Opposition for the Sake of Opposition

The Liberals have come out against an expanded House of Commons, arguing we have enough MPs as it is. I personally feel the problem is one of quality rather than quantity, but most Canadians would likely agree with the Liberal position and it makes a certain amount of sense when you consider Canada's population-to-MP ratio.

However, this smells a lot like a party opposing something for the sake of opposing it. Because the reality is, there's no way the Liberal Party could ever follow through on this pledge if they were in power.

Given the screams of horror that come out of Liberal ranks whenever the NDP even hints at opening up the constitution, it's a safe bet the Liberals aren't about to go down that road anytime soon. Which means each province must have at least as many MPs as it has Senators, and cannot have fewer seats than it had in 1985.

So even if the Liberals wanted to piss off a few smaller provinces to achieve true rep-by-pop, their hands are tied - Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland, and the territories are all at their 1985 seat totals.

If the Liberals want to keep the total at 308 seats, all they can do is shuffle chairs around between Alberta, BC, and Ontario, unless they repeal the laws of mathematics. Come to think of it, that might actually be easier than opening up the constitution.

So while there's some value behind the intent of this position, it's completely unworkable in reality unless the Liberals want to leave Ontario, BC, and Alberta seriously under-represented. Which might be a good thing, given the number of votes a plan like that would cost the Liberals in those provinces.

Redistribution Update

Just what we need - 30 more MPs!

Ontario will get 15 new seats, British Columbia and Alberta six each and Quebec three in the latest and probably final attempt by the Harper government to rejig the House of Commons in favour of the fast-growing provinces.

I took a look at the impact of this last week, by seeing who holds the ridings most likely to split. Updating for the new seat totals announced today gives the following breakdown of the "new" ridings:

CPC 19.8
NDP 7.2
Lib 2.7
Green 0.2
BQ 0.1

Obviously enough, a lot will depend on where the new boundaries are drawn and what the political landscape looks like in four years. What's currently a CPC seat might not be a CPC seat next campaign.

But the bottom line is this - the creation of these new ridings gives Harper a 10-seat cushion over the opposition heading into the next campaign, making the job of dethroning him that much harder.

Redistribution Winners and Losers

Even though it was the right decision, the Harper government likely didn't do itself any electoral favours by shutting Quebec out of the new ship building contract and the 15,000 jobs that go with it. However, they did announce two new jobs they will be creating in Quebec:

Ontario and B.C. will get fewer new seats than the Harper government originally promised, according to the Conservatives’ latest plan to redraw regional representation in the House of Commons. The move, meant to address growing populations in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, adds seats in all of those provinces. Compared to an earlier plan, though, B.C will receive five rather than seven new seats, while Ontario will get 13, down from the 18 it was originally promised. The Tory stronghold of Alberta will receive six new seats, and two more will go to Quebec, which had argued its representation was disproportionately low compared to English Canada in the Conservative’s original redesign.

While everyone will try to predict what this means electorally, a lot will depend on what the new ridings look like. Even in a place like Saskatchewan (who will stay at 14 seats) the new boundaries could be a game changer. Redrawing the nonsensical rurban ridings that go from downtown Regina and Saskatoon to 100 miles outside city borders could cost the Tories seats...or it could mean the end of Ralph Goodale's reign as the king of Wascana. We won't know the new boundaries for another two years, so anything before then is just speculation.

But speculation is fun, and it's better done using numbers than the guesswork we've seen in many newspapers this week. So I've taken a crack at analyzing the electoral implications of the new ridings in what is sure to be one of the most exciting edge-of-your-seat posts in the history of Calgary Grit.


Identifying New Seats

To figure out where the new seats will go, I took the average riding population post-redistribution and carved anything above this number off into new ridings. For example, once Alberta grows from 27 to 33 seats, the average riding population will be 87,000. Ridings smaller than this are assumed to stay the same, while 30,000 "excess" voters from Calgary Centre get sent to a new ridings...when tallying the numbers, this means Calgary Centre gets counted as about a third of a "new" riding.

In short, we know big chunks of big ridings will be carved up to make new ridings. This analysis identifies just how big those chunks are.


What It Means

Using this method, the popular vote for the 26 new ridings breaks down as follows:

CPC 46.9%
NDP 26.8%
Lib 20.0%
Green 4.6%
BQ 1.7%

That spells good news for the Tories and bad news for the NDP, but that's mostly a reflection of Alberta getting three times as many new seats as Quebec. Within each province, the support level for each party in the "new" ridings is quite similar to their province-wide numbers.

It's risky to project seats since a lot will change in 4 years, but based on 2011 election numbers, the new seats break down as follows:

CPC 17.8
NDP 5.7
Lib 2.3
BQ 0.1

Things will change, but this plan adds a de facto 10 seat cushion to the Tory majority. That's a big deal.

This will make the job of the Liberals and NDP harder in 2015, but they have no one to blame but themselves. The Liberals especially, have written off Western Canada for over 30 years, even though the electoral math makes that strategy riskier and riskier as time goes by. Going 0 for 19 in Alberta in 1972 is one thing...going 0 for 33 in 2015 makes it that much harder to form government.


One Final Note

Even though the addition of these new seats will benefit the Tories, these gains may be offset by other intangibles. Redistribution hurts incumbents, since new borders will force some MPs to campaign in neighbourhoods where they are unknown to voters. Given the Tories have the most incumbents, this works against them.

Redistribution also risks opening up is a Copps-Valeri situation, where MPs are forced up against each other. There aren't many benefits to only having 34 MPs, but this is a problem the Liberals won't have to worry about this go around.

Fairness and Frugality

Landing in my inbox is the following seat redistribution proposal from MP Derek Lee:

Ontario 113 (up from 106 currently and down from 124 in the gov bill)
Québec 75
B.C. 39 (up from 36 currently, but down from the proposed 43)
Manitoba 11 (down from 14)
Newfoundland 6 (down from 7)
Saskatchewan 10 (down from 14)
Alberta 31 (up from 28, but down from the proposed 33)
New Brunswick 7 (down from 10)
Nova Scotia 9 (down from 11)
P.E.I. 4
N.W. Terr. 1
Yukon 1
Nunavut 1

I actually like this scheme but given the political challenges in removing seats in certain provinces, it will obviously never fly - with either the Liberals or the House of Commons.

Still, the reasoning is sound:

This proposal offers a much more cost-effective alternative to Government Bill C-12, An Act to Amend the Constitution Act, introduced by the Hon. Steven Fletcher, a bill that plans to increase and redistribute the number of ridings per province. The Fairness and Frugality Proposal will provide for improved representation for Canadians while not incurring the over $40 million per year cost associated with the Government’s plan. The proposal recognizes Québec’s standing in our federation and does not diminish its presence in the House of Commons, in that Québec will continue to have the same number and percentage of seats. Finally and most importantly, the proposal provides a system of representation that adheres more closely to the principal of “representation by population” than both the current system and the plan proposed by the Harper Government in Bill C-12.