Canadian Redistribution - Federal, Provincial, Municipal

[Hatman 🍁]

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward. Why not extend the Cape Breton riding west to New Glasgow, add Musquodoboit Valley to the Cumberland-Colechester riding and have a Cole Harbour/Eastern Shore based riding?

[Hatman 🍁]

(1) Sackville/Halifax is now balanced.

(2) Red Deer is now reunified.

(3) Edmonton-Mill Woods is now 20% more Mill Woods-y.


Enjoy your Labour Day weekend.



Any opinions on Wild Rose vs. Rocky Mountain?

Wild Rose makes more sense. The short-lived Rocky Mountain riding covered much more of the Rockies. Now, I'm no fan of the name "Wild Rose" as it's meaningless; so we could explore different options. A more descriptive name would be "Banff-Cochrane-Clearwater" or "Banff-Cochrane-Rocky Mountain House".

[DC Al Fine]

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward.

This makes me wonder how the committee will actually address this after the 2021 census. Southern mainland NS will be fine as is, but Cape Breton/northern mainland already didn't have the population to justify their seats in 2016 census and Halifax will probably be entitled to something like 4.75 or 4.8 seats. They'll probably have to make another Halifax based seat with a bit of rural NS tacked on (as opposed to making four Halifax seats and tacking the remainder onto various rural ridings like they did the last two times.) It's probably going to look awkward as hell.

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward. Why not extend the Cape Breton riding west to New Glasgow, add Musquodoboit Valley to the Cumberland-Colechester riding and have a Cole Harbour/Eastern Shore based riding?

How would you split Pictou County? All those little towns near New Glasgow all blend together to form one small metro area... and that's the bulk of the county's population. Splitting them wouldn't go over well.

[Njall]

Okay, I have some comments/suggestions for Alberta in no particular order:

• A possible name, while long, for Calgary North could be Calgary--Symons Valley--Northern Hills. For the time being at least, that name would geographically describe the whole of the populated areas there, which is very rare for a Calgary riding
• The portions of the Downtown East Village and Victoria Park should really be in Calgary Centre, not Calgary Shepard. It would also be ideal to put Inglewood and Ramsay into Calgary Centre, but not absolutely necessary if the population numbers don't allow for it.
• I'd recommend maintaining the current southern boundary of Calgary Forest Lawn (26 Ave to the CN Rail track, then 17 Ave to the city boundary) instead of going along 17 Ave for the entire distance. Putting the boundary where the proposal does would mean that the namesake area of the riding, Fort Lawn, would be split between two ridings.
• If you need to boost the population of Calgary Shepard to make the above changes, I would move the community of Kingsland from Calgary Heritage to Calgary Shepard. If this is done, I might also move the community of Millrise to Calgary Heritage from Calgary Midnapore, as there's more new residential development planned for Midnapore than Heritage.
• I would call the Airdrie riding Airdrie--Chestermere instead.
• While it would be a challenge to accomodate, Beaumont and the surrounding area would be a much better fit in the Wetaskiwin-Leduc riding, as it interacts more with the communities in Leduc County than with those in Parkland County
• The boundary between Edmonton West and Edmonton Riverbend would make more sense if it followed the river the whole way instead of temporarily deviating inland
• It's not ideal to have the inner core of Edmonton split between two ridings, but I'm unsure what the best way to fix that would be. With the current proposed boundaries, I would suggest that Edmonton Centre isn't the best riding name given its new inner-west side positioning. A more fitting name could be Edmonton Jasper Place.
  

[Hatman 🍁]

Going back to Ontario; I think one recommendation I would make is moving all of the rural parts of Nepean and adding it to Carleton. This both balances population and COI better.

[Krago]

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward.

This makes me wonder how the committee will actually address this after the 2021 census. Southern mainland NS will be fine as is, but Cape Breton/northern mainland already didn't have the population to justify their seats in 2016 census and Halifax will probably be entitled to something like 4.75 or 4.8 seats. They'll probably have to make another Halifax based seat with a bit of rural NS tacked on (as opposed to making four Halifax seats and tacking the remainder onto various rural ridings like they did the last two times.) It's probably going to look awkward as hell.

