Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, like some others have already said, I had not planned on making general comments. I think that there are so many things that a person could take the time to address as contained in this report under general comments that we could be here a
long time. My main concern is that there not be any misunderstanding with respect to where I as a Member stand with regard to some of the events that have taken place and some of the comments that have been made. Someone has suggested here today that as a Member who also did not participate in the public hearings, this could have been viewed as contempt for the smaller communities. I want to say that I did not personally choose to participate in the hearings, I did not want to spend that much time doing that. I have a fairly large riding, and as every Member in this House knows, we spend a lot of time here in Yellowknife and a lot of time away from our constituencies. I felt that my time was best spent talking to my constituents through various forums and getting up to date with them on not only this issue of electoral boundaries but many other issues and I valued that time very much that I was able to spend at home this summer. It was not intended as a reflection.
I have had the opportunity as well to sit on the Constitutional Working Group for the last several years, and to be perfectly honest, it has been kind of frustrating. We have gone out to community consultation through that process as well and have had quite limited response from people on the issues of representation. It was my prediction that we would have limited input through this round of community consultation as well, and I think for the most part that has proved to be the case. However, that does not diminish that the people, the other members of Government Operations who went out certainly had the right to do that, and the people who attended made their comments. Opinions are good. Input is wonderful. I just feel that when people say that the voices of those people are not heard, then I have to wonder if their Members are not speaking up for them in this Legislature. I feel very strongly that it is my job as much as I can to make sure the voices of my constituents are heard through my position here in the Legislative Assembly.
Through the CWG and now through this process, people may have their own opinions, but I have tried to be as creative and as accommodating as possible when it comes to ideas and solutions. I look back now to the report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission that came to this House. I remember that day very distinctly. I was late. I came in just as the vote was being made, I was just in time to make comments. I had been caught up in weather on the drive back. Many times I have reflected back to that day. I voted against giving Yellowknife any additional seats, knowing full well that there was a threat of a court challenge. I was doing so in response to the community leaders who had spoken out in Hay River against changing the status quo of 14, and if I could turn back the clock now, I would certainly have voted differently and would have tried to address the size of the ridings in Yellowknife on our own, through our own political remedy, as opposed to going to the courts. If that had happened and if Yellowknife residents had been satisfied, there would have been no Friends of Democracy and there would have been no appeal to the courts. We would not be facing two MLAs in Hay River, which is another thing for the record. Although the community of Hay River, if Bill 15 passes, will be receiving two MLAs, I want to say that I have not heard one single voice of support for that concept in Hay River. Not one person has come up to me and said, Jane, I think we need two MLAs, I am really happy that Bill 15 is going to proceed and we are going to have them. If there could have been a way to address the situation in Yellowknife without implicating Hay River and Inuvik, I think it would have been all the better, but now we are bound by these numbers and this percentage. As I said, I now dearly wish that we had dealt with this ourselves before we had to be forced into a remedy.
The 14 Member proposal and the 15 Member proposal put forward by some Members were not acceptable to Hay River either, because in re-jigging the ridings, it looked like the only way we could do that would have been to take quite a substantial number of constituents out of our riding and put them into an adjoining riding, and we could not do that either, so it came down to an issue of the lesser of two evils. I have to support the 19 Member model, the 19 Member proposal as proposed in Bill 15. This is the way we are going to address it for now. As I said, I have been trying to think of ways that we could diminish the impact of the fears out there about the shift in the balance of power. I think that some of the comments that are being made that are scaring people are worthy of some kind of response or rebuttal, because I think that some of the projections, or anticipations, are rather wildly overestimated. For example, the shift in this Legislature between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Members makes the assumption that none of the new five Members will be aboriginal, and I think that is an erroneous assumption. I think that very likely from Hay River and from Inuvik and probably Yellowknife as well, with the large aboriginal constituency here, you would see aboriginal Members included in that increased number.
I also think it is erroneous to assume that urban communities and Members representing urban communities are necessarily going to band together for any kind of efforts to use that power base and those numbers to in any way negatively affect the small communities. I know that in the past there has been a majority in the House of Members from larger centres. That is the way the population pans out and that is the way it works in democracy. I have never been a part of any conversation or heard of any effort since I have been in this Assembly in the last four years where larger communities wanted to get together and do anything that would prohibit development in the smaller communities. I do not think that is a natural alliance. I do not think that it is there. Certainly your larger regional centres like Fort Simpson, Fort Smith, Hay River and Inuvik, have some things in common as larger communities, but I do not think there is as much to fear about urban communities versus rural communities. I do not see that actually coming to something that people should be worried about.
As far as the balance now between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Members in the Legislature, I think there are two ridings in the North which are very close and very much on the verge of being over that 25 percent average as well. I think that sometime in the near future we may see an expansion of the Legislature again to accommodate those which are predominantly rural and aboriginal ridings. I think there is much to be lost when we make remarks and take positions that are counter to pursuing unity and working together in the west. I agree with Mr. Krutko's comments from earlier that I think we all had high hopes for the west, and I think we have a responsibility as leaders to not say and do things which will tear down the prospects of that working together in that relationship in the future. For that reason, I will be looking forward to speaking to the recommendations that the committee has brought forward and, in any way possible, being as flexible and as accommodating as possible to make sure that people's concerns are alleviated. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.