Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to this motion. It’s unfortunate that I won’t have the opportunity to speak to a motion for 18, and I want to say that I believe there are Members in this House who did want to speak to the motion for 18 and that there are some Members that do support that option.
I want to just repeat many of the points that Mr. Dolynny just made, but I think they’re valid and they bear repeating. First of all, and I said this in my remarks earlier, 19 seats gives us the largest number of overrepresented ridings of all three options. We still have one riding, which is largely, seriously, hugely under-represented and that’s Monfwi. I feel that that’s definitely wrong.
All Yellowknife ridings are still considerably under-represented and Mr. Dolynny spoke to the fact that they’re very close to the 25 plus or minus percentage, the cushion that we’re allowed, given the Supreme Court ruling. It doesn’t allow for growth. I think I said that earlier as well.
The issue of Tu Nedhe being grossly under-represented is addressed, but it creates the situation where it has been pointed out by several Members that both Ndilo and Detah are not happy about moving into Tu Nedhe and Tu Nedhe are not happy about having Ndilo and Dettah in there with them. So we’re creating a riding where we have four communities who don’t necessarily want to be in the same place at the same time.
I also want to talk a bit to some of the comments that I heard earlier. I’m not sure if I interpreted the comments correctly, and if I didn’t, I’m sorry but I heard a number of comments that I feel need to be responded to. The first one is that someone stated that with more Members it would slow down our processes and one of them that was mentioned is budgeting, for instance. It would slow down the process of budget when we have more Members and my thought immediately was: How is that a bad
thing to take more time to consider the issue at hand, whether it’s a budget or whether it’s a motion, because we have more Members it’s a bad thing to slow down the business of government? If it’s urgent, well maybe, but we don’t deal with much that’s all that urgent.
There was a suggestion that with more Members we’re going to have more talking and that that’s a problem. In my mind it’s never a problem to discuss and debate an issue at length. We get more ideas that way, we see both sides of an issue that way, we come to consensus that way. In my mind it’s not the talking that needs fixing. We have to go back to the goal that I think we should be aiming for and trying to get to and that’s voter parity, and 19 doesn’t do it.
There have been questions to when does expansion stop and I have to say that expansion will only stop when we can bite the bullet and recognize that we will have to either blur the lines or expand or contract the lines of our ridings, overlap language and culture and we’re not really going there in terms of what we’re saying, and until we recognize that, we have to have situations where we have groups together that maybe don’t want to be there or languages together that maybe don’t usually combine, we’re going to have to keep expanding and if we’re going to take language and culture, particularly those two and make them paramount, we will always be expanding.
So to say that expansion to 21 is a bad thing because of the cost issue, I’ve already addressed the cost issue, but to say that we shouldn’t expand to 21, you know, because of the costs, because we’ve got more Members, it does recognize that language and culture are paramount. If that’s where we want to go, then that’s what we have to do. If we don’t, then we have to accept the fact that we are combining languages and cultures that don’t want to be combined. I think, from what I’ve heard, I would say the consensus is that language and culture are paramount.
There was a statement that Yellowknife will always get the numbers. I think that’s what I heard someone say. I’m thinking to myself, I look at this side of the House, there are 11 Members of which four are from Yellowknife, so where’s the majority in that? I look at across the other side of the House. There are seven Members of which three are from Yellowknife, and where’s the majority in that? I don’t understand that phrase that Yellowknife will always get the numbers. We do not have a majority in this House as Yellowknife Members. Maybe we’re better at convincing people to sit on our side, but we do not have the majority in the House whether we’re on this side or the far side or all 19 Members together, so I don’t understand that comment.
Lastly, the option for 19, in my mind, ignores the issue of voter parity and effective representation, and it basically says that’s not important. I think I’ll just leave it at that. I can’t agree with the 19.