The Significance of A Tory Seat Pick-Up In N.S.

Just a thought. After the last Election Kady O'Malley did an interesting piece on whether the increased number of Conservative M.P.s would/ought to wind up with a majority of seats on the various HOC committees.

They did not, for reasons I have forgotten.

But should Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley tip Tory, which seems to be the conventional wisdom at this point, then the math goes as follows:

143 MPS + Casey Old Seat = 144 MPS= 46.7% of House Seats.

12 (standard committee size) x 0.467 = 5.6 members per committee, if these are allocated in proportion to HOC seats.

5.6 rounded up gives 6 seats per committee. Where the committee is chaired a Member of an opposition party, that is a limited majority.

The opposition parties have had some success recently using the HOC committee structure to force the gov. in directions it didn't want to go. I wonder if Harper and Co. would use the assumed NS pick-up to make an argument for an enhanced presence--a majority--at the committee level.