Thank you, Madam Chair. Committee, please indulge me, I plan to speak for a while here.
I think when we gave this to the Electoral Boundaries Commission, many of us expected to see the addition of Yellowknife seats, which have long been underrepresented and have moved well past the 25 percent threshold established by both the Supreme Court of Canada and Justice Charbonneau in the last judicial review where Yellowknife was ordered to be given more seats, as well as an additional seat for the Monwfi riding, which now under this new formula is also well beyond that threshold and is the most underrepresented riding in the Northwest Territories.
I do not support this drawing of the boundaries. I believe they should have dealt with the question.
What they did here was creative; I'll give them credit for doing that work. They essentially created two types of ridings - urban, which include Hay River, Inuvik, Yellowknife, Fort Smith, and then the remaining seven are all special ridings. I don't think any of us in this House have issue with special ridings. There are ridings that are small in population, and I think always should warrant one MLA, and we can live with that. But when you look at the map, and it is a creative map they have done, Yellowknife's going to have to get to about 26,000 people, which is, you know, an increase of -- well, I don't know, about 20 percent or so, to get another seat. So it basically we've locked in under this new formula, the underrepresentation of Yellowknifers for the coming decades, assuming we accept this formula. As well as Monfwi, being a special designated riding, will never get another seat. They can gain another thousand people and it just doesn't matter. They're special, and that means they get one MLA under this formula. I don't think that's fair.
The commission should have done their job and presented an option that is in compliance with the current law. I recognize that this committee, it was chaired by a former judge, a Supreme Court judge, and if this is judicially reviewed, there's probably a pretty strong deference to recommendations made by former judges and passed by Legislative Assemblies, so I don't know whether this will survive judicial review. But I think perhaps we should have had the fight that was meant to be had about what to do about this fundamental question of as the population of Yellowknife increases, it gets underrepresented by MLAs.
It's not an easy question. I believe there was a political compromise probably to add one more seat to Monfwi and one more seat to Yellowknife and bring us to a 21-Member Legislative Assembly. That's the option I would have favoured. But, you know, that's not even a great option. I don't think any of us are all that excited about more politicians in this territory. So there are no easy options.
But the way I see it the commission did not go out and do the hard question of bringing us something that is in compliance with the previous court cases on this issue, and I am concerned that whether people from the Tlicho region or people from Yellowknife bring a court case that we will lose that, and we will put that all into chaos.
All that being said, I have one more other comment. I find it very odd that the Ingraham Trail is being moved from Yellowknife North to Range Lake. Ridings tend to develop a bit of a culture over time, and Ingraham Trail was part of the Weledeh riding before Yellowknife North riding was created, and I think those residents are better suited to remain in the Yellowknife North riding. I think they have a lot of similarities. I just don't think it makes sense to move that over to Range Lake. It's only a couple hundred people, most of whom are illegally living in recreational leases anyway so they shouldn't even be there.
Yeah, for those reasons I'm just not prepared to accept this motion and the work of the Electoral Boundaries Commission. I thank all of them for their work. It's not an easy job. They were faced with one of the hardest political challenges I think we have, which is what to do about this underrepresentation of Yellowknife issue. It certainly doesn't make anyone happy. But I don't think they faced it head on, and I think they've left us some legal risk. And ultimately, I can't support it. Thank you, Madam Chair.