January 2006 Premises

This is an example of what a proportional representation-driven Senate might look like based on the results of the 2006 General Election.

Premises

(To identify these premises against future versions, these premises will be referred to as the January 2006 Premises.)

• Candidates who are not elected to the House of Commons are grouped by party affiliation and then ranked nationally by number of votes received.
• The 105 available Senate seats are then distributed to each party based on their percentage of the popular vote.
• The Senators are selected in order from their party's list.

Total Votes: 14815680

Senate Roll

Party	Senator	Region	Votes
Green Party	Chernushenko, David	Ontario	6766
Green Party	Jolley, Shane	Ontario	6735
Green Party	Roberts, Danielle	Alberta	6653
Green Party	MacGillivray, Mark	Alberta	6573
N.D.P.	Uppal, Manjeet	British Columbia	20335
N.D.P.	Garrison, Randall	British Columbia	18600
N.D.P.	Bocking, Mike	British Columbia	18235
N.D.P.	Churley, Marilyn	Ontario	17943
N.D.P.	Ryan, Sid	Ontario	17815
N.D.P.	Gravelle, Claude	Ontario	17668
N.D.P.	Di Bartolomeo, Jody	Ontario	17484
N.D.P.	Burgis, Jennifer	British Columbia	17455
N.D.P.	Duncan, Linda	Alberta	17142
N.D.P.	Crawford, Michael	British Columbia	16417
N.D.P.	Robinson, Svend	British Columbia	16372
N.D.P.	Schreyer, Ed	Manitoba	16358
N.D.P.	Slavin, Linda	Ontario	16255
N.D.P.	Waddell, Ian	British Columbia	15570
N.D.P.	McIntaggart, Gerry	Ontario	15225
N.D.P.	Brown, Alice	British Columbia	14537
N.D.P.	Mancini, Peter	Nova Scotia	14396
N.D.P.	Clegg, Nancy	British Columbia	14306
Conservative	Callow, Bob	Ontario	28695
Conservative	Young, Terence	Ontario	25099
Conservative	Dechert, Bob	Ontario	23525
Conservative	Cutler, Allan	Ontario	23038
Conservative	Duncan, John	British Columbia	22931
Conservative	Weston, John	British Columbia	22881
Conservative	Brown, Lois	Ontario	22371
Conservative	Silver, Cindy	British Columbia	22023
Conservative	Gretzky, Al	Ontario	21690
Conservative	McColeman, Phil	Ontario	21495
Conservative	Green, Phil	Ontario	20827
Conservative	Gosal, Bal	Ontario	20358
Conservative	Lobb, Ben	Ontario	20289
Conservative	Capobianco, John	Ontario	19651
Conservative	Sowden, Norm	British Columbia	19429
Conservative	Reale, Anthony	Ontario	19005
Conservative	Mandur, Ajmer	Ontario	18817
Conservative	Kuhn, Axel	Ontario	18691
Conservative	Barr, Brent	Ontario	18342
Conservative	Gill, Raminder	Ontario	18121
Conservative	Mazzilli, John	Ontario	17914
Conservative	Carmichael, John	Ontario	17908
Conservative	Kerr, Greg	Nova Scotia	17223
Conservative	Thomas, Rondo	Ontario	16997
Conservative	Reid, Darrel Robert	British Columbia	16901
Conservative	Godue, Marie-Claude	Quebec	16863
Conservative	Rogers, Stephen	British Columbia	16844
Conservative	Dobson, Tim	Ontario	16686
Conservative	Grunstein, Mel	Ontario	16665
Conservative	Di Paola, Joe	Ontario	16515
Conservative	Chirico, Peter	Ontario	16511
Conservative	Forseth, Paul	British Columbia	16494
Conservative	Landry, Jean	Quebec	16385
Conservative	Majkot, Richard	Ontario	16335
Conservative	DeSouza, Troy	British Columbia	16326
Conservative	Sprovieri, John	Ontario	16310
Conservative	Lynch, Pat	New Brunswick	16294
Conservative	Boseovski, Jovan	Ontario	16247
Liberal	Carr, Gary	Ontario	28498
Liberal	Longfield, Judi	Ontario	25882
Liberal	Torsney, Paddy	Ontario	25414
Liberal	Ianno, Tony	Ontario	25086
Liberal	Godbout, Marc	Ontario	24215
Liberal	Berthiaume, René	Ontario	22786
Liberal	Macklin, Paul	Ontario	22563
Liberal	Carroll, Aileen	Ontario	22476
Liberal	McLellan, Anne	Alberta	22221
Liberal	Graham, Karen	Ontario	22083
Liberal	Powers, Russ	Ontario	21630
Liberal	Lastewka, Walt	Ontario	21424
Liberal	Lloyd, Diane	Ontario	20512
Liberal	Farnworth, Lee	Ontario	20244
Liberal	Saada, Jacques	Quebec	20190
Liberal	Gaffney, Michael	Ontario	20111
Liberal	Burroughs, Gary	Ontario	20099
Liberal	Whelan, Susan	Ontario	19508
Liberal	Mahoney, Richard	Ontario	19458
Liberal	Peric, Janko	Ontario	19420
Liberal	Myers, Lynn	Ontario	19245
Liberal	Valeri, Tony	Ontario	18878
Liberal	Kelly, Bill	Ontario	18697
Liberal	Bakopanos, Eleni	Quebec	18594
Liberal	Mitchell, Andy	Ontario	18505
Liberal	Bulte, Sarmite Sam	Ontario	18489
Liberal	Kirley, Elizabeth	Ontario	18389
Liberal	Speller, Bob	Ontario	18366
Liberal	Vaughan, Bob	Ontario	18034
Liberal	Garneau, Marc	Quebec	17768
Liberal	Carter, Heather	Ontario	17712
Bloc Québécois	Gagnon, Sébastien	Quebec	20494
Bloc Québécois	Clavet, Roger	Quebec	20051
Bloc Québécois	Marceau, Richard	Quebec	19038
Bloc Québécois	Simard, Christian	Quebec	18597
Bloc Québécois	Labelle, Gérard	Quebec	17693
Bloc Québécois	Pichette, Christiane	Quebec	17527
Bloc Québécois	Lapierre, Réal	Quebec	16223
Bloc Québécois	Charette, Alain	Quebec	15788
Bloc Québécois	Boulianne, Marc	Quebec	15410
Bloc Québécois	Desrochers, Odina	Quebec	15402

