Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it is difficult to say with any certainty how long a court action would take. A court action could be launched relatively quickly, however, the length of time that it would take the court to consider the matter would be very dependent on the types of arguments that were made in court. For example, under section 3 of the Charter it enshrines the right to effective representation and, as I have indicated, that does not always mean one citizen, one vote. There can be times when effective representation means that one constituency has to be bigger or larger than another because of the people who live in that constituency, or the distance away from another community, or the transportation links.
Anytime that you have an argument where you are justifying an unequal division or an unequal representation in the Assembly, it would be the obligation of the government to defend that unequal representation. That means the government might have to call evidence as to why they chose to have one constituency to be larger or smaller than another constituency. Anytime you get into calling evidence, you could be looking at a lengthy period of time. In other words, if a legal argument could probably be dealt with relatively quickly and within a matter of months, and hopefully, a few months at that, but if there were evidence called to justify the existing boundaries, that could prolong the process and take longer than a few months to deal with.
If that is the case, Mr. Chairman, there could be a problem in the sense that the present Elections Act, does provide that, knowing then, that to any provision regarding electoral boundaries is effective unless it is made six months before a general election is held. The exception to that is, if the Chief Electoral Officer agrees with the amendment and publishes a notice in the Gazette. The purpose behind that section is to ensure that the Chief Electoral Officer has the time, adequate time, to deal with amendments to electoral boundaries when he or she is running an election. There is this six-month time frame that is contained within the legislation and that six-month time frame can be waived, but there are still very practical considerations to running an election and there is the desirability to having voter enumeration take place in advance of an election, which our act provides for, to having electoral maps printed up, to doing a lot of advance preparation for an election. If we were to possibly get an adverse court decision and had to perhaps, change our boundaries, we would be running into the period of time in which it would be desirable to be preparing for an election, rather than changing the boundaries. The short answer is, it could take a few months. The longer answer is, depending upon the evidence, it could take quite a long time and that could interfere with the smooth running of the next election, Mr. Chairman.