New Countries

Continuing from this 

To hammer out the details of the new nation, the western Premiers agree to host a constitutional convention. Each federal riding thus elected 12 members to the convention. Romanow's leadership on creating a new nation helped him snag the convention site in Regina.

This is when Regina Mayor, Douglas R Archer, and Saskatoon mayor, Henry Dayday, hatched a plan. Both had been mayor since 1988 and were coming up on a decade in office. Working with Roy Romanow, the three decided that neither Calgary, nor Vancouver (the two most popular options) would be the Capital of Western Canada. Regina would be. In turn, the Capital of Saskatchewan would be moved to Saskatoon.

Though political maneuvers which will be detailed in a later post probably, this plan worked, and the Saskatchewan Legislative Building would become the new legislature of Western Canada. A new Legislature would be built in Saskatoon for the government of Saskatchewan, at the block of Preston, College, Cumberland, and 14th.

Fixed election dates were agree to at the convention, and set at the same date as US elections in November. After a disagreement about when to elect Senators (at Provincial elections or Federal elections) a unique deal was struck that allowed Senators to be replaced by their Seniority, yearly, with 6 Senators per province, serving roughly 6 year terms. This created a unique situation where if a Senator were to resign early, another Senator could thus end up serving a 7 year term or more. The three territories (Yukon, NWT, and to be created in 1999, Nunavut) would share 6 senators, 2 each, and be treated as a single unit when determining seniority for replacement.

"Canada and Quebec" meanwhile, simply kept the existing system.

It was decided in Western Canada to keep existing federal seat numbers, and, basically, continue using the formula. This will make it super easy to create federal election maps as the ridings always somehow stay exactly the same.

Preston Manning was chosen as the first Prime Minister, to serve until the fall elections.

Roy Romanow resigned as Premier of Saskatchewan to fight him, heading an alliance of the NDP, Liberals, and PC Party, known as the "Progressives".

Reform MP Jan Brown would join the Progressives, thus allowing Reform to enter the election with 51 sitting MPs; 1 from Manitoba, 4 from Saskatchewan, 21 from Alberta, and 24 from BC.

The Progressives meanwhile continued the national coalition in place when Western Canada separated. This gave them all 3 Territorial seats, plus 13 in Manitoba, 10 in Saskatchewan, 5 in Alberta, and 8 in BC, for a total, of 39.

The electoral map, however, had since changed. The results of the election follow in the next post.

In Quebec, Bouchard called a snap election. The PQ won a massive majority, 109 seats compared to 16 for the Liberals. This would not last. The PQ no longer called for Quebec to leave Canada.

A Federal election was called for the fall of 1997. The Bloc Quebecois was officially dissolved, and unofficially replaced by a federal wing of the Parti Quebecois, that desired to protect Quebec's interests. As a result of heavy pressure, the Federal PQ would be lead by Mario Dumont.

The results of this election also follow in the next post.