seemed to be a few separate developments using variations of the name.

Obviously I'm essentially just playing around with a paintbrush, but I thought I'd share it in case it gives anybody else any ideas.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think that's more or less baked-in by the internal constraints I set myself - if you're giving Calgary 11 whole ridings and refusing to cross the Bow River, then you either have to have a riding with the airport at the centre, or a riding stretching along the Trans-Canada Highway from the city centre to the eastern edge. I presume the latter option is at least as bad?

Obviously, this may just suggest that the internal constraints I set myself weren't helpful.