Improving Representation in the Canadian House of Commons

Abstract

AbstractCanada's single-member plurality (SMP) rules for elections to the House of Commons have a number of disadvantages, including their tendency to promote severe underrepresentation of the governing party in some regions, reward regionally concentrated parties, lead to single-region dominance of the governing party caucus and underrepresent women, Aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Electoral reforms proposed to weaken these effects, especially proportional representation and “mixed-member corrective” systems, generally make single-party majority governments almost impossible. After reviewing alternatives, this article presents a simulation of the effects of a system featuring a limited number of compensation seats designed to award most of these seats to the parties that garner the most votes nationwide. This system could help rectify many of the problems associated with the current SMP system while only modestly lowering the prospects for single-party majority government.