After the government backed away from the initial openness to replacing Justice Cromwell with somebody from outside Atlantic Canada, that signalled that the convention around how the seats are divvied up will continue to be followed, because it would invite litigation otherwise, and even if the government won that it would tie up the seat for a year (and create bad headlines in an electorally significant region).

Moreover, the West's population and judiciary are more diverse than the Atlantic's, so there shouldn't be any issue finding a qualified minority candidate there (indeed, the woman that Trudeau was rumoured to want to replace Cromwell is from BC).

All that in mind, the government should drop the pretense that the commission will accept applicants from everywhere in the country and formally limit the scope to the four Western provinces (and, I guess, the Territories, but lacking as they do their own law schools and appellate courts, that's not going to happen).