Phendrana Drifts

A week from now about 3.2 million British Columbians will be eligible to vote in the general election to choose 85 new (or old, depending on their mood) MLAs to represent and govern them. Chances are at best only 60% of those will actually show up and cast a ballot but voter turnout is a post for another day. But another piece of news hit me yesterday - Improvements will reflect Alberta's changing population - the move by Alberta's legislature to increase their numbers from 83 to 87 MLAs.

daveberta is already talking about this and I'm sure more will be shortly. Naturally, most are focusing on the geography of the decisions that are about to be made and I certainly think how to distribute the seats, whether there 83 of them, 87 of them or even 60 of them is a vital debate, and one that will hopefully get the discussion it deserves. But before that comes the magic number, and I don't think that 87 is it.

Edmonton has 12 councilors (along with the mayor) to represent some 752,000 people, with each councilor representing 63,000 people starting in 2010 - until then they share wards with another councilor, meaning Don Iveson works hard to represent some 125,000 people. My MP, the Honourable Rona Ambrose, has to work a little harder, as she represents 128,000 people and doesn't have a ward mate to help out. So why is it that the average Alberta MLA need only represent 43,765 people? When we move to 87 that number will drop to 41,753. Why does the City of Edmonton have 12 councilors and 8 MPs (who also represent Sherwood Park, St. Albert and Spruce Grove) but an amazing 18 MLAs?

A Legislature needs to be a certain size in order to function - that much is obvious. If we're dividing Canada's provincial legislatures into three sizes - small, medium and large - we have four small legislatures in the three territories and Prince Edward Island, between 18 and 27. Even at those low amounts, MLAs represent a very small number of people - between 1,850 and 5,200 people a piece. But that comes out of necessity, as the average Alberta MLA represents more people than the entire population of the Yukon. We need at least around 20 MLAs to even carry on the basic function of a parliamentary democracy. Indeed, 20 makes it difficult, hence the medium legislatures.

Newfoundland (48), Nova Scotia (52), New Brunswick (55), Manitoba (57), Saskatchewan (58) all have medium legislatures. They have enough MLAs to form functioning caucuses for both the government and opposition and have enough members to make a cabinet and shadow cabinet. It would be fair to say that somewhere between 45 and 60 is the base level a legislature should be if it has the population to support and justify it. After all, if Nunavut had 60 MLAs each would represent 526 people which is smaller than my graduating class in high school.

Then we come to the large legislatures (according to the arbitrary Duncan scale of Canadian provincial legislature sizes) - British Columbia (79 - soon to be 85), Alberta (83), Ontario (107) and Québec (125). Of these four, Alberta has the smallest population of 3.6 million compared to 4.4 million in BC, 7.8 million in Québec and 13 million in Ontario. An Ontario MPP represents 121,300 people, a Québec MNA represents 62,250 people and currently BC MLAs represent 60,000 people. I'm not advocating for each Alberta MLA to have an average constituency size of 120,000 but if they only represented 60,000 then we would have a functioning legislature of 65 MLAs. Lots of space for debate and diversity. Alas, the number of proponents of reducing the size of the legislature I suspect are going to have their voices drowned out. Too bad.

UPDATE: It would seem BC's legislature is growing to 85 on Tuesday, giving a BC MLA an average of 52,000 constituents.

Labels: alberta politics

Twitter Updates