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward. Why not extend the Cape Breton riding west to New Glasgow, add Musquodoboit Valley to the Cumberland-Colechester riding and have a Cole Harbour/Eastern Shore based riding?

How would you split Pictou County? All those little towns near New Glasgow all blend together to form one small metro area... and that's the bulk of the county's population. Splitting them wouldn't go over well.

Here are the seat entitlements for each Nova Scotia county.  If an area has 87,200 people (2021 Projection), then it would be 'entitled' to have one Member of Parliament.

1.10 - Cape Breton
0.08 - Victoria
0.19 - Inverness
0.10 - Richmond
0.08 - Guysborough
0.22 - Antigonish
0.50 - Pictou
0.34 - Cumberland
0.59 - Colchester
5.09 - Halifax
0.49 - Hants
0.70 - Kings
0.24 - Annapolis
0.19 - Digby
0.27 - Yarmouth
0.15 - Shelburne
0.12 - Queens
0.54 - Lunenburg


And here's the breakdown by current FED.  Since none of the eleven Nova Scotia ridings are outside the 25% threshold, you could get away with the status quo.

0.81 - Sydney--Victoria
0.80 - Cape Breton--Canso
0.84 - Central Nova
0.92 - Cumberland--Colchester
1.16 - Dartmouth--Cole Harbour
1.09 - Sackville--Preston--Chezzetcook
1.22 - Halifax West
1.20 - Halifax
0.96 - Kings--Hants
0.93 - West Nova
1.07 - South Shore--St. Margarets

[Krago]

Okay, I have some comments/suggestions for Alberta in no particular order:

• I'd recommend maintaining the current southern boundary of Calgary Forest Lawn (26 Ave to the CN Rail track, then 17 Ave to the city boundary) instead of going along 17 Ave for the entire distance. Putting the boundary where the proposal does would mean that the namesake area of the riding, Fort Lawn, would be split between two ridings.

If I needed to swap an area from Forest Lawn to Shepard to balance the populations, would you recommend Mayland Heights or Applewood Park?

[Hatman 🍁]

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward.

This makes me wonder how the committee will actually address this after the 2021 census. Southern mainland NS will be fine as is, but Cape Breton/northern mainland already didn't have the population to justify their seats in 2016 census and Halifax will probably be entitled to something like 4.75 or 4.8 seats. They'll probably have to make another Halifax based seat with a bit of rural NS tacked on (as opposed to making four Halifax seats and tacking the remainder onto various rural ridings like they did the last two times.) It's probably going to look awkward as hell.

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward. Why not extend the Cape Breton riding west to New Glasgow, add Musquodoboit Valley to the Cumberland-Colechester riding and have a Cole Harbour/Eastern Shore based riding?

How would you split Pictou County? All those little towns near New Glasgow all blend together to form one small metro area... and that's the bulk of the county's population. Splitting them wouldn't go over well.

Here are the seat entitlements for each Nova Scotia county.  If an area has 87,200 people (2021 Projection), then it would be 'entitled' to have one Member of Parliament.

1.10 - Cape Breton
0.08 - Victoria
0.19 - Inverness
0.10 - Richmond
0.08 - Guysborough
0.22 - Antigonish
0.50 - Pictou
0.34 - Cumberland
0.59 - Colchester
5.09 - Halifax
0.49 - Hants
0.70 - Kings
0.24 - Annapolis
0.19 - Digby
0.27 - Yarmouth
0.15 - Shelburne
0.12 - Queens
0.54 - Lunenburg


And here's the breakdown by current FED.  Since none of the eleven Nova Scotia ridings are outside the 25% threshold, you could get away with the status quo.

0.81 - Sydney--Victoria
0.80 - Cape Breton--Canso
0.84 - Central Nova
0.92 - Cumberland--Colchester
1.16 - Dartmouth--Cole Harbour
1.09 - Sackville--Preston--Chezzetcook
1.22 - Halifax West
1.20 - Halifax
0.96 - Kings--Hants
0.93 - West Nova
1.07 - South Shore--St. Margarets

What if we ignored Cape Breton, rejigged Halifax (add more of the Eastern Shore/Chezzatcook to Central Nova, move some of Darmouth to Sackville, add some Halifax suburbs to the South Shore) and moved Shelburne County to West Nova? Is there a big COI difference between West Nova and the South Shore (fancophones?). Parts of Shelburne were lumped with Yarmouth prior to the 1970s, but that boundary has held firm ever since.

