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Comment by casmclas | Hacker News Reader

I think comments here seem to be missing the point, which isn't so much that Nunavut is geographically huge, but that Canada doesn't seem to have anything like the principle of one person one vote. There's huge disparity between the electors or people per district figures - 1:8. That's some epic malapportionment.

Is there any kind of movement in Canada to introduce democracy? Americans regularly complain about their undemocratic constitution, giving equal say to sheep in the middle of nowhere and humans in New York. The UK has a few problematic cases, but they're easily removed and maintained because they want to maintain them.

But Canada's excuse is that they can't change their constitution — indeed, they continue to use the UK parliament to change what ought to be part of their constitution, that's how cowardly they are. Why is Canada considered so much a centre of democracy when all the evidence is against that notion?

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> excuse ... that's how cowardly they are

We ban accounts that post nationalistic slurs, regardless of which nation they have an issue with. Please don't post like this to HN again.

Also, the comment is factually wrong. But we don't ban people for that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The territories each get their own riding for a few legitimate reasons: one, it would be messy to have a rising cross territorial/provincial borders. Two, the north already gets ignored by southern politicians all the time: they have been suffering from food security issues for decades, for example. Three, the "territories" are a large geographic extent mostly comprised of tiny communities of a few hundred to a few thousand people each separated by hundreds of kilometers. If the entire territories were a single riding, the MP for that riding would have a tough time making herself available in person for all her constituents (they have a tough enough time of this already).

Canada hasn't had to use the UK for constitutional amendments since the passage of the Constitution Act in 1982. There is proscribed amendment formula now: the resolution must pass the Commons, the Senate, and be ratified by the provincial legislatures of at least 2/3rds of the provinces comprising at least 50% of the population.

Yup. Ive never heard a canadian reference any need to ask the UK for permission to do anything. Such remarks always come from outsiders who have spent too much time on wikipedia reading about how the Queen "owns" canada. Realworld is never so simple.

From Wikipedia:

> Seats in the House of Commons are distributed roughly in proportion to the population of each province and territory. However, some ridings are more populous than others, and the Canadian constitution contains provisions regarding provincial representation. As a result, there is some interprovincial and regional malapportionment relative to population.

In other words, because of a low population, Nunavut has fewer ridings†, but each MP from such a riding has more relative power than they “should” have, which kinda sorta balances out the problems that this causes.

† And the reason Canada went with apportioning Nunavut fewer ridings, is that it’s nearly impractical to expect a sparse population of 30k people to support even one full set of competing MP candidates with their own election campaigns, let alone several such sets operating concurrently. Better that they just elect one person, and that person hold all the electoral power owed to the province.

>they continue to use the UK parliament to change what ought to be part of their constitution, that's how cowardly they are

What? That hasn't been true since 1982.

There's a case to be made that Canada's democratic institutions could be improved. The two that come to mind are the appointed Senate and the use of first-past-the-post voting.

In my experience, no Canadians feel that Nunavut (or any of the other special cases) has too much power relative to its population.

And, as others have said, Canada's constitution was repatriated in 1982.

Why do you think Canada is undemocratic? Do you really think that Nunavut's riding should be larger, so that the number of people per district are more even? I think that would be even less democratic, because suddenly Nunavut gets even less representation, and I don't think they get enough as it is.

Geography matters.

You might argue that a political system that takes into account geography is fairer or better in some other way, but it’s not more democratic. Democracy literally means rule by people, not acres (or hectares in this case).

Doing everything by straight up majority rule leads to minority groups whose views can never get heard breaking away from the majority. Most of those so called empty areas, while not highly populated, do actually have some population and the land they're living on often has greater strategic value than the same amount of land located in areas of higher population. Compromises are designed to keep the country together because the sum is much greater than the parts.

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