Out in Left-Centre Field

The fourth in an ongoing series; the first part is an overview, while the second part covers the Maritimes and the North, and the third part covers the Prairies.

Here’s the third and arguably shortest of my regionally-focused discussions on the CYA’s new 177 riding system. As always, I strongly suggest you follow along with an interactive map of the real 308 ridings in the House of Commons, which can be found here.

My apologies for leaving you all so long without an update. Schoolwork takes a mighty big toll on one's free time to write these kinds of things ... on to the information!

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British Columbia:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 36
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 22
Minimum single ridings: 8
Maximum combined ridings: 14
New ridings: 8 single, 14 double.

British Columbia, like Alberta, allowed for a significant number of single ridings. This helped a lot, as some of the ridings are already absolutely huge. Let’s break down how they were arranged ...

For starters, Skeena—Bulkley Valley and Prince George—Peace River each cover roughly one-quarter of the province. These were no-brainers to leave alone. Sure, I will want to leave some urban ridings uncombined later, but adding any more ground to cover to these ridings is probably tantamount to torture. I originally thought to combine Cariboo—Prince George with Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, but after an error in calculations (see the Overview, link above) was resolved and effectively gave me an extra riding to work with, I left each of them as single ridings as well.

Then I moved to the southeast part of the province. Kootenay—Columbia and British Columbia Southern Interior formed a pretty cohesive whole and only rivaled Cariboo—Prince George in size, so I combined them to form “Kootenay—Interior”. Kelowna—Lake Country and Okanagan—Shuswap were the next logical combination, becoming “Kelowna—Okanagan”. This left Okanagan—Coquihalla to join with Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, forming “Chilliwack—Okanagan”.

Moving to the Island ridings, I had originally thought that Vancouver Island North would make a good combination with one of its free neighbours, but on closer research of its awkward geography and on the recommendation of Sheldon Starrett, a CYPCer and one of the CYA’s members in B.C., I left it alone. Next, Nanaimo—Cowichan made a natural fit with Nanaimo—Alberni to form “Nanaimo—Cowichan—Alberni”. I next figured that Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca would make a better combination with Saanich—Gulf Islands (“Esquimalt—Saanich”) than with Victoria which, owing to its likely high population of youth, I left on its own.

Moving to the Vancouver area, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country was already a pretty big riding, both in area and in name, and covered a range from suburban to rural settings, so I left it on its own, albeit as “West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast”. North Vancouver and Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam struck me as pretty similar ridings, so I combined them to form “Vancouver North—Port Moody”. Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission also was large and covered a variety of suburban and rural areas, so it too was left on its own. Langley and Abbotsford made the next logical combination, becoming “Abbotsford—Langley”. (I know, so imaginative, eh?)

Now came the fun dance in Vancouver proper. First, Fleetwood—Port Kells went with South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale (“Surrey South—Fleetwood”), followed by Surrey North and Newton—North Delta (“Newton—Surrey North”). Richmond and Delta—Richmond East followed an earlier theme of reuniting municipalities (“Richmond—Delta”). Then eight ridings in Vancouver had to go down to four: Vancouver Centre and Vancouver Quadra were first (“Vancouver Centre”), followed by Vancouver South and Vancouver Kingsway (“Vancouver South”), which was in turn followed by Vancouver East and Burnaby—Douglas (“Vancouver East—Burnaby”), and finally Burnaby—New Westminster with New Westminster—Coquitlam (“Burnaby—New Westminster—Coquitlam”).

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That concludes my look into B.C.; stay tuned for the fourth and penultimate regional spotlight on Québec, before Ontario concludes this series!

The third in an ongoing series; the first part is an overview, while the second part covers the Maritimes and the North.

Here’s the second of my regionally focused discussions on the CYA’s new 177 riding system. As always, I strongly suggest you follow along with an interactive map of the real 308 ridings in the House of Commons, which can be found here.

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Manitoba:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 14
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 7
Minimum single ridings: 0
Maximum combined ridings: 7
New ridings: 1 single, 5 double, 1 triple.

Manitoba, oddly enough, was found in the earlier calculations to have its ridings reduced exactly in half. As I intend to keep the existing rural/urban balance, the six rural and eight urban (Winnipeg) ridings should thus be combined down to three and four, respectively.

