Thank you, Madam Chair. I will not be supporting the amendment to go to 21. We had this debate last year and I have basically talked to a lot of constituents, and most constituents don’t see wanting to add more MLAs. I think I indicated in November, we travelled around Canada and we talked to other MLAs and they represent 40,000, 50,000, 70,000 people. We’re representing, the highest number is just over 3,200. That’s the highest. The lowest is 797 people. I mean, I know some of those communities are remote and it’s difficult and they have large issues. I don’t disagree with that. But I’m just saying to add more MLAs… Even the 21 option leaves another jurisdiction in the Sahtu over our limit again, so do we add to 23? Should there not be a motion on 22? Then when we
add 22, does it put somebody else over and where do you stop? I mean, where do we stop the MLAs?
Mr. Miltenberger talked about maybe we talk about the other side, about how big we get. Maybe we should be looking at, in the next go around, the options of how do we get bigger. Like, how do we have people represent 3,500 people on an average? I know Hay River and Inuvik used to only have one MLA. We’re almost going in a downward spiral. We should be trying to look upwards and trying to keep it at a higher number than a lower number.
I guess I just can’t support that. I mean, basically, because my constituents don’t support the concept of adding two MLAs. But, I mean, we have decisions on an ongoing basis about whether it’s a legal issue or not. We get legal advice. But we’re often challenged. We’re often challenged all the time about decisions we make and that they become court issues or somebody’s willing to challenge it. I mean, that’s the world we live in. But one of the reasons that we’re doing this and the adjustment is that Weledeh is well under-represented. They’re at 42 percent right now, 42.6 percent. We’re trying to fix one of those situations. Yes, Monfwi will be the next one that has an issue and we’re going to have to deal with that, but, I mean, I can’t support it because my constituents don’t support going to adding two more MLAs as well as the numbers, how many people we have. Like I said, when we fix this with 21, there’s another solution right behind it that needs 22 and probably 23 behind that, so where do we stop the bleeding and stop the additional MLAs? I mean, we know that a situation that the territory is getting more and more centralized. We’re going to end up having to add some of our communities together because the size of Yellowknife is centralizing. That’s what we’re trying to fight here but it’s happening. For right now, I think 19 we’re proposing is one of the remedies. It’s not a status quo because we’re actually changing and we’re fixing a Weledeh situation with an overrepresentation area. I mean, some of the Members are not pleased with this, and I respect them. I really do respect those individuals and those cultures, but I mean, we make some difficult decisions here and this is just basically what I see as a solution.