Currently, we vote for one representative per riding. The issue with that is that (hypothetically) one riding could have a million people and another could have 100 people. But both of them would have the same amount of power in Parliament because 1 riding = 1 mp.
How would that work in a proportional election system? Is there one candidate per X number of citizens in an area? Wouldn’t cities be over represented? Wouldn’t there be one candidate to cover very large sparsely inhabited areas that might not have the same needs from one spot to another?
I’m really curious how this would be implemented.
That’s kind of the problem I wanted to raise with this question. Some areas have a much higher population density than others. They’ll basically be running the country as you said.
But then again, if the majority of Canadians live there, wouldn’t they be better represented at the parliament? Wouldn’t decisions then be made to better represent the majority?
Housing is a major issue in densely populated areas. Shouldn’t there be more push to tackle this problem for example?
That’s why there’s a difference in riding sizes… 1 vote per person shouldn’t mean that Windsor-Québec should decide fishery issues for Newfoundland… So a riding on the rock has less people, because it has unique needs based on its location and geography that might be better served by giving them more of a say than ridings in London Ontario, which might have very similar needs across the city. In essence, more people don’t necessarily mean more unique issues. There’s a limit to that of course - but the general ‘needs’ are outlined by law and adjusted without gerrymandering - which is not terrible, but maybe could be improved with more representation in the dense ridings - after all, there’s increase concerns within the cities these days.