Wednesday, September 20, 2006

I Guess This Means No Triple-E Senate? (Or The Like)

It looks like Ontario is weighing in on the Senate Reform Debate. It wants more Senate seats or no Senate at all. Ontario seems to think that the Senate is supposed to be representation by population. Uhh, no, that what the House of Commons is for (well, sorta). The Senate is supposed to run on equal representation by region; each region gets an equal amount of seats. The exceptions are Newfoundland (joined in 1949) and the Territories.

West: 24 Seats
Ontario: 24 Seats
Quebec: 24 Seats
Maritimes: 24 Seats
Newfoundland: 6 Seats
Territories: 3 Seats

I think that what is needed is to fix up the regions in the Senate a little bit. I'd propose this set-up:

Pacific Canada: 32 Seats
Prairies: 32 Seats
Ontario: 32 Seats
Quebec: 32 Seats
Atlantic Canada: 32 Seats
Territories: 3 Seats

I just raised the number of seats to 32 (so that Atlantic Canada does not lose any seats with the inclusion of Newfoundland) and split the West into two regions (because the land area of the West is massive).

The only other change that I'd do to the Senate is have the Senators appointed by the provinces.

There, non-complex Senate Reform for all.

3 comments:

The JF said...

What's Pacific Canada else than BC?

The JF said...

Wow, that's strange. I posted as Jean-Francois?

Northern BC Dipper said...

Well, I was trying to sorta leave room for a BC-Alberta combination, which "Pacific Canada" is not the perfect term, so I used it in a pinch.