Canada’s democracy isn’t working

Fix it or risk it falling apart.

A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, except your vote is worth less than other Canadians depending on where you live. This needs to be addressed as its flaws are outdated, make no sense, and we can’t pretend that Canada is a fair democracy, as it is largely performative for some.

At the federal level, Canadians are represented by Members of Parliament, Senators, and then there are Supreme Court Justices. How they are decided on, and how many people they represent is different across Canada depending on your location.

Senators

The Senate of Canada is the upper house of Canada’s bicameral Parliament. It is modelled after the British House of Lords, and established as part of the Constitution Act. It went from the initial 72 seats to today’s 105 seats.

Senators in Canada are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. They must be minimum 30 years old, retire from the Senate at 75 and reside in the Province they are appointed to represent. In 1929, it was ruled that women were “persons” eligible for appointment, and Cairine Wilson took a seat as Canada’s first woman appointed to the Senate in 1930.

The Senate is divided into 4 regional divisions: Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and the Western Provinces. Each Division gets 24 seats. Newfoundland and Labrador gets 6 seats, and each of the Territories gets 1 seat. I hope you are now starting to see the problem.

Western Canada gets 24/105 Seats, which is ~22% while having ~32% of the population, and generating over 1/3 of Canada’s GDP. Alberta, which has 10x the GDP of N&L, has the same number of Senate Seats representing its interests.

The Senate’s job is to review Bills before they are passed, and provide a “sober second thought”. Yet 100 out of the 105 Senators are selected by Justin Trudeau, and there is no accountability, as they are not elected. An inherent bias is readily apparent to anyone paying attention to Canadian politics. This needs to change. Senators must be elected like anyone else who has a direct impact on the legislation of laws in Canada.

Members of Parliament

MPs are elected representatives in the House of Commons - the lower house of Canada’s bicameral Parliament. It is modelled after the British House of Commons of representation by population, where seats are allocated by proportionality while attempting to balance federalism. At least the intention sounds nice.

The number of seats in the HoC grew from 181 in 1867 to 343 in the last election. There is a redistribution every 10 years based on census. The seat allocation has a constitutional formula, and then a redrawing of boundaries by a commission under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act.

Each province is guaranteed at least as many MPs as they have senators. No province can have less seats in the House of Commons than it had in the 43rd Parliament. Quebec can’t have fewer than 78 seats under a newer grandfather clause.

The number of MPs we had in the 2025 election increased by 5 and now represent as follows:

Right away you can tell that some MPs need way less votes to get in and represent a much smaller population than others. Looking at the above chart, from a political strategy point, it is pretty clear where and to whom you have to pander to try and get a majority government. There are 232 Seats to be captured before you even go West of the Ontario border. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are almost irrelevant, and so is rural Alberta. In a country the size of Canada, regional differences are just so big and overlooked for the sake of votes elsewhere.

It also gives us a system where more votes don’t necessarily mean more representation in government. In the 2015 election, over half of the votes went to Candidates who did not win. In the 2021 election, the Bloc Québécois, a provincial Party, won 32 seats with 1.3M votes while the NDP won 25 seats with 3M votes. PPC got over twice the votes of the Greens and didn’t get a seat, while they got 3. In the last election Bloc won 22 seats with 1.2M votes, which is a 10-seat difference with around 80k fewer votes than the previous election.

It’s a mess. Balancing history with such vast population and economic interest differences is hard but completely unfair to people whose votes are not worth as much, or even worse, maybe voted against local important issues across the country just to secure a vote.

The Supreme Court of Canada

The Constitution Act, 1867, defined Canada’s current judicial system, instructing to create the General Court of Appeal for Canada which led to the creation of the Supreme Court of Canada. Initially, the Court consisted of six justices, with more added in 1927 and again in 1949 to reach a total of 9 justices, which is what we still have today.

Supreme Court justices are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister, with no fixed term and a mandatory retirement at the age of 75. Just like the Senate. In 2016, an Independent Advisory Board for the Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments was formed to provide more transparency. Qualifications include a minimum of 10 years’ standing at the bar, and now, a DEI component.

The Supreme Court Act requires that 3 judges be appointed from Quebec. 3 are usually from Ontario, 2 from Western Provinces or Territories and one from Atlantic Canada. Historically, many of them had public office and political roles as well. Besides all the obvious, this also risks a pro-federal tilt over provincial powers.

So we have a country where the majority of one of the legislative bodies was appointed by one politician - and probably the worst one in Canada’s history, votes don’t necessarily get you who the majority of people voted for and for many others, their vote can be overlooked and with a selected Supreme Court judges that can override legislative majorities all while 2 out of the 3 most import structures of the government have lifetime tenure.

No one in their right mind would structure such a system from scratch right now and pretend this is the best we can do to pretend we are a democracy. This is the legacy of essentially stacking history, heritage, and independence on top of one another into a wobbly tower of federalism while adding new provinces over time and trying to figure out how that works. It just may not work at all.

At a minimum, we need Supreme Court Justices and Senators to be elected and have term limits. We can’t have anyone who has an impact on our laws be selected by politicians and stay there for life. It is completely irrational and undemocratic.

Changes to the election/representation in the House of Commons are probably the most difficult thing. People won’t like to give up power, and won’t like the results of what they get if they do. Part of the solution here is to have an elected Senate that will actually give a sober second thought to legislation.

Changes to Canada are needed. Canadians need more accountability, more power as voters and while we are overhauling things, we need to move towards the absolutism and protection that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights offer, as an example. This will bring Canadians more fundamental Rights, and individual liberty.

The changes are needed because it is the right thing to do, as a democracy.