[DC Al Fine]

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward.

This makes me wonder how the committee will actually address this after the 2021 census. Southern mainland NS will be fine as is, but Cape Breton/northern mainland already didn't have the population to justify their seats in 2016 census and Halifax will probably be entitled to something like 4.75 or 4.8 seats. They'll probably have to make another Halifax based seat with a bit of rural NS tacked on (as opposed to making four Halifax seats and tacking the remainder onto various rural ridings like they did the last two times.) It's probably going to look awkward as hell.

DC is right, the Truro-Cole Harbour riding is awkward. Why not extend the Cape Breton riding west to New Glasgow, add Musquodoboit Valley to the Cumberland-Colechester riding and have a Cole Harbour/Eastern Shore based riding?

How would you split Pictou County? All those little towns near New Glasgow all blend together to form one small metro area... and that's the bulk of the county's population. Splitting them wouldn't go over well.

Here are the seat entitlements for each Nova Scotia county.  If an area has 87,200 people (2021 Projection), then it would be 'entitled' to have one Member of Parliament.

1.10 - Cape Breton
0.08 - Victoria
0.19 - Inverness
0.10 - Richmond
0.08 - Guysborough
0.22 - Antigonish
0.50 - Pictou
0.34 - Cumberland
0.59 - Colchester
5.09 - Halifax
0.49 - Hants
0.70 - Kings
0.24 - Annapolis
0.19 - Digby
0.27 - Yarmouth
0.15 - Shelburne
0.12 - Queens
0.54 - Lunenburg


And here's the breakdown by current FED.  Since none of the eleven Nova Scotia ridings are outside the 25% threshold, you could get away with the status quo.

0.81 - Sydney--Victoria
0.80 - Cape Breton--Canso
0.84 - Central Nova
0.92 - Cumberland--Colchester
1.16 - Dartmouth--Cole Harbour
1.09 - Sackville--Preston--Chezzetcook
1.22 - Halifax West
1.20 - Halifax
0.96 - Kings--Hants
0.93 - West Nova
1.07 - South Shore--St. Margarets

What if we ignored Cape Breton, rejigged Halifax (add more of the Eastern Shore/Chezzatcook to Central Nova, move some of Darmouth to Sackville, add some Halifax suburbs to the South Shore) and moved Shelburne County to West Nova? Is there a big COI difference between West Nova and the South Shore (fancophones?). Parts of Shelburne were lumped with Yarmouth prior to the 1970s, but that boundary has held firm ever since.

Nah, Shelburne County is only 1% Franco. I think the only reason Shelburne and Yarmouth they were kept apart (Yarmouth is part of the South Shore) was to make West Nova work. You might run into a COI issue sticking parts of Dartmouth in with Sackville, but it might be necessary. Halifax is too big for four ridings but too small for five so it makes drawing the map a touch awkward.

[DC Al Fine]

And here's the breakdown by current FED.  Since none of the eleven Nova Scotia ridings are outside the 25% threshold, you could get away with the status quo.

0.81 - Sydney--Victoria
0.80 - Cape Breton--Canso
0.84 - Central Nova
0.92 - Cumberland--Colchester
1.16 - Dartmouth--Cole Harbour
1.09 - Sackville--Preston--Chezzetcook
1.22 - Halifax West
1.20 - Halifax
0.96 - Kings--Hants
0.93 - West Nova
1.07 - South Shore--St. Margarets

That's an irritating underrepresentation. I get sometimes you need to make ridings bigger or smaller, but the way things are currently drawn, the entire Halifax area is systematically underrrepresented in order to pad Cape Breton and the North Shore.

Halifax+ Halifax West = 2.42 entitlement with 2 MP's
Sydney--Victoria + Cape Breton--Canso + Central Nova = 2.45 entitlement with 3 MP's

[Hatman 🍁]

Since we're turning this into a redistricting thread:

I just came back from a trip to Vancouver, so I thought I'd take a stab at a 10 ward map of the city. (currently they have an antiquated plurality-at-large voting system)



All wards are within 10% of the average. Unfortunately, my computer crashed and I lost the spreadsheet. In hindsight, I would've changed the boundary between Kensington and Langara a bit.

