Who Would Be Sitting in a BMP Senate?

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):

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.