I will leave it to Spacebar to answer the questions which refer to his personal opinions, but I have been waiting for an opportunity to jump in on this thread, and thought that I might as well answer the questions I could.

> In application to the current American system of government (with the executive and legistlative branches separated), it seems that Ridings would be a benefit in that they're [a] smaller, and [b] more numerous. However, we then get back to a loss of a state's identity in a national election (which I'm still not convinced would be a bad thing).

This is very much a problem in Canada. As Spacebar and Kaz could probably tell you, there are numerous problems where Alberta feels hard done by the federal government because the majority of Canada's population resided in the east, and so government policy is largely determined by people from the east. The oil industry is centered primarily in Alberta and is almost non-existent in the two most heavily populated provinces, which means that the majority of federal policy makers don't know too much about the oil industry. The result of this is that the fedral government often makes policies which they see as beneficial and fair, but which have (most notably in the late 70s and early 80s) crippled the Alberta oil industry on a number of occasions. If you consider Canada's provinces to be roughly similar to the states in the US (which in many ways they are), then this is just one example of the problems that arise from our system. And yes, it was a VERY bad thing. Alberta tends to be the most propsperous province (on average), but bad federal policies on energy have almost destroyed our financial security. But I should move on before this becomes a tirade against federal policies. :-)

> Now on to the second question.
>
> Are Ridings fixed in place, or can the boundaries be redrawn, much the way how congressional districts in the United States can be? For instance, if Edmonton Southwest sees more working-class Edmontonians moving in, would Edmonton Southwest and Edmonton Southeast be redefined or would Edmonton Southwest just eventually become a Riding of working-class Edmontonians?

The boundaries can and are redrawn. The size of our parliament increases over time, and obviously, to add more ridings, you must redraw existing ones. I don't think the redrawing process is done very often, though, and to the best of my knowledge, it is never done for reasons of following social changes in a region-- In general, specific regions will attract specific types of people based on simple geography, and that seems to be good enough.

> -Faux "congratulations on winning the Longest Forum Post Award" Pas

Don "The Monkey'Wants to say more, but would rather see what Spacebar has to say and didn't want to try to take away the Longest Forum Post Award anyway, since he is currently trying for the Longest Quote Inside the Name award'man" Jackson