» Senate Reform proposal # 2.678×1011
There’s an interesting Senate reform proposal over at democraticSPACE. It tackles the issues of how many senators each province/region should have and how they should be elected. It attempts to balance rep-by-pop with equal representation per region, and it mostly achieves this by creative redefinition of the senate regions into regions that actually are relatively equal in population, and then distributing senators proportionally to provinces within each region.
I like the new definition of “Central Canada”.
WESTERN CANADA
British Columbia — 12 (+6)
Alberta — 10 (+4)
Manitoba — 5 (-1)
Saskatchewan — 5 (-1)
Northwest Territories — 1 (-)
Yukon — 1 (-)
Nunavut — 1 (-)
TOTAL = 35 seats
CENTRAL CANADA
Ontario — 35 (+11)
TOTAL = 35 seats
EASTERN CANADA
Quebec — 25 (+1)
Nova Scotia — 4 (-6)
New Brunswick — 3 (-7)
Newfoundland & Labrador — 2 (-4)
Prince Edward Island — 1 (-3)
TOTAL = 35 seats
As he says, “For hockey fans, think about it like the 3 Canadian junior leagues — the WHL, OHL, and QMJHL.”
The proposal for elections is that senators should be elected by STV in small sub-provincial “regions”, each such region electing 1 – 4 senators. These regions would just be formed by grouping together adjacent federal ridings. He’s actually gone to the work of choosing and naming all such senatorial mega-ridings (although not mapping them, unfortunately). It looks like a mega-riding gets 1 senator for every three regular ridings that it contains.
What did we learn last time? Don’t redefine regions while reforming the senate and introducing STV. The whiplash from future shock will destroy any possible voter support of the proposal. Remember: Old people vote more.
Plus, looking at the deltas in those numbers, the proposal is likely to cause Newfoundland to secede. Maybe some of the other Maritimes as well, which isn’t in Canada’s interest. Callously, we need to use them as a laboratory to figure out how to rescue a resource-based economy from terminally depleted stocks. Additionally, we’d lose territorial control of the oil off their shores.
Jack
28 Aug 09 at 2:08 pm
Oh, that said:
I’m against reforming the senate just as I’m against electing the judiciary. I’m just one of those people that can separate policy analysis from political platform.
Harper wants to conduct his reforms under the guise of democracy in order to make it palatable to the people while subjugating senators to corporate investment in the election cycle. Reality has a liberal bent, but media-based election campaigns are subject to short-term conservative brutalization through fear mongering.
Better to have competent, professional legislators and statesmen. I follow American politics. There, but for the grace of God, goes Canada.
Jack
28 Aug 09 at 2:27 pm
It turns out that his proposal began as rep-by-pop with STV mega-ridings, and then he just noticed the “happy coincidence” of each new “region” having exactly 35 senators, so he grouped them into those new regions for presentation. Because of badgering about the usual things (Quebec will hate it, BC says that Manitoba should be grouped with Ontario), he dropped the references to the new regions.
So, really, it is a rep-by-pop, non-regional proposal.
Don
28 Aug 09 at 2:33 pm
Quebec wouldn’t need much of a push to secede either. They wouldn’t see this as gaining a seat, they’d see it as losing ten relative to Ontario. Imagine that: We get STV and lose the culturally-unique half of the country. Bad trade.
Jack
28 Aug 09 at 4:25 pm