[Krago]

I've updated my map with 21 alternative federal ridings in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as well as several changes in Alberta.

https://goo.gl/6UMkjz


For NB and NS, all alternative seats are within 10% of the provincial average.  Saint John is put back together, and the Fish-and-Chips seat (Carleton-Charlotte) has returned.  I also put 5 ridings entirely within Halifax (City?) (County?) (Metro?), and let the dominoes fall along the shoreline.

For Alberta, there are three new riding names (Airdrie-Chestermere, Calgary Northern Hills, Edmonton Jasper Place).  I also moved around a few Calgary communities to give Calgary Centre and Calgary Forest Lawn better boundaries.

[Hatman 🍁]

I don't hate the changes, but why are you so averse to triple barrelled names? Some of these ridings would need them to keep everyone happy.

[Njall]

Okay, I have some comments/suggestions for Alberta in no particular order:

• I'd recommend maintaining the current southern boundary of Calgary Forest Lawn (26 Ave to the CN Rail track, then 17 Ave to the city boundary) instead of going along 17 Ave for the entire distance. Putting the boundary where the proposal does would mean that the namesake area of the riding, Fort Lawn, would be split between two ridings.

If I needed to swap an area from Forest Lawn to Shepard to balance the populations, would you recommend Mayland Heights or Applewood Park?

Shoot just saw this. I would have recommended Mayland Heights, which it looks like you picked anyways. The result's not aesthetically-pleasing, but Applewood Park's a better fit with the Forest Lawn district than Mayland Heights.

[DC Al Fine]

For NB and NS, all alternative seats are within 10% of the provincial average.  Saint John is put back together, and the Fish-and-Chips seat (Carleton-Charlotte) has returned.  I also put 5 ridings entirely within Halifax (City?) (County?) (Metro?), and let the dominoes fall along the shoreline.

Regional Municipality unfortunately.

[Krago]

An alternative Alberta map is up.

- Vegreville is back in Lakeland
- Devon and Beaumont are in a riding with Leduc
- Edmonton now has two rurban seats

P.S. And yes, I added the national park to Edmonton--Elk Island, just so that I wouldn't have to call it Edmonton--Cooking Lake

[Hatman 🍁]

Edmonton-Elk Island is very messy. If you're going to have a riding go across Edmonton city limits, it should have St. Albert or Sherwood Park in it, I think.

[Njall]

Edmonton-Elk Island is very messy. If you're going to have a riding go across Edmonton city limits, it should have St. Albert or Sherwood Park in it, I think.

I'd agree with that. Fort Saskatchewan and Beaumont could also work in combined ridings with Edmonton. St. Albert would probably be the best fit for a blended riding though, in part because the population of St. Albert is around half of a federal riding's population in Alberta, so the Edmonton and St. Albert parts would more-or-less balance each other out (whereas Beaumont or Fort Saskatchewan would be outweighed by the part of Edmonton, and Sherwood Park (if wholly contained in a blended riding) would be the dominant part).

[Krago]

What would you say to a St. Albert--Fort Saskatchewan riding?

https://goo.gl/6UMkjz


This should please Hatman--Sunshine Coast--Sea-to-Sky Country.

All the ridings are within the 5% threshold, and I love the name Sherwood Park-Evergreen (Evergreen is a 'manufactured home community' i.e. trailer park).

[Njall]

What would you say to a St. Albert--Fort Saskatchewan riding?

https://goo.gl/6UMkjz


This should please Hatman--Sunshine Coast--Sea-to-Sky Country.

All the ridings are within the 5% threshold, and I love the name Sherwood Park-Evergreen (Evergreen is a 'manufactured home community' i.e. trailer park).

Fort Sask is a more natural fit with Strathcona County, but it also works with St. Albert. I like the looks of those ridings tbh.

[Hatman 🍁]

Parkland-Redwater is now the weird riding

[DC Al Fine]

I have news from out east...