Party Summary

Party	Votes	Proportion	Senate Seats
PC Party	14446	0%	0
Independent	77438	0.5%	0
Green Party	665940	4.4%	4
WBP	1094	0%	0
N.D.P.	2590808	17.4%	18
AACEV Party of Canada	72	0%	0
Libertarian	3003	0%	0
Christian Heritage Party	28279	0.1%	0
Conservative	5370903	36.2%	38
Canadian Action	6201	0%	0
Communist	3127	0%	0
FPNP	1340	0%	0
No Affiliation	5205	0%	0
Marxist-Leninist	9289	0%	0
Liberal	4477217	30.2%	31
Bloc Québécois	1552043	10.4%	10
Marijuana Party	9275	0%	0

Regional Summary

Region	Senate Seats
Ontario	61
Prince Edward Island	0
North-West Territories	0
Nova Scotia	2
Alberta	4
Saskatchewan	0
British Columbia	17
Yukon	0
Manitoba	1
Quebec	15
Newfoundland and Labrador	0
New Brunswick	1
Nunavut	0

Caviats

• Due to the rounding used, only 102 of the 105 senate seats are assigned in this model:

  Seats = int(percent-popular-vote*105)

• I don't know what the difference between Independent and No Affiliation is.

Commentary

This first whack at a Proportional Representation system immediately highlights a weakness in the proposal: the seats are overwhelmingly from Ontario. This is a result of the close races between Conservative and Liberals in this region. Regions which elected their representatives by a landslide, or have a disproportionately high number of seats per capita (see parliamentary breakdown from 2004) are accordingly shut out of the Senate.

While I expected to see some regions present in a reduced way, the overwhelming number of Ontario seats is a surprise to me.

With this result the distinction between Independent and No Affiliation is academic, however should the combined vote approach qualification for a seat, the question arises regarding how to select the seat holder. My personal belief is that Independent candidates essentially represent themselves, so each candidate is effectively their own party and would therefore probably not qualify for a Senate seat.

Appendix

Both the raw data and the perl script use to generate these results are available (attached to this page).

• The raw data is from the Elections Canada website, downloaded the morning of January 24 2006. The header fields and footer fields have been manually removed from the original download; all other data is original.
• The perl script was written by me and is released without warranty of any kind (ie the Don't Worry, Be Happy; Now Go Away License).