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Citizen and Provincial Power Under Alternative Amending Formulae: An Extension of Kilgour's Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Terrence J. Levesque
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
James W. Moore
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Extract

In a recent number of this Journal, D. Marc Kilgour describes a formal analysis of the power of provinces and citizens to effect a constitutional amendment, given the requirements specified by paragraph 38(l)(b) of the Constitution Act, 1982. He concludes that the amending formula—essentially the Fulton-Favreau formula proposed in 1964—distributes power more equitably among provinces than it does among citizens when power measures the capacity of provinces and citizens to change the outcome of the amending process by changing their positions on the issue.

Type
Comment/Commentaire
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1984

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References

1 Kilgour, D. Marc, “A Formal Analysis of the Amending Formula of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982,” this Journal 16 (1983), 771–77.Google Scholar

2 This provision is described in paragraph 49 (Part V) of the Constitution Act, 1982.

3 This provision is described in paragraph 4 of “An Act to Provide for the Amendment in Canada of the Constitution of Canada.” See Proposals on the Constitution 1971–1978 (Ottawa: Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, 1978).Google Scholar

4 Banzhaf, John F. III, “Weighted Voting Doesn't Work: A Mathematical Analysis,” Rutgers Law Review 19 (1965), 317–43.Google Scholar

5 The ways in which non-Atlantic provinces satisfy the Victoria Charter formula's requirements were determined using 1981 census populations.

6 Owen, Guillermo, “Multilinear Extensions and the Banzhaf Value,” Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 22 (1972), 741–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 We note that it is possible to obtain Kilgour' s version of citizen power by the following transformation

where P is the total population of the 10 provinces. Hence, our index is proportionate to Kilgour's index.