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Re-Distribution of Seats


jdobbin

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Well, so far I haven't heard any noise from them. I gather it is the plan of the Liberal Party to attempt to exploit this issue for political gain? Do your best to get them "up in arms" as you say? I'm sure that will do wonders for national unity but then, when has your party ever cared about anything other than itself?

Actually, I thought it was going to be a gimme for the Bloc on the federal side to the detriment of of federalists.

Harper's only interest in his himself, it seems, because he tried to screw Ontario once on this and now is trying to do this with Quebec.

Edited by jdobbin
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Achieving fairer representation for BC and Alberta and Ontario and maintaining Quebec's over-representation are competing objectives.

As the Edmonton Journal pointed out, the changes as proposed would shift the inequity not balance it.

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It does? They will have the highest ratios in Canada for quite some time under the Tory changes.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Harper+swap...5982/story.html

I don't understand how the Edmonton Journal could have arrived at these figures.

It's true that the current minister responsible, Steven Fletcher of Winnipeg, seems to have roughly evened out the average population per electoral district in Alberta, B. C. and Ontario, which as proposed will be between 87,000 and 90,000 residents in each riding. The redistribution, as yet unannounced, could create more than 30 new ridings exclusively in those three battlegrounds.
But how then, to explain why Quebec--its seat total frozen at 75 --would now be the odd man out in the nation, as its proposed ratio would become the most disproportionate in the land, with 96,500 Canadians per riding?

Refer to the latest estimates from Statistics Canada.

According to Stats Can, Quebec has 7,828,879 residents. Divide that by 75 seats and I get 104,385 residents per riding, not 96,500. I understand that the current proposal is to add 21 seats for Ontario, 7 for BC and 6 for Alberta. Ontario, with 13,069,182 residents and 127 seats would have 102,907 residents per riding. BC with a population of 4,455,207 people and 43 seats would have 103,609 people per riding. Alberta, with 3,687,662 people and 34 seats would have 105,362 people per riding.

To reproduce the Edmonton Journal's figures, I had to use the 2001 census figures. Given the disparate rates of growth since then, it seems pretty sloppy for a major daily to use such outdated numbers.

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Quebec's population is declining year after year. It doesn't make sense to add more seats to a dying province.

By contrast Alberta, BC and Ontario are only getting bigger and growing.

Chretien added seats to Ontario when he was in power and I don't remember the Liberal base whining then. Oh that's right they can do no wrong but the Tories do everything wrong. I got it now.

Edited by Mr.Canada
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Quebec's population is not declining - it just isn't growing as fast as that of Ontario, BC or Alberta.

Yes this is the fact in 10 years they will have the same representation numbers as there other provinces becuase these guys are growing in some cases twice as fast. Infact Quebec should stop growing in 5 years according the population predictions.

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To reproduce the Edmonton Journal's figures, I had to use the 2001 census figures. Given the disparate rates of growth since then, it seems pretty sloppy for a major daily to use such outdated numbers.

The source the Journal used accoridng to the radio report on CBC was the figures the government used to calculate the seats they wished to add under redistristubition.

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The source the Journal used accoridng to the radio report on CBC was the figures the government used to calculate the seats they wished to add under redistristubition.
Why not use the globe and mail figures I posted in this very thread?

The Globe & Mail is also using figures from the 2001 census. My question is why is everyone using outdated figures? Are the Stats Can estimates not sufficiently accurate for this purpose? And if they're not, why not use the 2006 census?

At any rate, I suspect the government took the later, more accurate figures into account. I don't think it's mere coincidence that the ratios of population to MP's is so close based on the latest figures.

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