Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to put on record my position on this bill as well. Madam Chair, I would like to start by thanking the commission and the commission members along with all the other Members for the work that they have done. I'd like to say, for the record, that I am not in support of the bill as it's written as it suggests keeping a status quo of 19 Members plus redrawing some of the borders. So I will not be supporting it unless it's amended to reflect the commission's report.
Madam Chair, let me just say that the reason why I take this position is because I believe that it is in the public interest that we are here to protect and in the interest of this Legislature for us to accept this recommendation. First of all, let me just talk about the deference to the commission I believe that this Legislature should pay attention to, because I think that we should be mindful of the fact that this commission is not just a regular advisory board where the work of our Legislature is helped by, in many, many different instances, we have lots of boards where Ministers appoint Members to and those
recommendations are subject to our acceptance or not. I would submit an argument that this commission is not such a board. It is a statutory board and the members of that commission were appointed by a legislative action in this House. It was done by a formal motion in this House and I believe there is a lot of distinction in that as opposed to some other appointment. This commission went out there to do the work that they were tasked with by a former motion of this legislature. They had very specific provisions in the Commission Act; as well, they had lots of other legislation and historical analysis they were asked to look at.
Madam Chair, I also believe, and I want to answer to some of the other suggestions made I believe that the commission looking into the issues that the Members are raising. I don't believe the commission's recommendations reflect strict population parity. I do believe that the commission looked at the regional remoteness, the regional government situations, the fact that some ridings have six or seven communities that the MLA in charge has to look after, because they were asked to look into that. Specifically, I believe, and I have attended a number of meetings that the commission had in the city, and I believe in the report it mentions the fact that it looked at the special committee report on sunset clause, for example, in the last Assembly where this Legislature dealt with districting. There were very strong recommendations made for the commission to look at issues other than population parity, because I tell you, Madam Chair, if the commission just looked at the population parity, it would have come back with more than just two seats, or it could have looked at nine seats possibly for Yellowknife out of 19. The fact that it didn't I believe speaks to the fact that the commission did not look at specifically to population parity and that the commission looked at all the other concerns the Members are raising here. So I think that it should be with great carefulness that this Legislature rejects the recommendation of the commission.
There are lots of things in hindsight we could have done if there were very strong opinions here that the House should not grow any bigger for budgetary reasons or financial reasons as presented here, then that should have been made clear, which I would argue was not. But I think that that was mentioned in some of the hearings and I do believe that the commission considered that and rejected that and it's the commission's right to do so. The commission could have reduced a smallest riding or amalgamated it with another riding. I believe that was in their books too. I believe they looked at whether 19 was best or we should go lower or higher, but I believe that they looked at that and they chose not to address the overrepresentations scenario, but looked primarily into the under-representation. So I have to say that my decision in this regard is strictly with the deference to the work of the commission.
Another thing that I want to say about the arguments being made here that we really don't have money to spend on extra MLAs and I think there's a strong argument to be made in that. I could tell you that in the constituency meeting that I had in June when this report came out, this was a topic of discussion and I would agree with all the Members who said that the general population in Yellowknife are not looking for an extra Member for Yellowknife. But I tell you, they guard very close to the idea of voting parity. I would argue that voting parity in this regard is a Charter right. It's not an issue where it's a decision that could be made just on the political will. Some have suggested that it's for us to make a political decision, but I would argue that the Charter right of an individual voting person and their voting parity is not up to us to decide, it's not at our disposal. A person voting in Range Lake should not have one-third of voting power of somebody in Tu Nedhe. The fact that the commission decided that that's okay for the Tu Nedhe Member to be overrepresented, but the commission spoke that under-representation too far above 25 percent is not allowed. I believe that the commission and these Members did the work and that we should not disregard the committee recommendations lightly.
Let me just say also, to reject the committee recommendation because so many ridings are so close to 25 percent and because we know that this issue will not be visited again for another eight years, I would suggest that it would be quite irresponsible for this Legislature to not address so many ridings where it's either at 25 percent or over 30 percent. So I would suggest to you, Madam Chair, that my position is that I believe that the commission looked at all of the considerations that we are looking at and they made the recommendation that Monfwi should get an extra seat and that Yellowknife should get the voting parity. In that regard, I think that I will be strongly supporting that.
Somebody suggested that we should do this to avoid court challenge. I might just switch that around and say that I don't want to do the things in this House because I feel threatened by a court challenge. Although I think that should be a consideration, I think what we should consider ourselves is that it is more harmful for us as a legislator to give away someone's protected Charter right when we do we have a Charter that says that's wrong and the court will step in. So I don't know if anybody could see the distinction on that, but I believe that it is our job as a legislator to protect the Charter rights of everyone, and this is not talking about strict voting parity here, I mean I think the voters outside of Yellowknife are overrepresented and the commission said it's okay and the law has said it's okay, but how far do we go with that? The commission has drawn the line here and I think it's to our interest and in order that we do our jobs here, that we accept the committee's recommendation and move forward from that. Thank you, Madam Chair.