by Jason Scott
We propose to appoint the best finishers in the general election to a BMP Senate. After the 2015 election, a BMP Senate would have contained the following numbers of Senators, by affiliation (see Appendix A Table A-6):
The table below lists the individual candidates – the best finishers by province and affiliation – who would have been appointed to a BMP Senate in 2015:
Pr | Electoral District Name | Candidate | Votes Obtained | Percent of Vote | Party |
NL | Coast of Bays–Central–Notre Dame | Kevin George O’Brien | 6479 | 18.3 | CPC |
NL | Avalon | Jeannie Baldwin | 6075 | 14.4 | NDP |
NL | St. John’s East | Jack Harris ** | 20328 | 45.3 | NDP |
NL | St. John’s South–Mount Pearl | Ryan Cleary ** | 16467 | 36.8 | NDP |
PEI | Malpeque | Stephen Stewart | 3947 | 17.6 | CPC |
PEI | Egmont | Gail Shea ** | 6185 | 29 | CPC |
PEI | Charlottetown | Joe Byrne | 4897 | 23.1 | NDP |
NS | Central Nova | Fred DeLorey | 11418 | 25.8 | CPC |
NS | South Shore–St. Margarets | Richard Clark | 11905 | 22.6 | CPC |
NS | West Nova | Arnold LeBlanc | 11916 | 26.1 | CPC |
NS | Cumberland–Colchester | Scott Armstrong ** | 12257 | 26.5 | CPC |
NS | West Nova | Clark Walton | 1904 | 4.2 | GPC |
NS | Dartmouth–Cole Harbour | Robert Chisholm ** | 12757 | 24.4 | NDP |
NS | Halifax | Megan Leslie ** | 19162 | 36.1 | NDP |
NS | Sackville–Preston–Chezzetcook | Peter Stoffer ** | 16613 | 34.4 | NDP |
NB | Tobique–Mactaquac | Richard Bragdon | 14225 | 37 | CPC |
NB | Fundy Royal | Rob Moore ** | 17361 | 37.1 | CPC |
NB | Miramichi–Grand Lake | Tilly O’Neill-Gordon ** | 12476 | 34.3 | CPC |
NB | New Brunswick Southwest | John Williamson ** | 14625 | 38.6 | CPC |
NB | Saint John–Rothesay | Rodney Weston ** | 12915 | 30.5 | CPC |
NB | Fredericton | Mary Lou Babineau | 5804 | 12.4 | GPC |
NB | Acadie–Bathurst | Jason Godin | 20079 | 39.4 | NDP |
NB | Fundy Royal | Jennifer McKenzie | 8204 | 17.5 | NDP |
NB | Madawaska–Restigouche | Rosaire L’Italien | 9670 | 25.9 | NDP |
NB | Saint John–Rothesay | AJ Griffin | 7411 | 17.5 | NDP |
ON | King–Vaughan | Konstantin Toubis | 24170 | 44.2 | CPC |
ON | Oakville North–Burlington | Effie Triantafilopoulos | 26342 | 43.3 | CPC |
ON | Richmond Hill | Michael Parsa | 21275 | 43.3 | CPC |
ON | Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill | Costas Menegakis ** | 23039 | 45.2 | CPC |
ON | Burlington | Mike Wallace ** | 29780 | 42.5 | CPC |
ON | Eglinton–Lawrence | Joe Oliver ** | 23788 | 42.6 | CPC |
ON | Markham–Stouffville | Paul Calandra ** | 25565 | 42.8 | CPC |
ON | Newmarket–Aurora | Lois Brown ** | 24057 | 42.6 | CPC |
ON | Oakville | Terence Young ** | 27497 | 42.5 | CPC |
ON | Vaughan–Woodbridge | Julian Fantino ** | 20746 | 43.9 | CPC |
ON | York Centre | Mark Adler ** | 18893 | 44 | CPC |
ON | Dufferin–Caledon | Nancy Urekar | 4433 | 7.3 | GPC |
ON | Guelph | Gord Miller | 7909 | 11.3 | GPC |
ON | Thunder Bay–Superior North | Bruce Hyer ** | 6155 | 13.8 | GPC |
ON | Kenora | Howard Hampton | 10420 | 33.9 | NDP |
ON | Oshawa | Mary Fowler | 19339 | 31.9 | NDP |
ON | Sarnia–Lambton | Jason Wayne McMichael | 18102 | 31.1 | NDP |
ON | Toronto–Danforth | Craig Scott | 22325 | 40.2 | NDP |
ON | Davenport | Andrew Cash ** | 20506 | 41.4 | NDP |
ON | Hamilton East–Stoney Creek | Wayne Marston ** | 16465 | 32.7 | NDP |
ON | Niagara Centre | Malcolm Allen ** | 17218 | 31.5 | NDP |
ON | Nickel Belt | Claude Gravelle ** | 18556 | 37.8 | NDP |
ON | Ottawa Centre | Paul Dewar ** | 29098 | 38.5 | NDP |
ON | Parkdale–High Park | Peggy Nash ** | 23566 | 40.2 | NDP |
QC | Beloeil–Chambly | Yves Lessard | 18387 | 27.7 | BQ |
QC | Hochelaga | Simon Marchand | 14389 | 27.7 | BQ |
QC | Laurentides–Labelle | Johanne Régimbald | 18792 | 29.7 | BQ |
QC | Laurier–Sainte-Marie | Gilles Duceppe | 15699 | 28.7 | BQ |
QC | Longueuil–Charles-LeMoyne | Philippe Cloutier | 13974 | 27 | BQ |
QC | Longueuil–Saint-Hubert | Denis Trudel | 15873 | 27.3 | BQ |
QC | Montarville | Catherine Fournier | 16460 | 28.4 | BQ |
QC | Salaberry–Suroît | Claude DeBellefeuille | 17452 | 28.4 | BQ |