Starting with the rural ridings, Churchill covers more than half of Manitoba, so I left it on its own. Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette and Selkirk—Interlake made the next logical combination (“Swan River—Selkirk—Interlake”), while Brandon—Souris, Portage—Lisgar, and Provencher had to be combined together (“Brandon—Portage—Provencher”) as they were the three smallest rural ridings and none really fit with any out of Winnipeg.

As for the provincial capital, Winnipeg North made the best match for Kildonan—St. Paul (now “Winnipeg North”), while Winnipeg Centre and Winnipeg South Centre were a natural fit (as “Winnipeg Centre”). On the recommendation of Matt Schaubroeck, a long-time CYA member from Manitoba, Elmwood—Transcona was combined with Saint Boniface to form “Winnipeg East”. This left Winnipeg South and Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia in a slightly awkward but still manageable combination (“Winnipeg Southwest”).

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Saskatchewan:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 14
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 6
Minimum single ridings: 0
Maximum combined ridings: 6
New ridings: 4 double, 2 triple.

For some reason, Saskatchewan seems to consist entirely of large rural ridings, unlike the clear rural-urban split seen in Manitoba. Why that is, I don’t know; but I pity whoever has to represent Saskatchewan ridings, as the travel involved must be a pain.

To start, given how tied my hands were with how many combinations had to take place, I put Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River with Prince Albert (“Prince Albert—Desnethé”), in order to prevent more triple combinations later. In comparison to many other potential combinations, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, and Battlefords—Lloydminster made a relatively cohesive whole (“Saskatoon—Battlefords”). Saskatoon—Humboldt and Blackstrap then made the next logical combination (“Saskatoon East”).

But then how to split the ridings in Regina, the south, and the east? Combining Regina ridings in pairs would have filled two more spots, with three huge rural ridings then set to combine to make an awkwardly massive (and massively awkward) riding wrapping around Regina from the northeast to the southwest. I opted to make the combinations regardless of whether I thought the ridings were urban or rural, as the ridings were all sizable and thus likely to be mostly rural anyways.

First, Regina—Qu’Appelle and Yorkton—Melville appeared to be a natural pair (“Regina East—Yorkton”), followed by the combination of Wascana and Souris—Moose Mountain (“Wascana—Souris”). The final riding in Saskatchewan was formed by the combination of Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Palliser, and Cypress Hills—Grasslands (“Regina West—Cypress Hills”). It might be large, but it forms a workable and not-too-overly-populous whole.

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Alberta:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 28
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 19
Minimum single ridings: 10
Maximum combined ridings: 9
New ridings: 10 single, 9 double.

Alberta was the first province where I was able to have a significant number of single ridings – there must be a higher-than-usual concentration of youth, for some reason. At the same time, and much like Manitoba, I’ve tried to keep the urban-rural balance mostly the same: eight ridings in Edmonton, eight in Calgary, and twelve elsewhere were reduced to five in Edmonton, five in Calgary, and nine elsewhere.

Starting with Edmonton, Edmonton—Spruce Grove was the largest riding and was left on its own. Edmonton—Leduc and Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont made the first really self-evident choice for a combination (“Edmonton South”). Edmonton—Sherwood Park was also pretty sizable, so I left it on its own. Out of the four remaining ridings, I estimated that Edmonton Centre would fit best with Edmonton—Strathcona (“Edmonton Centre”), leaving Edmonton—St. Albert to join Edmonton East (“Edmonton North”).

Moving on to Calgary, Calgary Southwest and Calgary Southeast made the first natural combination (“Calgary South”). I left Calgary East on its own because it was fairly large already, for an urban riding. Calgary Centre and Calgary Centre-North made another reasonable combination (“Calgary Centre”). Calgary—Nose Hill and Calgary Northeast seemed to be the next logical choice for a combination (“Calgary North”), leaving Calgary West on its own. Having one single riding in both the east and the west sides of Calgary also lent some geographical balance to the combined ridings.

Elsewhere in Alberta, I had to be careful not to create ridings which were too large in geographic size. Peace River and Fort McMurray—Athabaska were both huge already and so I left them on their own. Westlock—St. Paul and Vegreville—Wainwright made a good geographical combination (“Westlock—Vegreville”). Crowfoot and Medicine Hat were both already pretty sizable and were each left on their own. Lethbridge and Macleod combined (“Lethbridge—Macleod”) to be about the size of each of Crowfoot or Medicine Hat.

