Quebec shouldn't separate from Canada
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I've read through the last several pages of....whatever this is. I hate to feed further
into what this Thread has degenerated into...but I have to ask, with respect to the
above quote in this post, "How so, big?"
Feel free to use more than one sentance in a non-cryptic answer. How is Quebec
"clean" and how is Alberta "dirty" and why will Canada have to choose between
these two specific provinces.
Gerrymandering with respect to Quebec's provincial boundaries in relation
to Federal Politics? Gerrymandering with respect to which boundaries are
you making reference to here, and what are these boundary lines affecting,
in your opinion? 8O......and how do these boundary lines that you're referring to
affect Quebec specificly?
Early in Canadian history, both the federal and provincial levels used
gerrymandering to try to maximize partisan power. When Alberta and
Saskatchewan were admitted to Confederation in 1905, their original district
boundaries were set forth in the respective Alberta and Saskatchewan Acts. These
boundaries had been devised by federal Liberal cabinet members to ensure the
election of provincial Liberal governments.
Since responsibility for drawing electoral boundaries was handed over to
independent agencies, this problem has largely been eliminated. Manitoba was the
first province to authorize a non-partisan group to define constituency boundaries
in the 1950s. In 1964, the federal government delegated the drawing of boundaries
for national seats to the "arm's length" Elections Canada. As a result,
gerrymandering is not generally a major issue in Canada.
In 2006, a controversy arose on Prince Edward Island over the provincial
government's decision to throw out an electoral map drawn by an independent
commission. Instead they created two new maps. The government adopted the
second of these, designed by the caucus of the governing party. Opposition parties
and the media attacked Premier Pat Binns for what they saw as gerrymandering of
districts. Among other things, the government adopted a map that ensured that
every current Member of the Legislative Assembly from the premier's party had a
district to run in for re-election, whereas in the original map, several had been
redistricted.[13] Despite this, in the 2007 provincial election only seven of 20
incumbent Members of the Legislative Assembly were re-elected (seven did not run
for re-election).
The current federal electoral district boundaries in Saskatchewan have also been
labelled as gerrymandered — the province's two major cities, Saskatoon and
Regina, are both "cracked" into four districts each when the populations of the
cities proper would justify about three and two and a half all-urban (or mostly-
urban) districts respectively[14] - the map instead groups parts of the New
Democratic Party-friendly cities with large Conservative-leaning rural areas.[15]
At the time the districts were created in their largely present form in the mid-
1990s, it was alleged that they were intended to give the NDP and Liberals a better
chance of winning seats including much of the province's rural hinterlands at the
expense of the then-extant Reform Party. If that was the intention it has
backfired, as in 1997 Reform took three of the four Saskatoon seats thanks largely
to strong rural support, in 2000 their successors the Canadian Alliance added the
remaining Saskatoon seat plus one in Regina and in 2004 the CA's successors the
Conservatives added the NDP's two remaining Regina seats to shut the NDP out of
the province. Since then the Conservatives have held the seven districts in
question, while the NDP holds no seats in the province despite commanding a
strong proportion of the vote especially in the cities. Polling data shows the Tories
could probably not have swept either of these cities had they contained all-urban or
mostly-urban constituencies. Perhaps not surprisingly, neither the federal
Conservatives nor the new centre-right Saskatchewan Party government has
expressed any interest in changing the map, notwithstanding the fact that it was
not their creation.
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I sense hypocrisy.
While Quebec is part of Canada, hydro electricity on Quebec territory belongs to Quebec... But if Quebec separates, it belongs to the the Natives?