Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, would like to thank the Electoral Boundaries Commission. I believe that they went out and carried out the direction this Legislature gave them.
I know many things have changed in this territory over the last two decades. A number of years back there were only 24 seats and we served a larger population. Through that time, many things have increased. A good example is when we were combined with Nunavut, we had the same budget that we have now, pretty similar. Here we are after division, debating whether to move to 21 seats, which is only three less than what was originally serving the people of two territories.
I know a lot of people who are debating here today are concerned with under-representation, but it’s very clear through this report that many of the people of the Territories and many times Members
here are always saying listen to the people. The majority of the people would like to see the status quo. Many people feel that there are already too many MLAs. We always get e-mails saying there are too many MLAs; we should be getting rid of some. Those are the e-mails I receive, anyway. I just wanted to bring that forward.
I know we are debating whether to choose 18, 19 or 21 Members. Through the different scenarios it could work with either one, but I would like to support the public and leave this government at 19 Members for the future. If we do actually decide to go with 21 within the next government that we have or within the next eight years, you could see another MLA being added, which, as Mr. Bouchard mentioned earlier, would really throw things off. If we were to go with 21 Members, most likely you will see the cost of this Legislature going up between one and two million dollars. Not only would we have two more MLAs, but we would most likely have another Minister. That’s the sort of things that we have to look at here when we’re asking these decisions.
Right now, the way this government is operating, I believe it’s operating very well. If we were to go down to 18, that would put a larger workload on committees. Right now, with 19 Members and 11 Regular Members, we have enough Members to function with all the committees that we now have in this Legislature. Those are my opening remarks. Thank you, Madam Chair.