Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, as several of my colleagues have done before me, I want to highlight the Electoral Boundaries Commission and the consultations that are currently in progress across the NWT.
The Electoral Boundaries Commission is established every eight years to review our NWT electoral boundaries and ridings. The commission considers the populations of our current ridings and determines if all ridings are equitable. It recommends possible changes to the Legislative Assembly, and the Assembly then debates the issue and does or does not make changes to the NWT Elections Act.
The commission is currently trying to decide whether the territory should lose one electoral district, add two more, or keep the current 19 electoral districts. The commission has an interim report and they are seeking feedback on the report from residents on the three options that are put forward in that report.
A public meeting was held about a month ago here in Yellowknife, to hear that kind of feedback. Unfortunately, it was extremely poorly attended. A second meeting is scheduled for tomorrow evening, March 12th, at 7:00 p.m. at Range Lake School and I hope to see many more Yellowknifers out this time so that the commission hears Yellowknifers’ views. Why should people bother to go? This is important to all Yellowknife residents because it affects how they are represented in the Legislative Assembly.
The city of Yellowknife is currently under-represented here. This city has 50 percent of the population of the NWT but only 37 percent of the seats in this Legislature. Is this a concern for Yellowknifers? If so, you Yellowknifers have to let the commission hear your views. It’s not enough to contact your MLA. The commission needs to hear from residents because silence is generally taken as assent. Do Yellowknifers feel that our city gets its fair share of the GNWT budget and resources? If not, would more Yellowknife Members help to right that imbalance? The commission won’t know if you don’t tell them.
The commission’s interim report can be viewed at www.nwtboundaries.ca. Check it out and then consider attending tomorrow night. Get involved and be heard. All views, both pro and con, should be provided to the commission to guide their discussions in the development of their final report. I hope to see a full to overflowing room tomorrow night at Range Lake North School.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to join some of my colleagues in their suggestion that people get out and attend the public hearings of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, and have their say and have their input into how they think this Legislature should look in terms of representation from across the Northwest Territories.
I have served in this House for a few terms now. I have served in this House with 24 Members, I’ve served with 14 Members and I’ve served with 19 Members, and I think I have a bit of a perspective on some of the issues that actually are related to the number of MLAs that are in this House. I have heard people say, we don’t need more MLAs; it costs too much money.
I would like to just put out there that what you see MLAs doing in this Chamber is not all of the work of MLAs when it comes to our formal work here in Yellowknife. Much of it is done in standing committees. In standing committees, when you do not have a critical number of people, there’s just something that’s lost, there’s something that’s missing. Even in this Chamber, if a couple of our Members are not present on any given topic or any given day, we just notice that the energy and the exchange and the vibrancy of the group tends to diminish as the number grows smaller.
Constituencies change. When I was first elected, I represented all of Hay River, the corridor and Enterprise. Since then, my riding has got… Well, there was a court challenge, so that necessarily changed the way the numbers that would make up each constituency. Subsequent to that, my constituency has actually been reduced in size with every term. So it isn’t like there have not been changes. People talk about the traditional constituencies, but there have been a lot of changes over the years, and I will say that the recommendations of the Electoral Boundaries Commission ultimately will come back to this House, and it’s the experience of us around this table that we’ll have the final say in what will be the final product that will be produced. But I want to tell people this is a regular and periodic exercise that we’d have as we strike the Electoral Boundaries Commission, that we look at these issues because the North is ever-changing, populations of different regions are changing, and we need to undertake this exercise in order to make sure we have the most appropriate representation in this House.
So I would encourage people to have their say, and then we will add to it our experience and our knowledge here and hopefully come up with a good product. Thank you.
