Canada's gritty rotten boroughs
A propos of my discussion with J.C. in the comments to my last post, let's consider how Canada's limited adherence to the principle of rep by pop might have affected Monday's election.
I proposed to do this by considering what happened in the smallest ridings in Canada. Now, I admit that I don't have statistics about the total populations of Canada's ridings. However, as a proxy I shall use a statistic that I do have, namely the number of votes taken by the winning candidate in each seat on Monday.
Using these figures, I will define as "small" any riding whose winner received no more votes than the total received by the biggest vote-getter on Prince Edward Island, whose ridings are undeniable exemplars of smallness. That total is 11,542, achieved by ex-Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay in Cardigan (that's the electoral district of Cardigan--whether or not he was elected while wearing a cardigan I'm not so sure, although I seem to recollect a disturbing vocal resemblance to the late Mr. Rogers).
This isn't a totally scientific way of determining the smallest ridings but I'm virtually sure that I've got most of the right ones and further research is constrained by the fact that it's nearly bedtime. Anyway, subject to correction, here's my list, with the winners, their parties, and the number of votes they received.
PEI -- Cardigan -- Lawrence MacAulay (Liberal) 11,542
PEI -- Egmont -- Joe McGuire (Liberal) 10,287
SAS -- Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River -- Gary Merasty (Liberal) 10,237
MAN -- Churchill -- Tina Keeper (Liberal) 10,159
PEI -- Malpeque -- Wayne Easter (Liberal) 9,679
PEI -- Charlottetown -- Shawn Murphy (Liberal) 9,586
ONT -- Kenora -- Roger Valley (Liberal) 9,465
YUK -- Yukon -- Larry Bagnell (Liberal) 6,847
NWT -- Western Arctic -- Dennis Bevington (NDP) 6,801
NFL -- Labrador -- Todd Russell (Liberal) 5,737
NUN -- Nunavut -- Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Liberal) 3,439
If you add this up, you find that the Liberals won ten of their 103 seats with the votes of a grand total of 86,978 Canadians. That's 8697.8 per member.
The bottom tenth of the Grit caucus, it turns out, are Bulk Foods MPs out of a Parliamentary Club Pack.
* * *
By way of comparison, here's what 86,978 evil Albertan votes would buy you in the south end of Calgary:
ALT -- Calgary Southeast -- Jason Kenney (Conservative) -- 44,008
ALT -- Calgary Southwest -- Stephen Harper (Conservative) -- 41,549
Um...that's two and we're already up to 85,557...the other 1,421 could make a start on Akrasia's beloved rural Red Deer, where 36,836 God-crazed evangelicals voted for Bob Mills (Cons.)
To be fair, the largest number of votes cast for all candidates in a single riding was probably somewhere in Toronto's mostly Liberal 905 belt (likely Oak Ridges-Markham). The individual vote totals in Alberta are partly a reflection of the overwhelming support received by Conservative candidates there, unequalled by any Liberal anywhere in the country (even in Mount Royal, Irwin Cotler couldn't manage much over 60%--can't resist noting that Conservative Maxime Bernier in Beauce scored 67%).
But the point remains that while both Liberals and Conservatives run in a significant number of very populous ridings, the Liberals seem to get a significant advantage out of their domination over Canada's eleven rotten boroughs.
5 comments:
Actually, there are 8 particularly rotten boroughs in Canada: the three territories, the four ridings of PEI, and Labrador. The most populous of these, "Western Arctic", has a population 40% that of the average electoral district in Canada.
Voter participation ranged from 30% of the (total) population to 69%; the "laziest" boroughs were more Liberal than not, but not hugely so. (There's also a tendency for the lazy boroughs to pile up huge majorities, but there's a majority of 73 with a 38% participation rate, and a majority of 837 with a 33% participation rate.)
The 5 districts with the most total votes cast went 4 - 1 Conservative, two by whomping big majorities (about 20,000 each), and two by small majorities (3,400 and 1,900 out of not quite 70,000 votes). Oak Ridges-Markham went Grit by 6,400 out of 74,500.
PEI has the highest voter turnout in the country. Constitutionally, each of the above-mentioned areas are not allowed to have less than 1 MP (territories) or 4 MPs (PEI).
The only solution without altering the constitution is many more MPs in more populated areas.
Angela, that's true, but the problem also lies (1) in the statutory requirement that no province ever lose seats which keeps Manitoba and Saskatchewan artificially high and particularly (2) in the formula by which the size of the House is increased at a very small rate, allowing Ontario, Alberta and B.C. only very limited room for adding seats and therefore exacerbating the imbalance with each successive redistribution.
No one is a bigger Winnipeg booster than me, but I can't really justify the fact that Winnipeg has roughly the same number of seats in the House as Calgary does. By population, Calgary should have 50% more.
Manitoba did away with its rotten boroughs about 15 years ago, mandating that all seats, urban and rural, northern and southern and poor North End and wealth South End, should fall within a 5% (I believe) variance from the provincial mean. There was a lot of unhappiness, particularly from the North which lost one of its "sacred trust" of five seats as a result, but the sky didn't fall.
In a federation, there are reasons to weight small entities more heavily, but I don't have time to get into that very far right now.
I understand wanting to not dilute the representation of the small provinces too much, though I think the US arrangement of doing most of the counterbalancing in the Senate is a better way. What I don't get is why larger provinces have some really large population variations between ridings. Ontario has 5 ridings which are less than 80% of the mean riding population. (What's with Kenora, with less than 60% of the mean riding population?)
By the way, I've put together an excel spreadsheet with each riding, population, and top two votegetter's votes, plus some other stuff; I'd like to email it to you. Email me at anthony at danceslut dot net if you're interested in it.
Well, because Northern Ontario is essentially like a separate province. There are certain limitations on geographical size. Kenora is a huge riding with many communities not reachable by road.
The same goes for Abitibi-Baie James, Skeena, Churchill and Mackenzie (now called Desnethe-something or other). For an MP to cover such a vast area adequately is very difficult.
Another point is that many rural areas are depopulating while many urban areas are rapidly growing, meaning that even an attempt to keep everything equal tends to fail since by the time the new ridings are created the census figures on which they are based are out of date.
Post a Comment