Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to participate in this debate today and discussion of the final report. I’d like to thank the Electoral Boundaries Commission for their work. Trying to penetrate this quagmire, it is certainly never an easy job or an easy process, but I think we do recognize that and try and provide some helpful guidelines, specifically the plus or minus 25 percent goal for fair representation; that is every riding should be within 25 percent of the mean population, the average number of people per riding in order to be considered fair representation, and that we should give consideration to the integrity of language and cultural groups as relevant factors in the considerations of these boundaries.
It’s clear from the past decisions that overrepresentation, that is where a riding comes in considerably below the 25 percent guideline from the mean number of people for all ridings, is acceptable; whereas, under-representation, that is where the population is greater than 25 percent above the mean riding population, is much less so. This differentiation to me has always been perplexing as a situation, where a riding is highly overrepresented relative to other ridings seems to me as unfair, and certainly to all those people living in under-represented ridings. That’s a long and convoluted way, unfortunately, of saying I really think we should stick within the minus 25 percent to plus 25 percent guideline here, something that has not been done in the past.
As we’ve heard, MLAs provided guidance for the development of the electoral boundaries report and specifically requested consideration of three scenarios, solutions, with 18 MLAs or constituencies, or 19 or 21. To my mind, we really failed to provide sufficient guidance by stopping at that point. I believe we should have requested several options for each of these proposals. Of course, there probably are an infinite number of options or scenarios that could result. I think that by simply implying that one was sufficient, we failed a little bit in giving clear direction there.
As a result, we have three options that for me provide little satisfaction in terms of sufficient improvement in fair representation across all ridings. There are understandable reasons for this, some of which I’ve mentioned, but they give little comfort towards accepting the partial solutions that currently seem to be available to us in the final report.
One of the additional reasons, I think, is our unwillingness to cross language and cultural boundaries, at least in some areas, despite highly unfair representation numbers. It begs the question,
at what point does fair representation overcome cultural and language group considerations.
Again, using Weledeh as an example, the Yellowknives Dene First Nation of Ndilo and Detah have indicated their preference to me, and to the committee, I believe, to remain within a Yellowknife riding rather than being affiliated with more distant communities despite strong cultural ties with those other communities. To some degree, however, all of Yellowknife ridings host Aboriginal residents with a variety of cultural and language affiliations.
Despite changes made in the past, some ridings have remained substantially under-represented and a good example of this, again, is the Weledeh riding. Currently, it is the most disparate with a population at 42 percent above the main riding population for the NWT. Now, given other disparities such as Tu Nedhe, this means that a resident in Tu Nedhe has effectively had four times the representation that one of my constituents have had in Weledeh. Again, not a desirable situation.
Now, the population of Weledeh has been increasing throughout my six-year-plus term to date and it was clearly already under-represented from the start. As we speak, residential construction is rampant in Weledeh, particularly in the Niven Lake part of the constituency and I note that it’s also moving right along and I think it’s in Kam Lake.
Another under-represented riding is Monfwi, also substantially under-represented at almost 40 percent above the mean riding population. I believe it’s been under-represented, again, for a long time.
There have been some attempts to reduce the number of under-represented ridings with the options before us, although in Yellowknife all seven or eight proposed ridings cover just below the 25 percent mark in the options presented in the report. As indicated, with the considerable residential construction happening in parts of Yellowknife, you can expect that at least one or two will quickly grow to exceed the 25 percent guideline soon after we make a decision.
Population growth rate in ridings is one of the factors that should be considered in setting boundaries according to the act, Section 9, and I did not see this discussed in the report.
Given a generally stable NWT population over recent years, population changes in ridings would be most likely to be caused by movements of people such as into regional centres or the capital. Ultimately, it is important for representation to reflect these population shifts.
Similarly, some ridings have remained highly overrepresented over time, including Tu Nedhe, Deh Cho and the Inuvik ridings as examples. There is a tendency for this overrepresentation to continue for all of these ridings in the options presented in the boundaries report. This is a bit mysterious to
me. Again, it seems to be acceptable to have people overrepresented for some reason by those making these sorts of recommendations.
Under the current situation, as things are now the status quo with 19 ridings, 10 of them are unfairly represented, five over and five under-represented. With the 18 seat option, it becomes four and one respectively. With 19, worst case, five and two that are under-represented, five over and two under. Finally, with 21 constituencies the most improvement is seeing three overrepresented and one under-represented. So, given that, my preference would be to support the scenario for 21 electoral districts, although, as I mentioned, I am not enamoured with any particular one.
Should we consider a 21 electoral district option? I think the most common concern I’ve heard is the additional cost, so I’d like to address that issue.
I think we do have a lot of representatives for a modest number of people. However, we are over a sixth of Canada and we represent an amazing diversity of peoples and cultures and languages and geographic areas. I believe the cost of fair and democratic representation is of the highest priority and a legitimate cost of democracy. Also, the cost would be a tiny fraction of the GNWT budget, which will likely average well over $1.8 billion over the course of the next eight years.
Finally, and less importantly in this case, the two new ridings proposed would be in Monfwi and Yellowknife and, as such, would be less costly than new ridings in other remote areas of the NWT, but again, the costs are very modest relative to the budget and the cost of good representation and democracy. While a 21 seat option does not address the Tu Nedhe issue of gross overrepresentation or the Sahtu’s under-representation, most of the other issues are largely addressed. Again, none of them are particularly pleasing, but that may be the nature of the question we’re trying to address.
I have about 30 more seconds. I will stop here if you want and continue later, or complete my statement. Mahsi.