QC | Thérèse-De Blainville | Alain Marginean | 15238 | 27.1 | BQ |
QC | Louis-Hébert | Jean-Pierre Asselin | 16789 | 27.2 | CPC |
QC | Pierrefonds–Dollard | Valérie Assouline | 11694 | 20 | CPC |
QC | Québec | Pierre-Thomas Asselin | 11737 | 21.8 | CPC |
QC | Mount Royal | Robert Libman ** | 18201 | 37.9 | CPC |
QC | Pierre-Boucher–Les Patriotes–Verchères | JiCi Lauzon | 5056 | 8.5 | GPC |
QC | Ville-Marie–Le Sud-Ouest–Île-des-Soeurs | Daniel Green | 2398 | 4.8 | GPC |
QC | Saint-Jean | Hans Marotte | 17555 | 29.1 | NDP |
QC | Ahuntsic-Cartierville | Maria Mourani ** | 16684 | 30 | NDP |
QC | Chicoutimi–Le Fjord | Dany Morin ** | 13019 | 29.7 | NDP |
QC | Gaspésie–Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine | Philip Toone ** | 12885 | 32.5 | NDP |
QC | Hull–Aylmer | Nycole Turmel ** | 17472 | 31.5 | NDP |
QC | LaSalle–Émard–Verdun | Hélène LeBlanc ** | 15566 | 29 | NDP |
QC | Mirabel | Mylène Freeman ** | 17873 | 30.1 | NDP |
QC | Rivière-des-Mille-Îles | Laurin Liu ** | 17111 | 29.5 | NDP |
QC | Rivière-du-Nord | Pierre Dionne Labelle ** | 17077 | 30.1 | NDP |
MB | Kildonan–St. Paul | Jim Bell | 17478 | 39.8 | CPC |
MB | Charleswood–St. James–Assiniboia–Headingley | Steven Fletcher ** | 18408 | 39 | CPC |
MB | Brandon–Souris | David Neufeld | 2526 | 6.1 | GPC |
MB | Brandon–Souris | Jodi Wyman | 15338 | 37.3 | LPC |
MB | Churchill–Keewatinook Aski | Rebecca Chartrand | 12575 | 42 | LPC |
MB | Winnipeg Centre | Pat Martin ** | 9490 | 28 | NDP |
SK | Desnethé–Missinippi–Churchill River | Lawrence Joseph | 10237 | 33.9 | LPC |
SK | Regina–Lewvan | Louis Browne | 13143 | 27.5 | LPC |
SK | Saskatoon–Grasswood | Tracy Muggli | 12165 | 26.4 | LPC |
SK | Saskatoon–University | Cynthia Marie Block | 11287 | 25.2 | LPC |
SK | Regina–Qu’Appelle | Nial Kuyek | 11144 | 30.2 | NDP |
SK | Saskatoon–University | Claire Card | 14115 | 31.5 | NDP |
AB | Banff–Airdrie | Mike MacDonald | 2509 | 3.8 | GPC |
AB | Calgary Confederation | Matt Grant | 29083 | 43.5 | LPC |
AB | Calgary Forest Lawn | Cam Stewart | 14762 | 36 | LPC |
AB | Edmonton West | Karen Leibovici | 18649 | 34.9 | LPC |
AB | Edmonton Centre | Gil McGowan | 13084 | 24.5 | NDP |
AB | Edmonton Griesbach | Janis Irwin | 16309 | 34 | NDP |
BC | Mission–Matsqui–Fraser Canyon | Brad Vis | 15587 | 34.9 | CPC |
BC | Steveston–Richmond East | Kenny Chiu | 16630 | 38.5 | CPC |
BC | Kelowna–Lake Country | Ron Cannan ** | 25502 | 39.8 | CPC |
BC | Kootenay–Columbia | David Wilks ** | 23247 | 36.8 | CPC |
BC | Esquimalt–Saanich–Sooke | Frances Litman | 13575 | 19.9 | GPC |
BC | Victoria | Jo-Ann Roberts | 23666 | 32.9 | GPC |
YT | Yukon | Ryan Leef ** | 4928 | 24.3 | CPC |
NW | Northwest Territories | Dennis Fraser Bevington ** | 5783 | 30.5 | NDP |
NT | Nunavut | Jack Iyerak Anawak | 3171 | 26.6 | NDP |
** indicates the candidate was the incumbent in the House of Commons. Forty-one of the BMP Senators following the 2015 election would have been incumbents. All clearly had strong support yet their supporters were rewarded with nothing by our FPTP system. BMP would appoint them to the Senate, where they could continue to contribute as their constituents evidently wanted.
There is one small problem here: the table above only lists 100 Senators, five short of a full Senate. This is due to an oddity in 2015 that had not occurred in the previous six elections. One party – the Liberals – won every seat in the four Atlantic provinces, leaving no “best finishers” to fill the five further seats the Liberals earned in a BMP Senate based on the strength of their popular vote (see Appendix A).
However one party rarely sweeps a province: although it happens frequently in four-seat Prince Edward Island, it has only happened once in another province since 1997: the Conservatives swept 28-seat Alberta in 2006. In none of these cases would the sweeping party have earned any BMP Senate seats, so the lack of best-finishers would have been moot. Given the rarity of this scenario, and the expectation that BMP would change voting patterns, we will leave the question of how to fill such BMP seats.