The last four were a problem going down to three: Red Deer was found to be fairly youth-heavy, so it was left on its own, while Yellowhead was left alone based on its geographic size. Wetaskiwin and Wild Rose were left to form the last, albeit somewhat weirdly shaped, combination (“Wetaskiwin—Wild Rose”).

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That concludes my look into the Prairies; stay tuned for the third regional “spotlight”, this time on British Columbia! (Québec and Ontario to follow …)

The second in an ongoing series; the first portion, an overview, can be found here.

Here’s the first of my regionally focused discussions on the CYA’s new 177 riding system. Once again, I suggest you follow along with an interactive map of the real 308, which can be found here.

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Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 3
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 3
Minimum single ridings: 3
Maximum combined ridings: 0
New ridings: 3 single.

All three territories’ ridings were left the same, as it was decided that no ridings would cross jurisdictional boundaries. There was some talk of uniting two of them (potentially Yukon and Western Arctic) into a single riding, given the scarcity of youth in the North, but the sheer geographical size of the territories won out to keep them separate. I sincerely hope this works out and helps us gain more involvement from the young people of Canada’s north.

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Newfoundland and Labrador:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 7
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 3
Minimum single ridings: 0
Maximum combined ridings: 3
New ridings: 1 single, 2 triple.

N&L seemed straightforward at first glance, but it turned out that geographical concerns made it the most controversial province by far.

Labrador, in and of itself, is far larger than the entirety of Newfoundland. It’s simply massive, and its population is scattered. It may have far fewer youth than the island, but the difficulty in properly representing such a huge area compensates in a big way. So what to do? Should I try and combine Labrador with an island riding, or leave it on its own and split the six on the island into two?

The problem with combining Labrador with any island riding is that they are physically separate. With so much area already to represent, the member for Labrador would have to make a long journey just to visit the island. Furthermore, after putting together the two St. John’s ridings, the resulting combination of Avalon, Random—Burin—St. George’s, and Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor is still fairly huge and geographically awkward.

There was also the argument that N&L should have an extra riding to accommodate Labrador while still splitting the island into three. Still, this makes possible combinations on the island geographically awkward – and, furthermore, it’s unfair to the other provinces who don’t get extra representation.

So, in the end, I left Labrador on its own. The island ridings I then split into two groups of three ridings: St. John’s East, St. John’s South—Mount Pearl, and Avalon now form “St. John’s—Avalon”, while Random—Burin—St. George’s, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, and Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte (whew!) combine to form “Terra Nova”.

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Prince Edward Island:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 4
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 1
Minimum single ridings: 0
Maximum combined ridings: 1
New ridings: 1 quadruple.

This was, by far, the simplest province to do. Four ridings (Egmont, Malpeque, Charlottetown, and Cardigan) combine to form the only quadruple-combined riding in the country – naturally, renamed “Prince Edward Island”.

(On an interesting/random note, much of my mom’s side of my family comes from PEI. My great-aunt, Leone Bagnall, was briefly the interim leader of the PEI Progressive Conservatives back in 1986, after having been Minister of Education for the preceding four years. She’s also a member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Prince Edward Island. Neat, eh?)

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Nova Scotia:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 11
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 5
Minimum single ridings: 0
Maximum combined ridings: 5
New ridings: 4 double, 1 triple.

Nova Scotia was far more straightforward than N&L. Starting with the obvious: Halifax with Halifax West (“Halifax”), and then Dartmouth—Cole Harbour with Sackville—Eastern Shore (“Dartmouth—Eastern Shore”). One of the few ideas I actually poached from the old discussions was Coady’s point that Cape Breton should be a single riding; to that end, I put Cape Breton—Canso with Sydney—Victoria to form “Cape Breton”. Three down.

West Nova and South Shore—St. Margaret’s made a natural combination, as did Central Nova with Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, but where to put Kings—Hants? It didn’t make sense to put it with the Halifax-area ridings, but I had no more space. In the end, I decided to put Kings—Hants with Central Nova and Casey-land as it made a more cohesive area (“Kings—Cumberland—Central Nova”) while West Nova and SS-SM (now “Southwest Shore”) already made a sprawling area to represent.

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New Brunswick:
Ridings in the House of Commons: 10
Ridings under the 177 riding system: 4
Minimum single ridings: 0
Maximum combined ridings: 4
New ridings: 2 double, 2 triple.

