Thank you, Madam Chair. First off I want to acknowledge and thank the commission for their hard work. It was a difficult task we gave them. They took it up honourably and certainly I believe to my heart of hearts that they have done the best that they could.
Now, the commission followed our direction, so if there’s anyone to blame, it’s obviously the instructions provided to them by the Assembly. What I found was, here I am almost seven years later and we’re revisiting a similar style and problem of issues, whereas sometimes the instructions weren’t as clear as possible. I think every successive group that will provide instructions to any boundaries commission will always suffer from, geez, if we’d only suggested this or helped create this. This time around we thought about giving them more options as opposed to last time and the options we had before us, we all know that the options they’ve come up with are on our direction when the Assembly said look at combinations for 18, 19 and 21.
I would say, at the end of the day, the options that have come forward – and this is not meant as any disrespect to the commission – but I don’t think any of them have been helpful in the very end.
I’ve seen them all. I’ve sat and gone through them carefully and what I found was the fact that the options themselves are very limiting. You either like it or you don’t. If you don’t like the option as presented, you have to go the next one and consider it and you like that one or you don’t. You go to the third one and it’s the same question that needs to be asked.
The problem is, I find all three recommendations very foggy to the issue and what happens here is the fact that we’re missing what surely should have been one of the directions, but we failed to provide the commission the direction, or at least the insight. The insight of it, which I believe in my heart of hearts, should have been the direction we’ve given them is we should have said things like give us
three combinations or three various options for 18. There are those who believe in fiscal prudence and say we have too many MLAs, and there are people out there that say that would then allow us to give due consideration to various combinations.
The challenge for us, of course, is the personalization or, in some cases, the depersonalization of this particular issue. Those who like status quo could have considered different options. I’m not necessarily advocating for this point publicly, but what I am saying is the only combination for 18 we came up was to get rid of Tu Nedhe, amalgamate the Deh Cho and come up with a weird combination that includes Monfwi. But had there been other perspectives of 18 come forward, the perspective of, for example, take Mackenzie Delta, the two Inuvik ridings and Nunakput riding, and there are four there that could have gone down to three with little or no challenge in the sense of cause and effects.
So I’m not trying to stand and say one is better than the other, but the problem is if you believe that 18 was the right direction, you’re only given one choice. I think that is very limiting in itself. I think the commission, if they truly had good direction, should have come up with various options for 18, various options for 19 and various options for 21.
For those who believe in democratic reform and the eagerness of representing their areas, as we all do, we should be asking ourselves how did we achieve or what did we achieve by coming up with these three combinations. I’m concerned that when you look at the balance, and people use the word “power,” so we should not pretend it doesn’t exist and pretend it’s not out there, but the reality is how does the balance of power affect the relationship of population. We’ve seen many Yellowknife issues get buried, but we continue, in our own way, to be relentless and we’re glad to be relentless on our issues.
There was an interim recommendation which suggested, for example, nine ridings out of 21 that should come to the Yellowknife region. Now Yellowknife is represented by mid-36 percent of voting power, okay, but we represent almost 48 percent of population. If we had risen to the challenge of accepting the recommendation of nine ridings in Yellowknife out of 21, that would have brought the Yellowknife context closer to what it truly represents in the public, which would have mathematically worked out closer to 43 percent of voting power in the House. That would not have been perfect and I don’t think constituents of mine have said that the voting balance or that the representation balance or boundary balance has to be absolutely perfect, but I think people want what’s truly out there.
This is a boundary issue. This is about where the lines are drawn. I’ve never heard anyone say we
need more MLAs in the context of pure, raw, effective representation. Where I hear them say they want more Yellowknife MLAs is when Yellowknife MLAs are unable to promote the ideas and issues that are brought forward in Yellowknife and they’re out-voted or out-scrummed each and every time. I mean, it’s difficult to represent Yellowknife issues when we have such a minority in here.
