Four. But the region's purpose in any system, whether it's DMP or MMP, is for allocating seats, which party is on a proportional basis. In some systems, the regions and the districts are synonymous and in some they're not. In DMP and MMP, for example, they're not. They're two different entities. You would merge, likely, the districts rather than doubling the House of Commons.
In my report, for instance, I recommended increasing it by about six seats, simply to account for the provinces and territories that don't currently have an even number of seats to merge together. Then it wouldn't require a massive increase to the House of Commons.
The basic idea, in terms of electing the MPs, is you would elect the first candidate by first past the post. This is to ensure that the first-placed candidate is guaranteed to win a seat. That also puts the floor of the representation at basically the current system. Currently, the first-placed candidate is the only one who wins, and it's only the voters who voted for that candidate who are represented. In this system, since we're always electing that candidate, we're always going to be above the representation of the current system. That second MP who's elected would be an additional number of Canadians locally represented on top of the current system.
That second MP would be elected to fulfill the requirements of proportional representation at the regional level. If the Liberals need 10 seats in western Canada, for example, the second seats would account for that. The way those candidates are elected is based on merit. For the Liberal Party, for example, if they needed 10 seats, you would look at the top 10 candidates in that region for the Liberal Party and assign those seats to those candidates.
In some cases there will be conflicts. The Liberal Party might be assigned the same seat as the New Democrats, for example. In those instances you would look at the party that performed better at the local level, and the party that performed better locally would be elected. The party that didn't would have to take the next best seat on the list.
The system is designed to simultaneously elect candidates based on merit, based on their local vote, but also based on the regional decision Canadians made in terms of what they want the House of Commons to look like.
Does that give a bit more clarity to that process?