Thursday, April 21, 2011

The problem the NDP will have soon

The NDP could lose a lot of support in the west if they are seen to be to nice to Quebec nationalists.  

Just to highlighting one issue, the seats in the house of commons.   The NDP has said Quebec should always have 1/4 of the seats, this means if BC, Alberta and Ontario get the seats they deserve, Quebec would get more seats as well.

It will hard for a BC NDP MP to defend this province having less representation in Ottawa than it should have.  How do you tell people in BC that because they are in this province that they should not get their fair share of MPs?

As it stands, BC should have about 42 MPs and Alberta 35 MPs.  In any case, BC and Alberta should have more MPs than Quebec.   We are about 13 MPs short.

As long as BC does not have representation that reflects the population of the province, the issues of BC will not get the prominence they should have in Ottawa.   Every candidate for every party in BC should be demanding BC immediately get six more MPs and then demand the national formula for how it is decided how MPs each province gets is reformed to that we have equity across the nation.

The NDP was kicked in the nuts in 1993 in BC because the NDP supported entrenching political inequity.   17 of 19 seats were lost in 1993, including Vancouver East, the most left wing riding in Canada.   Nelson Riis and Svend Robinson survived because of personal popularity, but even then they came closer to defeat than was expected.

Being too close to Quebec and not being willing to speak up for the issues of BC will lead to a loss of seats in future elections.   I could even have an impact this time, though the timing is a bit late for that to happen.

1 comment:

Ian said...

Where is this in their platform? If anything, their support for PR will help the west, especially Western Progressive.