Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Boundaries Commission first of all, I would like to begin by saying that the Report of the Nunavut Electoral Boundaries Commission was a very good piece of work. They spent a lot of time on it. They had an opportunity to travel around Nunavut to visit the communities and to get the communities' input into the constituencies that will be in place as recommended by the Commission by April 1, 1999 when Nunavut comes into play.

Mr. Chairman, the concern I have is that indeed this House directed that Commission to look at 20 to 22 ridings and they did come up with a Model C which is 17 constituencies. The costs for an extra three members in Model C which gives us 17 now in Model B which was 20 is about $650.000. My concern here is what we have demonstrated over the past year and a half at this House where you have 24 Members, you have eight put into Cabinet and you end up with 12, 15 Ordinary Members. With the 17 member constituency, if you had a smaller Cabinet, you would still have smaller representation on the side of the Ordinary Members' Caucus to do your committee work, for example, and other things. Right now, we sometimes have problems in trying to get a quorum. With a 17 Member constituencies Model C, my concern would be indeed that you would have a bigger problem.

The other concern I have is with the emphasis on representation by population and description. In the Model C arrangement, we have 17 and we are trying to use a percentage of deviation average. For example, the deviation average goes from minus 5 percent in Baker Lake to over 41 percent in Rankin Inlet. That is the concern. You also may note, Mr. Chairman, that indeed when the Commission was struck, they were given directions from this House and they came back with a different plan. That in itself was not a concern to the point that it would flaw the report because the report is very good.

Model B which gives you 20 single Member constituencies would add three extra MLAs. There is a concern, for example, that Rankin Inlet would get two MLAs in that case and Iqaluit would get three. There is some concern that the power base could be shared between those communities. But as demonstrated, Mr. Chairman, over the past x number of years in the Northwest Territories and indeed here in the 13th Assembly, that has not occurred. For example, you have four Members from Yellowknife in this Assembly. You only have one of those Members in Cabinet. You have two Members living in Rankin Inlet representing this Cabinet, but you only have one seat there. Just on the basis of having three seats does not give the elected official any more power or representation within Cabinet. That has been demonstrated through the years in the territorial Legislature. I do not think that is an argument.

The other argument that I would present to you, Mr. Chairman, is the argument on the voting population. In the election of November, 1995, there were 1,200 and some odd people on the enumeration list as voters in Iqaluit. Indeed, over 1,300 people voted because the enumeration list was flawed. In actuality, Mr. Chairman, in the town election that is occurring this month, there is 1,922 voters on that list, an increase of over 600. That has not been taken into account anywhere in the Commission's report. Also, based on Iqaluit being the capital as an example, more people will be moving there. They were projecting a growth in Iqaluit to be anywhere between 25 to 30 percent over the next couple of years. After saying that, it is good to see that communities like Clyde River and Broughton Island will be grouped together as opposed to being separated or amalgamated into a smaller constituency.

I think, Mr. Chairman, that after going through the report at some detail after re-evaluating my written submission to the Boundaries Commission, which I asked for 20 members and given the seat breakdown based not only on the actual population but the voting age population, indeed Model B to me seemed to be the best model because it gives you the opportunity to have fewer representation based on population but also based on representation by the number. I believe that many other Members agree with Option C, but I do not think that covers the area of population growth and so on. To save this government some money and the Nunavut government, I would say to you, Mr. Chairman, based on the population projections alone that we will have to have another Electoral Boundaries Commission within two to three years to re-draw the boundaries again because of the increased population loads. Those, Mr. Chairman, are my opening comments on the Nunavut Electoral Boundaries Commission.