User:The Tom/Apportionment of the House of Commons of Canada

Apportionment of the House of Commons of Canada refers to...

Apportionment formula
Apportionment of the House of Commons follows the broad principle of representation by population; however, as a result of special provisions in the apportionment rules, a degree of degressive proportionality is assured as an outcome. In all recent reapportionments, Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta have been under-represented in proportion to their populations. The other seven provinces (Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador), which are either smaller or have experienced a relative decline in their share of the national population over time, are over-represented.

The apportionment provisions for the House of Commons are defined by Sections 51 to 52 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and have been amended on multiple occasions, most recently in 2011.

Amendments to this portion of the Constitution are subject to particular complexities. Since 1982, the amending formula has provided that while in general amendments for this matter may be made under Section 44 of the Constitution Act, 1982 (meaning only the agreement of the House of Commons and Senate is required), there are two significant exceptions: any change affecting "the principle of proportionate representation of the provinces in the House of Commons" must be made using the Section 38 general amending procedure that requires the agreement of the House, Senate, and legislatures of a supermajority of provinces; while any change that would result in a province having fewer MPs than the number of Senators it was entitled to in 1982 must be made using the Section 41 procedure that requires unanimity amongst the House, Senate and all provincial legislatures. The two amendments enacted since 1982 have both used the Section 44 procedure.

Present formula
The present formula for reapportioning seats was adopted in 2011.

The total number of residents, without reference to considerations such as citizenship or voting eligibility, is used for both apportionment and the realignment of electoral boundaries within a province. While both processes are initiated following the decennial census, since 2011 each has used slightly different sets of population counts: instead of the latest formal census population counts, the population estimates for July 1 of the census year prepared by Statistics Canada are used for apportionment calculations. These use data from the Census of five years prior and apply statistical techniques to correct for factors such as undercount, which are believed to result in more accurate figures at the provincial level. The subsequent process to adjust boundaries within a province, however, uses unadjusted count data from the most recent Census.

A number called an "electoral quotient" is established for Canada. Each province is assigned a base number of seats by dividing its population by the electoral quotient and rounding up to the nearest whole number; this means the electoral quotient is mathematically the maximum value possible for the average number of residents per MP that any province can have at the end of the redistribution.

The value of the electoral quotient is indexed to grow every census at a rate equal to the average of all the provincial growth rates. The electoral quotient was set in 2011 at 111,166 by backcasting the new formula to 2001 so as to replicate the ratio of residents to MPs from that year.

Historical formulae
The previous formula for reapportioning seats was adopted in 1985. It starts with the number of seats in Parliament at that time, 282. One seat is automatically allocated to each of Canada's three territories, leaving 279. The total population of Canada's provinces is thus divided by 279, resulting in an "electoral quotient", and then the population of each individual province is divided by this electoral quotient to determine the number of seats to which the province is officially entitled.

Finally, a few special rules are applied. Under the "senatorial clause", a province's number of seats in the House of Commons can never be lower than its constitutionally mandated number of senators, regardless of the province's population. Under the "grandfather clause", the province's number of seats can also never fall below the number of seats it had in the 33rd Canadian parliament.

A province may be allocated extra seats over its base entitlement to ensure that these rules are met. In 2004, for example, Prince Edward Island would have been entitled to only a single seat according to the electoral quotient, but through the senatorial clause the province gained three more seats to equal its four senators. Quebec was only entitled to 68 seats by the electoral quotient alone, but through the grandfather clause the province gained seven seats to equal the 75 seats it had in the 33rd Parliament. Saskatchewan and Manitoba also gained seats under the grandfather clause, New Brunswick gained seats under the senatorial clause, and Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador gained seats under both clauses.

A third protection clause exists, under which a province may not lose more than 15 per cent of its seats in a single adjustment, but specific application of this rule has never been needed. In practice, the process results in most provinces maintaining the same number of seats from one redistribution to the next, due to the senatorial and grandfather clauses—prior to the 2015 election, only Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, traditionally the country's three fastest-growing provinces, had ever gained seats in a redistribution. All other provinces still held the same number of seats that they held in 1985, and were thus already protected from losing even one seat by the other clauses. The 2012 redistribution, which added three new seats in Quebec, was the first time since 1985 that any of the other seven provinces had ever gained new seats. The 15 per cent clause will thus only become relevant if Ontario, Alberta or British Columbia undergoes a rapid population decline, leading to a reduction in their seat entitlement, in the future.

Some sources incorrectly state that a special provision guaranteeing a certain number of seats to Quebec is also applied. While such a provision was proposed in the failed Charlottetown Accord, no such rule currently exists—Quebec's seat allotment in the House of Commons is in fact governed by the same adjustment clauses as all other provinces, and not by any provisions unique to Quebec alone.

In 2008 the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposed an amendment to the process which would have given Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, the three provinces whose electoral districts have an average size larger than those in Quebec, a total of 32 additional seats by applying Quebec's average of 105,000. The measure initially included only British Columbia and Alberta; Harper later proposed an alternative plan which included Ontario. However, opposition then emerged in Quebec, where politicians expressed concern about the province losing clout in Ottawa if its proportion of seats in the House of Commons were reduced; finally, three new seats were allotted to Quebec as well. The measure did not pass before the 2011 election was called, but was put forward again after the election. It was passed on December 16, 2011 as the Fair Representation Act (Bill C-20), and resulted in the 2012 redistribution process.