The fundamental problem is you can’t have less than one seat, so as long as the territories and PEI exist, there’s always going to be some bias, but it’s not nearly the same degree of bias as in the US. As such, it’s far harder for a coalition of small population provinces to grid-lock the government, as compared to grid-locking the US government.
Yeah, exactly. And that’s why I said it isn’t 100% perfect, but a pretty decent compromise. We’re reasonably close to a 1 vote = 1 “point” of political power overall across the country as a whole. When was the last time anybody campaigned HARD for those territory seats and their disproportionate electoral power? 
I don’t know, but I would hazard never.
I think the only way to get even closer would be to have like 3,000ish seats. And that raises a whole other set of problems.
Well, national proportional representation (or mixed member) would as well, but that ain’t gonna happen. Neither is ranked voting (my preference). The party that wins under FPTP is never going to get rid of FPTP. It was, and remains, my biggest disappointment in the Trudeau tenure as PM.
Plus, even if you were to try to mess things up in some kind of coalition, who would make up that coalition?
Here are the provincial breakdowns of seats and population:
Playing with the numbers, the about 13 million people in Ontario get 121 seats, compared with the about 13 million people who live everywhere other than Ontario and Quebec, who get 139 seats. So, yeah, there’s an imbalance there. But could you imagine any issue that would get all those other provinces and territories to agree to gang up on Ontario? Alberta and Nova Scotia? Not likely! And BC is right out. And the Newfies who like Alberta have all already moved there! 
So gridlock is far less likely.
Do you think maybe your bias is the assumption that only one side can end a strike? Was it not possible for Toronto to make concessions that the employees could agree to and get back to work?
It seems to me that New Zealand has crafted an excellent compromise on these matters. You can vote for a candidate of one party for a particular seat, but you can cast a party vote for a different party to determine which party gets the most seats overall.
I noticed the fucker didn’t pull this shit with the nurses - but school cleaning staff and educational assistants. Much softer targets.
I expect nurses or teachers to be next.
Honestly, if I’m a member of any union I’d be pushing my leadership to walk out in support.
Just keep increasing the number of seats until it’s suitably proportional. I think the U.S. House of Representatives should have at least 1,000 seats.
I got an e-mail from my union this morning asking us to show up to the demonstrations in our area today, if we are able. They realize how bad a precedent this could set. We’re not actually walking out, not yet anyways, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens.
The Canadian House of Commons is relatively even though PEI and the Territories skew so much smaller
| Prov/Terr. | Ridings | Avg pop/riding | Median pop/riding | Pop. (1000s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ON | 121 | 117553 | 116908 | 14224 |
| QC | 78 | 108998 | 110569 | 8502 |
| BC | 42 | 119069 | 120532 | 5001 |
| AB | 34 | 125372 | 123333 | 4263 |
| MB | 14 | 95868 | 95159 | 1342 |
| SK | 14 | 80893 | 80696 | 1133 |
| NS | 11 | 88126 | 87744 | 969 |
| NB | 10 | 77561 | 79795 | 776 |
| NL | 7 | 72936 | 81544 | 511 |
| PE | 4 | 38583 | 39270 | 154 |
| NT | 1 | 41070 | 41070 | 41 |
| NU | 1 | 36858 | 36858 | 37 |
| YT | 1 | 40232 | 40232 | 40 |
| Canada | 338 | 109444 | 111742 | 36992 |
Did the nurses request an equally large percentage increase? To be honest, I wasn’t paying that close attention.
Nurses generally have more education and emergency nurses in particular are worth their salary. But I believe they were asking for increases commensurate with inflation, although I could be mistaken.
But cleaning staff and educational assistants can go fuck off and die?
This is not remotely what I said. I expressed sympathy and compassion with non-teaching school staff in above (and very recent, see four posts in this thread around 95-102) submissions, a desire for a settlement in good faith perhaps with arbitration, and disdain at the heavy handed methods being used by the government. I think your comment is unfair.
In particular, I think Covid showed the important and unheralded work done by, say, janitors and support staff.
My “bias”, such as it is (and this is in reference to the Toronto garbage strike of 2009, not the current situation) is mainly that CUPE behaved more like a criminal gang of thugs than a labour union. CUPE and CUPW, the union of postal employees, have always been among the most notorious of the generally vicious public service unions. There is absolutely zero regard for the public interest, or public safety. At one point the president of CUPW was arrested and jailed for blatantly defying back-to-work legislation. CUPW has been considerably tamed in recent years only because the postal service is no longer the critical infrastructure service that it used to be, so they’ve lost the ability to hold the public hostage to get their demands.
Anecdotally, since I got out of Toronto and into a smaller community that outsources its garbage and recycling to private operators, the service has been far superior, and with no strikes or any threats of a strike.
Sorry for the hijack about a different strike, but this just reminds me how much I hate CUPE. Those are also the same fuckers responsible for the strike at York University by contract professors and teaching assistants. At one time I was driving someone to classes there and heard on the radio that they had blockaded entrances to the university. Fortunately they were dispersed by the time we got there or I would have been sorely tempted to run the fuckers down. Yes, I’m exaggerating, but that was certainly my emotion.
I’m west of Yonge St., which has outsourced garbage collection. I can home to find that our large, wheeled recycling bin along with the neighbour’s was left in exactly the centre of the street. So much for that.
I found myself wondering how such a thing is even possible. The system we have here involves just a single driver, with a truck equipped with a lateral arm that reaches out to the curb, grabs the bin, brings it in and dumps it, and then pushes it back to the curb. It’s physically impossible to leave it in the middle of the street.
When I was still in Toronto, the bin system they used involved multiple workers – as I recall, a driver and two others, whose job was to manually bring the bins in from the curb to the back of the truck, where the automatic lift system did its thing. Is that what they’re still using in you area? If so, it’s probably intended to be compatible with the in-house system in the rest of the city, where CUPE would no doubt ensure the need for the maximum number of labourers and oppose any automation.
We have a one operator system. I suspect they could not get clearance due to the car, got out of the truck, moved the bin, got back in the truck, dumped the recycling, then left the bin on the road and didn’t bother moving it back.
Their timing is rather understandable when one considers the crushing inflation we’ve suffered in the last year. In effect, a person making $40,000 has seen their pay cut by the equivalent of $2500, a genuinely massive blow for a person at that income level. An offer of under two percent is an insult and a one time increase of 11-12 percent might actually be quite reasonable if they hadn’t gotten an increase at all in a few years. What else were they supposed to do? Eat sawdust?
I’d be far more inclined to seeing the government’s position if they’d started off making a reasonable offer.
This may be true, but perhaps the government worries about using inflation as a precedent given inevitable future negotiations with many groups. If so, arbitration occasionally results In both sides moderating proposals.