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The size of today’s legislative assemblies

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

Canada’s legislative assemblies vary considerably in size from one jurisdiction to another. Although one should make a distinction between eligible voters and overall population, the table below nonetheless provides some perspective on these variations by listing each jurisdiction with its estimated population in 2026 and the average number of people represented by each member. However, it is important to remember how that average number conceals how some jurisdictions may have:

• protected seats such as the traditional Acadian ridings of Argyle, Clare and Richmond in Nova Scotia as well as Preston, a riding designed to encourage more African-Nova Scotian participation, and
   
• large rural ridings in which the population is much smaller than the jurisdiction’s average, such as the Ontario ridings of Kiiwetinoong (which is 68% indigenous) and Mushkegowuk—James Bay (which is 27% indigenous and 60% francophone). Together they cover slighly more than half of Ontario’s territory but have less than 0.5% of the province’s population whereas, speaking strictly in mathematical terms, a single riding in Ontario would be expected to have, on average, about 0.8% of the province’s population.

Related topics
→ A brief history of ridings in the Canadian jurisdictions
→ Considerations when redrawing an electoral map
→ Number of ridings and seats over time in the Canadian jurisdictions

Also, the population in some ridings might be noticeably higher than the average if it includes many young families, but the number of persons 18 years or over who are eligible to vote in those ridings could be in line with the jurisdiction’s average. In fact, to account for such variance, Saskatchewan is one province that, during its decennial redistributions, calculates its new electoral quotient only on the number of persons who are 18 years of age or older, whereas Elections Canada seems to consider total population.

Legend }						p/s: Average population/seat %s: Percentage of seats
Jurisdiction						Federal			Prov/Terr		General elections
Details			Capital city	Largest city	Population	Seats	p/s	%s	Seats	p/s	←	→
1	CA		Ottawa	Toronto	41,472,081 † 41,336,114	343 340	120,910 121,577	n/a	—	—	2025-04-28	2029-10-15
8	BC		Victoria	Vancouver	5,658,528 13.69%	43	131,594	12.65%	93	60,844	2024-10-19	2028-10-21
9	AB		Edmonton	Calgary	5,048,151 12.21%	37	136,437	10.88%	87	58,025	2023-05-29	2027-10-18
10	SK		Regina	Saskatoon	1,265,936 3.06%	14	90,424	4.12%	61	20,753	2024-10-28	2028-10-30
11	MB		Winnipeg	Winnipeg	1,505,117 3.64%	14	107,508	4.12%	57	26,406	2023-10-03	2027-10-05
6	ON		Toronto	Toronto	16,136,480 39.04%	122	132,266	35.88%	124	130,133	2025-02-27	2029-06-07
5	QC		Québec	Montréal	9,033,887 21.85%	78	115,819	22.94%	125	72,271	2022-10-03	2026-10-05
3	NB		Fredericton	Moncton	867,383 2.10%	10	86,738	2.94%	49	17,702	2024-10-21	2028-10-16
2	NS		Halifax	Halifax	1,090,074 2.64%	11	99,098	3.24%	55	19,820	2024-11-26	2028-07-19
4	PE		Charlottetown	Charlottetown	182,001 0.44%	4	45,500	1.18%	27	6,741	2023-04-03	2027-10-04
7	NL		St. John’s	St. John’s	548,557 1.33%	7	78,365	2.06%	40	13,714	2025-10-14	2029-10-15
12	YT		Whitehorse	Whitehorse	48,218 0.12%	1	n/a	n/a	21	2,296	2025-11-03	2029-11-05
14	NT		Yellowknife	Yellowknife	45,803 0.11%	1	n/a	n/a	19	2,411	2023-11-14	2027-10-05
13	NU		Iqaluit	Iqaluit	41,946 0.10%	1	n/a	n/a	22	1,907	2025-10-27	2029-10-22
† Excluding the territories. The average population/seat is calculated with the population of the provinces only. Note: At the provincial or territorial levels, except for the three Maritime provinces, a number of far-northern seats are in fact excluded from the jurisdiction’s calculation of the average population/seat, but the calculations presented in this table do not exclude them. As a result, the official figure used by each jurisdiction is higher.