CNN.com has a good, concise overview of the upcoming Scottish vote: http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/09/world/europe/scottish-referendum-explainer/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
Quebec does get some special consideration though. Guaranteed representation in the Supreme court and in the Parliament regardless of population shift. They also have more control over immigration.
The representation on the Supreme Court (3 out of 9 justices) is to ensure that on cases from Quebec dealing with the Civil Code, the Court can set a panel of 5 (the minimum quorum) and have a majority of civil law judges on the panel.
All provinces are guaranteed a certain level of membership in the Commons regardless of population: see s. 51(1), rule 2, and s. 51A of the Constitution Act, 1867. The province that benefits the most from these rules is PEI, which is guaranteed 4 Commons seats, regardless of its population.
All provinces have constitutional authority over immigration: see s. 95 of the Constitution Act, 1867. Quebec has chosen to exercise this power more extensively than the other provinces have done.
Something to consider is that there is currently a significant emigration of young Scots. Them staying would go a long way to alleviating the immigration issue.
With respect to seats in the Canadian House of Commons, the wiki article has a helpful table.
It’s sortable, so if you click on the final column to the right, “Electoral Quotient - Average Population per Electoral District”, it will sort from low to high. All three territories, and seven of the provinces, including Quebec, have electoral quotients below the national electoral quotient, and thus are arguably over-represented in the Commons. B.C., Ontario and Alberta have electoral quotients over the national average, and thus are arguably under-represented.
Of the over-represented provinces, PEI is the most over-represented, with an electoral quotient of 33,963, instead of the provincial average of 103,317. The next six provinces, in ascending order, are Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
Thus, of the seven over-represented provinces, Quebec is closest to the the provincial average, with a quotient of 100,615 instead of 103,317. That is much closer to the provincial average than the other six over-represented provinces.
I don’t know what it is exactly that you’re trying to argue. All provinces have basically the same formal Constitutional rights, sure. The fact that Quebec is the only one that – again and again – chooses to exercise certain of those rights, or chooses to exercise them to a particularly extreme extent, is precisely my point. Moreover, all provinces, just like all individuals, have the implicit right to do anything that isn’t expressly prohibited, such as acting like assholes; in the case of a province, this might involve establishing a lunatic political party whose sole purpose is separation and threatening the federal government and the rest of the country with it. Again, Quebec is the only province that has done this.
The point I was making in what was intended to be a one-post side comment pertinent to this thread is that no amount of decentralization or pandering is necessarily going to change aspirations to sovereignty if such aspirations are cultural or emotional or otherwise not rationally grounded.
As the author of that original side comment, I have no wish to further disrupt this thread so may I kindly suggest that if you want to further debate the Quebec issue that you start a separate thread on it.
In my first post, I was agreeing with you and RickJay that a decentralised government is no guarantee against nationalistic fervour, as shown by the sovereigntist movement in Quebec over the past forty years. I was, however, disagreeing with some of your characterisations of Quebec’s conduct. It also seemed to me that you were suggesting that Quebec had special powers. If I misunderstood you on that, no harm, no foul.
My second set of posts were not responding to you at all, but to CarnalK, who was clearly suggesting that Quebec had special powers, or privileges, such as with respect to immigration or representation in the Commons.
Not to make too much of a hijack but I think you downplay the advantages of quebec in the House. As you note, they are arguably overrepresented yet they are still getting 4 more seats in the coming adjustment to the number of seats in Parliament - because they are simply guaranteed 4 new ones with every reallocation. Also, until 1985 the whole allocation process was based on Quebec’s population.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/quebec/
Also, it seems that the feds, at least, think Quebec has a “special agreement” regarding immigration but I admit that I guess other provinces could also put something like that in place
There is a great deal of talk in the UK about the Canadian experience with Quebec and what lessons can be learnt.
It sounded like a close run thing.
Constant calls for another referendum - a ‘neverendum’ does not sound much to look forward to. The whole idea of the referendum was to settle the issue once and for all.
We are probably done with it for a while now. Quebec’s separatist federal party collapsed in the last election. I would like to think that Scotland will be sensible enough to not keep bringing it up like Quebec has.