New Brunswick was a bit awkward, in spots. Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe and Beauséjour made a natural combination (“Moncton—Beauséjour”), as did Fundy Royal and New Brunswick Southwest, which I then combined with Saint John, which they surrounded (“Saint John—Fundy”).

What to do next, though? Five ridings had to go down to two. Acadie—Bathurst only bordered on Miramichi, so that combination was obvious; Fredericton would then have to combine with Tobique—Mactaquac, at the very least. So where does that leave Madawaska—Restigouche? It’s a weirdly arranged riding in the extreme northwest corner of NB. To combine it with either of the neighbouring pairs of ridings would form a sprawling combination – either way wasn’t pretty. In the end, I put it with Acadie—Bathurst and Miramichi (“Bathurst—Miramichi—Madawaska”), as it was fairly distant from probably the biggest youth concentration in the province, Fredericton, which was already on the opposite side of Tobique—Mactaquac (now “Fredericton—Tobique”).

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So that’s the first and smallest regional spotlight; stay tuned for the Prairies!

The first in an ongoing series.

If you’ve been around the Canadian Youth Assembly’s website or forums anytime lately, I’d bet anything you’ve seen mention of this “177 riding” arrangement being adopted by the CYA. I don’t fault you if you’re still confused as to what it is or how it was created.

Read on, then; your answers are finally nigh. (It’ll take me a few issues, but the more thorough, the better, eh?)

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So, you ask, how did this new system come about?

Well, its primary raison d’ètre is simple: the CYA, being a new and still-developing organization, needs to save money. One of the big ways in which this is possible is by cutting down on the financial requirement needed to elect and support Youth Representatives in the Assembly. That means having fewer members than the 308 which constitute the real House of Commons. The trouble with that endeavour is that there needs to be a substantial reduction while still retaining adequate regional representation; it’s a tricky balancing act, as you will see.

Possibly an even greater problem is getting everybody to agree on an arrangement. I was late in coming to the CYA’s Gradual Growth Committee board; when I was granted access back in December, what I could immediately gather was that nothing comprehensive had been done. Oh, there had been some calculations based on nice, round 50/100/150/200/250-seat targets, but none of the province-specific discussions had ever come to any sort of conclusion, nor made a real effort to follow one of those targets or some unified system. Everything was all over the map (literally), and the board was pretty much dead.

So what to do? It was the Christmas break, I was done my exams, and I needed something fun to challenge my mind. (Yes, “fun.” I’m in engineering. To me, basic math like this is fun.) So, I thought, why not work upwards from the numbers of youth in each province instead of adopting a target? Could a fair and unified system be found to that allocate seats to each province? Steven Heidel, the CYA’s Elections Coordinator, had posted a breakdown of percentages of youth in each province in the calculations thread:

NL: 0.0182894586
PE: 0.0047279466
NS: 0.0294165332
NB: 0.0243019700
QC: 0.2368288461
ON: 0.3711107619
MB: 0.0382326384
SK: 0.0359777907
AB: 0.1092728116
BC: 0.1282931003
YK: 0.0009802601
NT: 0.0014092798
NU: 0.0011610969

Little did I know those numbers were from 2004 and were unreliable; but I’ll touch on that later. So, where to start? I decided to divide all the various jurisdictions by the smallest youth population (the Yukon), and got this:

Newfoundland: 19
PEI: 5
Nova Scotia: 30
New Brunswick: 25
Quebec: 242
Ontario: 379
Manitoba: 39
Saskatchewan: 37
Alberta: 111
British Columbia: 131
Yukon: 1
NWT: 1
Nunavut: 1

… which yielded a total of 1021 ridings, which is actually way more than the original 308, and which clearly won’t work. So, then, I decided to discard the territories (as they were all going to come up with similar results), forcing them to have 1 seat each, and decided to try dividing everybody by the smallest province, Prince Edward Island:

Newfoundland: 4
PEI: 1
Nova Scotia: 6
New Brunswick: 5
Quebec: 50
Ontario: 78
Manitoba: 8
Saskatchewan: 8
Alberta: 23
British Columbia: 27
Yukon: 1
NWT: 1
Nunavut: 1

… which gave a total of 213 ridings – much better than over a thousand. Still, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for; so, I thought, how about dividing everybody by half of Newfoundland & Labrador (because of its geographical split)? The result:

Newfoundland: 2
PEI: 1
Nova Scotia: 3
New Brunswick: 3
Quebec: 26
Ontario: 41
Manitoba: 4
Saskatchewan: 4
Alberta: 12
British Columbia: 14
Yukon: 1
NWT: 1
Nunavut: 1

… for a total of 113 this time. However, this seemed a little too low; the combinations might be a more than a little painful. (Most of Quebec as triple ridings? No way.) Maybe the answer lay somewhere in between. With that in mind, I decided to try dividing everybody by one-third of the youth population of Newfoundland & Labrador, with this result:

Newfoundland: 3
PEI: 1
Nova Scotia: 5
New Brunswick: 4
Quebec: 39
Ontario: 61
Manitoba: 6
Saskatchewan: 6
Alberta: 18
British Columbia: 21
Yukon: 1
NWT: 1
Nunavut: 1

… for a total of 167 ridings! This seems like the best balance so far, no? I thought so, too. In fact, the calculated numbers were pretty close to whole numbers of seats even before rounding. So I adopted this framework and moved to the step of going through each of the provinces’ ridings to combine them into their respective allocations. I used the CBC’s online map of the 2008 federal election results as both a visual and a naming resource, as I wanted everything to make geographic sense. I decided to stick to the following guidelines as I worked:

• Party standings in individual ridings would have no bearing on combinations;
• As in real life, no ridings would cross provincial/territorial boundaries;
• Geographical area of the ridings would be taken into account, in addition to the potential numbers of youth in the riding;
• Combined ridings would have to border one another to form contiguous areas;
• The urban/rural balance would need to be maintained, as much as reasonably possible;
• I would rather have more double ridings, instead of triple/quadruple ridings, given the difficulty in representing more youth or more area;
• Reuniting split communities would be a secondary goal, where possible;
• No real-life ridings would be split.

After I had created a preliminary (i.e. draft) combination system for the ridings, I presented my idea to the Gradual Growth Committee. Cue the suggestions, the feedback, and the nitpicking – fun times! This is where Immanuel Giulea of the AYCC came in: he had the keen idea of going through the 2006 Census data for each riding and compiling the number of youth in each riding who were between ages 15 and 24, as a means of checking and validating my combinations. In doing so, he found a key error: Steven’s numbers had been from 2004, while the more comprehensive, useful, and reliable census data was from 2006. This meant we had to do everything again.

In order to extrapolate the numbers of youth ages 14 through 24 in each province in 2009, Immanuel went through the numbers for ages 11 through 21 in the 2006 census, added them up for each province and territory, and then found what percentage each province and territory had out of the whole youth population for that age range. We now had new initial proportions:

NL: 0.0152626350 (down)
PE: 0.0045559625 (down)
NS: 0.0279895355 (down)
NB: 0.0220135189 (down)
QC: 0.2249472972 (down)
ON: 0.3903970043 (up)
MB: 0.0391924232 (up)
SK: 0.0341016630 (down)
AB: 0.1112025662 (up)
BC: 0.1261994099 (down)
YK: 0.0010352999 (up)
NT: 0.0016429759 (up)
NU: 0.0014597085 (up)

… which, as you can see on close inspection, are somewhat different from the first set (nothing drastic, though), resulting in a different distribution of seats. Immanuel suggested keeping Quebec’s existing figure of 39 ridings and working out all of the other provinces and territories accordingly. The new result (and the one we finally settled on) is as follows:

Newfoundland: 3
PEI: 1
Nova Scotia: 5
New Brunswick: 4
Quebec: 39
Ontario: 68 (gained 7)
Manitoba: 7 (gained 1)
Saskatchewan: 6
Alberta: 19 (gained 1)
British Columbia: 22 (gained 1)
Yukon: 1
NWT: 1
Nunavut: 1

The correction had added 10 ridings, for a grand total of the 177 you see today. With the new breathing room, I was able to split up several ridings that were either geographically huge or were known to have a high youth population. Fortunately, however, a lot of issues with the combinations and naming had been resolved by that point; as a result, only a few small tweaks followed before none of the CYA members on the forums had anything left to bring forward. Next up were Tyler and his staff; I wasn’t sure how they’d like it but I was pleased to hear that it passed the Board of Directors without complaint. Yay for progress!

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(I realize that this overview doesn’t really cover the specific riding combinations in order – that’s why it’s an “overview.” Next up is in-depth coverage of each region of the country, one after another. Stay tuned!)