Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In spite of what my colleague from Thebacha says about 15 seats, I want to state for the record that I will not, have not, and cannot consider lopping off a significant part of my constituency, diminishing Hay River's presence in the new Western Territory in the interests of balancing the numbers. I am not prepared to impose extinguishment on small ridings, or rolling them up with non-traditional components in the interests of balancing the numbers. From a very pragmatic position, does Hay River need two MLAs? Probably not, but we have a court ruling and a judgement which says fix the numbers. Given the options for adding or taking away, I believe that it is better to add.
The question of appealing the judge's decision is risky at best. We have not heard any good grounds for doing that to date. To be non-compliant with the order is to render three ridings non-existent on March 31st, one of them is my riding. Appeal is also a risk, in that appeal judges may not agree with Justice DeWeerdt's opinion that over-representation is acceptable in our unique territory but under-representation is not acceptable. An appeal could bring about the need to address the ridings which fall below 25 percent average. Right now, we are only being asked to address the situation of the ridings which exceed 25 percent over the average.
One advantage of adding to the number of Members is the number that would be available to share the committee workload, and the number of Members available to hold the government accountable. Required greatly in this mix is a healthy dose of trust, fairness and respect for each other in our very diverse, new, emerging territory. As stated in our press release, this matter and proposed changes to legislation will receive full debate in this House prior to being voted on.
As I have said, it is easy to be a critic, but if anyone out there has any ideas of how these concerns can be addressed differently, while still satisfying the test of constitutional compliance, of course we would greatly appreciate hearing from them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.