You may recall that Nova Scotia used to have four undersized ridings drawn to increase minority representation, three for Acadians and one for blacks. The previous NDP government instructed the last boundaries commission to draw the map. Well, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court eventually struck down that map last year. Premier McNeil finally appointed a new commission which began doing public consultations this weekend.

The commission has already proposed a draft map. (PDF warning)

Key changes include:

1) Reinstating the old special ridings (Argyle, Clare, Preston, & Richmond, which merit about 2.25 seats between them)

2) Adding a new Acadian seat; Cheticamp (francophone area in northern Inverness county), which merits a whopping .19 of a seat.

3) Dividing Bedford (my seat ) into two seats

4) Cole Harbour/Eastern Passage get three ridings instead of two.

Also of note, the terms of the commission allow for seats to be non-contiguous. The commission is considering including Cheticamp in Richmond, which is on the other side of Cape Breton and a two hour drive away. Halifax & Kings-Hants are probably underrepresented by a seat or two, because even non special seats are allowed to vary +-25% from the population/# of ridings.

Earl, Krago, Njall what are your thoughts?

[Hatman 🍁]

Ugh. What a mess. At least they're adding seats, which is refreshing considering what's going on here.

What's the justification of having the Guysborough seat under the 25% allowance? All they gotta do is move the western boundary a bit.

[Krago]

Here was my attempt (from Page 1) to make Nova Scotia's electoral map pass constitutional muster in time for the 2017 provincial election.

https://goo.gl/Eg0c6g

- the four protected ridings (Argyle, Clare, Preston, Richmond) would return to their previous boundaries

- two seats would be added to the Nova Scotia legislature:

    - the two ridings in SW NS (Clare-Digby, Annapolis) would be split into three (Clare, Digby-Annapolis West, Annapolis East)

    - the three ridings in SE NS (Argyle-Barrington, Queens-Shelburne, Lunenburg West) would be split into four (Argyle, Shelburne-Barrington, Queens-Lunenburg West, Lunenburg Centre) - to match the new names, Lunenburg riding would be renamed Lunenburg East

- there would be several changes to other districts, to make sure all the remaining ridings are within plus or minus 25% of the new provincial quotient (13,573, using the electors from the 2013 provincial election)


I will have to get a dataset of the 2018 electors to revise my map.  Any guesses if the Commission will provide it?

[DC Al Fine]

Ugh. What a mess. At least they're adding seats, which is refreshing considering what's going on here.

Anything specific about it that you dislike?

From a local's POV I can see a lot of community of interest issues, but I don't know a lot about map making per se. Also I can kind of buy having somewhat smaller seats to represent minorities, but Cheticamp is a rotten borough straight out of the 18th century... If they had made a Cheticamp seat last time, my riding would be nearly nine times the population right now!

What's the justification of having the Guysborough seat under the 25% allowance? All they gotta do is move the western boundary a bit.

Honestly, I think they just got lazy. Looking at the map, most of the borders are identical to either the 2013 map or the 2003 one in areas where they brought back the old special ridings.

Here was my attempt (from Page 1) to make Nova Scotia's electoral map pass constitutional muster in time for the 2017 provincial election.

https://goo.gl/Eg0c6g

- the four protected ridings (Argyle, Clare, Preston, Richmond) would return to their previous boundaries

- two seats would be added to the Nova Scotia legislature:

    - the two ridings in SW NS (Clare-Digby, Annapolis) would be split into three (Clare, Digby-Annapolis West, Annapolis East)

    - the three ridings in SE NS (Argyle-Barrington, Queens-Shelburne, Lunenburg West) would be split into four (Argyle, Shelburne-Barrington, Queens-Lunenburg West, Lunenburg Centre) - to match the new names, Lunenburg riding would be renamed Lunenburg East

- there would be several changes to other districts, to make sure all the remaining ridings are within plus or minus 25% of the new provincial quotient (13,573, using the electors from the 2013 provincial election)


I will have to get a dataset of the 2018 electors to revise my map.  Any guesses if the Commission will provide it?

Maybe? Elections NS is notoriously slow with that sort of thing.

As for revisions, you could probably guesstimate based of the 2016 census and local knowledge. For example, Halifax West has grown the most of any federal riding in NS and most of that growth has been around the intersection of the current Bedford, Hammonds Plains and Clayton Park West seats.