Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
The real problem is that you can't compare the US and Canada directly when trying to devise a system for allocating senate seats. While there are states that are over- and under-represented in the senate (Rhode Island and California being the two greatest examples at either end of the spectrum), each state is only limited to 2% control, so individual states still don't have that much of a say, even if they might have more seats than their population would dictate.
On the other hand, you get situations like Canada where PEI would have 10% control of the senate despite only having 0.4% of the population, and the situation becomes that much more extreme.
I think the senate allocation could use some reform, but equal representation by province is not the way to do it. Equal representation by region (tweaking the formula we currently use) would work much better. Assuming a 100 seat senate, I could see something like this working, where each region (Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, West) gets 20 seats:
Atlantic Provinces: 5 seats each
Quebec: 20 seats
Ontario: 20 seats
Manitoba: 5 seats
Saskatchewan: 5 seats
Alberta: 10 seats
BC: 10 seats
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That defeats the purpose of an equal Senate. Maybe the best compromise would be to only keep the representation by region with the smallest pronvices, and merge Atlantic Canada and merge Sask/Man, and split Toronto and Ontario... so you end up with 7 blocs with a minimum of 2 million people each:
BC 10
AB 10
Prairie 10 (SK 5, MB 5)
ON 10
GTA 10
QC 10
Atl 10 (NS 4, PEI 1, NB 3, NL 2)
This would alleviate the PEI effect, have equality amongst regions, yet acknowledge Ontario being bigger than any two provinces combined, and set a minimum standard of 5 seats per million (approx) to a maximum of 10 seats per province/region.