Canada’s Parliament

Canada is a federation of 10 provinces and 3 territories that share a common federal government. In Parliament, Senators and Members of Parliament work together to represent Canadians from across the country. Parliament passes laws that affect all Canadians, in areas like foreign policy and national defence. Each province makes its own laws in other domains, such as education and health care.

Canada is also a constitutional monarchy. This means that the Monarch is the Head of State, and the Prime Minister is the Head of Government. Bills are created and passed by Parliament and signed into law by the Governor General (the Monarch’s representative in Canada).  The House of Commons is Parliament’s elected Lower Chamber. 

Each of the 338 Members of Parliament (MPs) represents a specific geographic area in Canada, known as a constituency or riding. Each riding will average approximately 83,000 voting-age residents.  MPs bring the concerns of the people who elected them to the House of Commons. They spend much of their time debating, voting and participating in committees.

Most MPs belong to a political party. Normally, the leader of the party with the most seats becomes the Prime Minister, and the second-largest party becomes the Official Opposition.

If you are a Canadian citizen over the age of 18, you may run to become an MP, as there are few other requirements.  As such, there is a wide range of experience, expertise, and competency among those who choose to run. There is usually a federal election once every four years in Canada. Elections Canada, a nonpartisan agency that reports directly to Parliament rather than to the Government of Canada, coordinates and oversees the elections. On election day voters typically choose one of the candidates from a list of 5 - 10 names. Most of these will be associated with a political party, but some candidates will run as independents.

How Sortation Would Work in Canada

This is a hypothetical situation, but we have used real data and estimates to provide a reasonable simulation.

Employing sortation, rather than holding elections, Elections Canada (renamed to Sortations Canada) would administrate the following:

1. Establish a lottery system to randomly select 1,000 people (Nominators) from the population of each of the 338 ridings (in the same way that a jury is chosen)
2. Nominators receive detailed instructions and swear an oath to uphold the best interests of their respective constituency.
3. Instructions include nominating up to 5 individuals (Nominees) who are, in their sole opinion, eminently qualified to hold the office of MP for the riding. 
4. Each nomination must be ranked in order of preference.
5. Nominees are assigned a score based on the number of nominations received ☓ the ranking of each nomination, the expectation being that several individuals will be nominated multiple times by the Nominators (because of the small size of individual ridings and the relatively large number of Nominators).
6. Nominees are ranked in order of choice for the role of MP based on their accumulated points.
7. The Nominee ranked highest would be offered the MP position, and if unwilling or unable to accept, the next highest ranking would be approached, and so on, until the role is filled.
8. All Nominees accepting MP positions, and those who were ranked highly enough to be offered the role, would now, in turn, nominate up to 3 persons to become Prime Minster.
9. The same process in #7 would be repeated until the PM role is filled.