Now I hear the context being brought forward and I agree with them. I’m not going to suggest Mr. Beaulieu or Mr. Lafferty have got bad issues. I believe in the strength of their principles of what they’re bringing forward. Representation of people, representation of culture, representation of area are significantly important if not it’s a crystal clear value of who we are as representatives of people of the Northwest Territories. We care about those things. I care about them. I don’t want anyone to feel unrepresented. Those are the challenges before us.
One of the issues that I struggle with is which one not only helps Yellowknife but helps the territory at large. I’m willing to do my part, carry the fair share of the load and to do what is necessary, but this, in essence, all of these continue to allow the political interests to be the forefront of the issue, and really what we should be asking ourselves is how are we serving the constituents, or at large how are we serving all residents of the Northwest Territories. So then in the way of the balance here, we carry politics versus programming, politics versus people and then politics versus the personalization of how do we do this.
Again, the 18 recommendation, just for sheer illustration, points out that, well geez, if we accept 18 we’d be deleting Tom and maybe a Michael’s riding. That is not the case and, unfortunately, that always becomes the issue. We always talk about it in that context. We should be talking about how we represent people fairly. That’s why I will support the motion that comes forward later today, of course, about taking the politics out of the initiative, because we need people to do this to provide guidance, advice, direction, and then not let the politicians then control the outcome of it.
My ideal situation of what a true commission would look like is, first of all, it would be binding, and second of all, I would issue a suggestion of it would, say, our two top judges plus maybe a lay judge, so you could have a judge from the Supreme Court and the Territorial Court.
Finding boundaries, fairness and fair representation is not politics. It’s just being human, and the challenges of this are not easy. I think the only solution – and I will be moving a motion to that context – is to refuse all three suggestions. I don’t think it’s met the minimum of what we wanted, and I think, if anything, as I said earlier, all these combinations in some way, although well intended,
has fogged the greater issue of how we do this business.
Fairness for all has always been told to me and I agree with people who’ve always told me that. If we pick 18, 19 or 20, are we being fair to all? I assert to you that 18 is complicated, 19 is avoiding the problem, and 21 keeps us super safe that no one’s feelings get hurt. Have we done our job? I would assert to this Chamber that we have not done our job if we pick any of those three. I don’t think we’ve done enough work.
At the same time, we have all the time we need. What I mean by that is we could send this back and ask for a revision, better instructions, instructions that are clear, elaborate, and certainly, if any case, binding, and at the same time, we could get it back to this House and ensure it was still implemented in a timely way. I have great faith in that. I have great faith in the people that could do that. But at the end of the day, we have to depersonalize this, take out the politics, and here we are politicians, 18 in the room, and we’re talking about not being political. Isn’t that kind of ironic of the whole situation?
By going to 21 there’s a big fault, and I know several people want that. I believe that, yes, it creates a parity situation, whereas if we add one to Yellowknife, sure, lots of people in Yellowknife say we need more MLAs, but you just further tip the balance right back into the exact same situation but adding one more outside of Yellowknife, so you actually haven’t pushed the initiative forward. All you now do is create two new MLAs and I don’t think we’ve solved any problems.
But we have to deal with the elephant in the room, which is the size of certain ridings, and Tu Nedhe’s size must be addressed under this scenario. I don’t know if I fully agree with deleting it, but I do say a three to one voting power is challenging. I can tell you, in Yellowknife it bothers a lot of people, and that elephant in the room cannot be ignored. I do not want the people of Tu Nedhe to be unrepresented, and I would not suggest that in any way. I just think that it’s an issue that we need to talk more about and how we get there, and we will find a way.
As my time runs down, I will leave it with this, is that my issue is about depersonalizing this. We must find a way that creates fairness for all. Geography is a problem but I don’t think it’s an insurmountable challenge that the boundary lines cannot be better drawn, and as such, later today I will be moving a motion that reflects that interest. Of course, I’ll let the House’s decision stand, whatever direction it takes.