The last statement strikes me as being a weird non-sequitur; if you’re deciding how many MPs every province should get, picking one of the big provinces, giving them a bunch of MPs, and saying “everyone else is proportional to that” actually makes sense and is in no way unfairly biased towards the benchmark province.
But Quebec simply does not have any significant advantage in the House, and has not has an advantage of any significance in decades, if ever. Their population and representation are very, very close. The coming adjustment will LOWER their relative representation, because while Quebec gets 4 more seats, the rest of Canada is adding 26; Quebec’s percentage will go down.
As it should, but not down by as much as if they weren’t guaranteed an extra 4 seats. I am not some Quebec basher. I think it’s not bad to remember that they are really half of the foundation of Canada. Just pointing out they are indeed getting special consideration here.
I have been somewhat supportive of Scotland voting Yes but a tad apprehensive too but until this week I didn’t think it was a likely occurrence. It might just be the Twitter echo chamber or the Scottish circles I move in but it seems like Yes is on the cards. It hadn’t hitherto.
Whichever way they vote, and I hope they get out and vote, it probably won’t matter all that much in 50 years time.
Immigration could help to address the problem - but to make a serious shift in the tax base would take unprecedented levels of immigration. It’s not clear that Scots would actually accept that.
It’s true everyone has to address this problem - but the UK’s big advantage is the low rates it can borrow at. With the SNP already promising to cut corporation tax it’s not clear that the trade-offs will be very different.
The IFS model is here. It uses OBR forecasts of oil up to 2017 and assumes revenues will be a steady share of GDP thereafter. (c.7% I think) I think that’s fair enough - it’s unlikely that the share will change radically. However, they provide a range of different scenarios - see chapter 3. Using the Scottish Government’s most optimistic scenario, the deficit hits 10% by 2050 instead of 2046. Debt hits 200% of GDP by 2062 instead of 2056. High migration makes a bigger difference: Deficit is 10% by 2056 and debt is only c.160% of GDP by 2062.
Even combining these factors to make the most optimistic scenario still leaves Scotland’s deficit and debt rising steadily over the next 50 years.
I think a Yes is absolutely on the cards now - Yes has a much better grassroots campaign set up which will always make a difference; Better Together is beginning to look panicky and shambolic; most importantly, the total absence of a positive case for Union in the debate has left a big hole.
Add to that the fact that people are more likely to vote Yes if Yes looks like winning (you might not bother if the polls said 30%, but at 50% every vote counts; also, no-one wants to be on the losing side) and there’s the potential for a major historical event on the cards.
There’s significant emigration because there are comparatively few highly skilled jobs in Scotland compared to elsewhere in the UK, notably the South East. Both my wife and I left Scotland for the South East because we could not find jobs in our respective lines of work, and that does not look like it will change any time soon, as the rest of the UK has some pretty major advantages (the sheer size of London, entrenched clusters of high-tech jobs in the various technology corridors around England, the fact that UK manufacturers are now undercutting Eastern and Southern Europe on price, Scotland’s relative geographical isolation compared to England’s proximity to the major players on the Continent, a concerted programme by the Tories to slash corporation tax, and so on). To reverse the trend, you have to first bolster the number of highly skilled jobs, which doesn’t look particularly easy.
How can you say that when all those polls indicate a significant number of ‘don’t knows’.
A lot of people really don’t know what to decide and for those that have made their mind up, the arguments are dividing friends and families. Peoples opinions also swing from one side to the other.
The public are quite unused to making decisions in this way. People are used to regular elections that do not have the profound implications that this vote has. I suspect many will find it exhausting and divisive and the finger pointing will go on for years afterwards. This is a lot of responsibility to put on the shoulders of the Scottish voters.
I can understand why the Canadians did not want to go through it again. Sadly referendums seem to be seen as the answer to political deadlock.
Given the policy of no nukes, no nuclear power stations and the uncertain future of building warships in Scotland, a lot more precision engineering skills are likely to go.
That was my earlier point: all of the provinces have jurisdiction over immigration. Quebec, unlike the others, has chosen to use that power, and has reached an agreement with the federal government on it. That doesn’t mean that Quebec has some special status with respect to immigration, just that it is using a provincial power that the other provinces have chosen not to.