You mean some regions need the vote.I don't, personally, think that any do. I'm totally down with equal sized ridings, so that every vote counts equally.
That said, I understand that PEI is some historic special case the way Catholic School Boards in my neck of the woods are special cases.
When we voted on the Charlottetown Accord that would have cemented those inequites in place without any realistic amending formula PEI was the highest Yes vote and BC was the highest No vote.
Those special cases were the result of wheeling and dealing while drunk and disorderly.
I cannot agree at all.
There are different dynamics between similar size communities that are provinces on their own or parts of provinces.
Consider this: a part of a large province could politically have to pay attention and advocate for a small part of itself and therefore this small part could have more clout on the national stage than an entire province of the same size that could be safely ignored.
I think that PEI if it only had one seat to match its population would have less clout than a single seat in another province tdue to this dynamic. Conversely, I do not think that PEI has much more clout than other places its size.
PEI entered confederation with this deal to make sure it remained a viable province. Without this it woudl cease to exist. It has been argued in the past that Atlantic Canada ought to be a single province. If it were then you could apportion seats based on populaiton since the entire region would retain more clout together. Similarly, you would have to do soemthign about Manitoba and Saskatchewan (take Northern Ontario and add it to Saskatchewan and Manitoba to create another good size province. Thus, Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario (south), Prairie and N. Ontario, Alberta and BC= 6 slightly more equal provinces.
This does not address either the north or Indigenous peoples. I think some weighting arrangemnt for Indigenous communites in Canada, although spread out could be considered but perhaps this weighting could be done within the six provinces or through some House of Commons dedicated seats.
When people complain about the representation of PEI, they often forget taht it is Northern Canada where the density of votes/seats is the lowest.
The alternative is to accept that lower population provinces have higher numbers of seats to make up for the lower clout those provinces have -- even on a per capita basis by being low population, low seat provinces.
When you consider the policies of the government of Canada, I think there is no argument that can be made that these small provinces have more clout than they represent in population despite the number of seats they have. The record of attention being paid to larger provinces makes it clear that these additional seats are more of a drop in the bucket. This is also true of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The attention to the centre of Canada means that BC and Alberta have a lower clout than their populations deserve but this is not lost to Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Atlantic Canada. It is lost to Quebec and Ontario. If anything any balance away from Quebec and Ontario is a good thing for all of Canada. A strict population based approach would see more clout to Ontario which it does not need.
Thinking Canada would be more functional with the extreme difference in population among provinces should we make all seats the same population is wrong-headed.
The other solution would be to break up some of the big provinces. Certainly Ontario would be a great canddiate for that, but you can see quickly that Quebec would never agree.
As such, you have to use different weighting for provinces within Canada when it comes to population in order to equalize the clout they have on the national stage.
It is ironic that small provinces can have more attention and recognition by being a province and having a government (like PEI) than similar size regions within provinces and yet have less clout becuase they are not part of a larger province with the weight to push an agenda. However, this is true.
As such, this debate over population to seat count is much more complicated than it first seems.
338 seats total for Canada divided only by population would result in the following (rough rounding but illustrative --4 out with rounding):
NL 5
PEI 0
NS 9
NB 7
QC 78
ON 131
MN 12
SK 10
AB 37
BC 45
North 0
Compare regions:
ON now 121 would have 131
QC now 78 would have 78
Atlantic Canada now 32 would have 21
North now 3 would have 0
MB and SK now 28 would have 22
AB now 34 would have 37
BC now 42 would have 45
Now consider the benefits: If AB had 3 more seats but Atlantic Canada, North and Prairies had 20 fewer would Alberta have more or less clout federally? With fewer allies to balance Ontario I suggest it woudl have less. Same argument with BC.
The only winner here would be Ontario which is already the province with by far the most clout of all in Confederation.
There is absolutely no good argument to be made that Canada could be better off weighting more power to the centre, even if the result gave a handful more seats to BC and Alberta. The better arguement in this picture would be simply to close the gap slightly by a giving 3-5 more seats to BC and Alberta at the cost of Ontario. Problem is seats are already huge in Ontario.
The present compromise, leaving everyone unhappy may in fact be the best possible without rejigging the populations of the provinces themselves.