it is sometimes said that Canada's provinces do not have fair representation -- that some provinces have more seats than their population warrants.
But a close look shows that only 35 seats out of the 343-set HofC (about 10 percent of seats) are wrongly allocated.
Seven of these seats are in PEI who has 4 seats when due 2 and each Territory gets 1 when due only a half each.
And if we take these off as being constitutional requirements, then we see that the remaining provinces have almost exactly their portion of the remaining population - only a total of 4 seats are wrongly placed then, no moe than one or two in any one province.
So that is very good.
Meanwhile under FPTP about half the votes cast are set aside and not used to elect anyone.
Many -- perhaps a third of MPs -- were elected by a minority of votes cast in the district.
Parties with fewer votes get more sets than parties with more votes.
Those three places are where the real inequality is, and that can and should be addressed by PR.
Table comparing prov seat counts and proportions of the Canadian population
A column -- the new seat count the prov has, compared to its percentage of pop. gives how much seat count is off by
B column - if we say PEI and Territories have to be what they are, then look at the province's new seat count and compare it to its percentage of the Can. pop minus the pop in PEI and Terr., B column gives how much seat count is off by
C column -- the diff. separating pop percentage and seat percentage (using new seat count)
(done without squaring, rooting or dividing by 2)
A B C
tot seats 343 seats 336 seats (Diff in real numbers)
pop. 38,246,108 37,985,387 diff between percentages of pop and seat count
BC -3.8 .6 1
AB -2.8 .5 .8
SK 3.4 .1 .9
MB 1.6 .2 .5
ON -11 1.7 3
QC .8 1 .2
NB 2.9 .1 .8
NS 2.1 .1 .6
PEI 2.5 NA .7
NL 2.3 1.4 .7
Yukon .6 NA .2
NWT .6 NA .2
Nunavut .6 NA .2
diff total 35 seats wrong 4.4 seats wrong 10.2 percent off
percentage of seats wrong:
10 percent off 1 percent off 10.2 percent
the total "off" is 10.2 percent of the seats in the HofC, so not too bad compared to the mass waste under FPTP.
But if we accept that PEI is due its 4 seats (about 2 more than its pop figure) due to a constitutional guarantee and the Territories are each due one MP (about twice what each deserves pop percentage-wise) due to each being jurisdiction on their own (and one MP is the lowest that rep. can be and still have a living human being as rep.)
then the other nine provinces each have very close to what they deserve pop-proportionally wise.
just 4.4 seats wrong.
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