Debates of November 5, 2013 (day 2)

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. General comments. Next I have Minister Lafferty.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. [Translation] I would also like to thank the commission for doing the report for us, and I know it was very difficult work for them and that’s one of the reasons that we’re sitting here to discuss it today. I know that they’ve travelled to all the communities to meet with the people and they also went in the Behchoko and Whati ridings and they’ve listened to a lot of people and their concerns. How can they get more representation in their area was one of the topics that they had. But today in the Dogrib region, there are a lot of people that are sitting here. They are also concerned. A lot of our Dogrib leaders are in the House because they are concerned about this situation.

Every seven years or more, this issue always comes up, how many representatives are here, are we going to get an extra representation is what our concern is. But we have to think about one issue. When you’re talking about 25 percent, it’s been like that in the past. We have to take note of that 25 percent riding. I know there are a lot of people that have expressed their concerns here. They want to have 21, but they have to have the status quo to go with that. But in the Tlicho region, we have 25 percent. We are far beyond 25 percent representation in our region. I think we are at 39 percent in our region, so that is why the leaders have expressed for another person to represent them.

We know by our communities. We are from small communities. We have small communities. We have many communities that are small but they have to have representation and with the culture and language needs, and we have to remember that. But we have to always look at the people in the region. We have to make sure that they are represented.

I know that some people said that they want 18 or 19. Maybe they will do away with one chair, but Tu Nedhe and Deh Cho, if they are going to be put together, what do they think? What do the people think about it? I know that a lot of people in that area are not happy with that. And they also said Tu Nedhe and Weledeh, they want to put them together, and I know that people in that area don’t like that. They have always had representation in the past, that is known, and then they talk about 21 seats. I think right now 21 seats is more favourable. When you look at it, you have to think about your language, your culture, and you have to take note into all those issues of language and culture.

When they went to the Behchoko area, a lot of people showed up for the meeting. When they went to other northern communities, a lot of the people didn’t show up to the meetings, but in the Behchoko region a lot of people went to the meetings because they are concerned. We’ve been talking about this for a very long time.

We are following our elders’ advice. We always wanted to have an extra representation. In the Monfwi riding there are over 3,000, 39.5 percent, that is the percentage in that riding, but right now, as we have it, we have 25 percent, and it seems like they can get a representation for 25 percent. You have to take a look at that.

When the commission looked at the population, they took into consideration that 25 percent to 39 percent representation. Right now it is 39 percent. What about in the next eight years? It could go up to 50 percent, but it seems like our population is on the rise, but we still don’t have that extra representation.

When you look at the whole situation in our area, it seems like it’s almost the same as Inuvik representation. It’s also like that in Hay River. Our population, when you look at our population, it is the same as those two regions. You have to take a look at that. You have to notice that population, and I know that a lot of people here have made their comments and concerns about it.

Every eight years there are recommendations; yes, we want this representation, or else they’ll say no, we don’t need representation. That is the way it used to be, but now they say we have 19 representatives. Why did we have the commission do this work if we’re not going to have this change? I know that it’s going to take a lot of money if we do have 21 representations, but in our region we have our own government. We have self-government in our region and we want to work well and go forward ahead with each other, but it seems like we’re not doing that because we’re not having the equal representation. If it stays as 19, it seems like we are not going to have any proper representation.

When you want to look at population, it’s always like you have to know the population. Even though we have over 3,000 people living in that area, some of the southern provinces, a lot of our population are away at school or living down south and they are the ones that come back and that’s how our population will rise again, so a lot of those people talk to me and express their concerns. Those kinds of people that are living down south are not also counted within our riding. When you look at the situation, there’s 25 percent. We should take a really good look at that 25 percent situation. We have to have equal representation and be represented equally, even though we are from other places or from other representation or from small communities. It seems like sometimes they are under-represented and they are not even counted, but we want two representatives in our region but some other people, some other ridings are… I know that if they were in our situation, at 39 percent, they would be asking for extra representation, so that is one of the reasons we are asking for representation as everybody spoke on status quo. I know that the Commissioner said that status quo is not to be, so if we change it little bit now, we change it. After, are we going to be adding one or two or two or three chairs? So, once it’s in the court’s hand, a decision is going to be made.

Right now our elders, leaders, have given me a direction. That is why I am speaking here in front of you. I have always supported 21 seats and that is what I wanted to bring up my concern in the Monfwi area. I know that all the MLAs have also expressed their concerns, so I would just like to express my concerns and say thank you.

Thank you. Next for general comments I have Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to provide some comments in relation to the Electoral Boundaries Commission. I just wanted to start off by saying, first and foremost, I don’t think we need any more politicians to represent the people in the Northwest Territories. I think 19 is very good. I’ve been here for almost a decade and the scenario that we have today is a workable one, it’s a manageable one.

Some Members are talking about the cost and that certainly is a factor in all of this, but I want to make one other thing clear. That is that I wouldn’t support any move to erode what representation the citizens of Yellowknife and my riding in Kam Lake have in this building. Again, I either would stay with 19, the status quo, the recommendation in the report, or I could be persuaded to look at the option to go to 21, if that presents itself later this afternoon. Again, I think, if we are going to look at adding a seat outside of Yellowknife, adding a seat to Yellowknife certainly would have to happen, in my mind. The report speaks to that and certainly that is something that may be available to us later today.

We have gone through this before. I know some Members have been here for a fifth term for a couple of you, and this is my third term, and there are other Members that have been and lived through an Electoral Boundaries Commission report. The last one was eight years ago, where the Legislative Assembly just basically decided not to act on the recommendations of the report. That obviously is an option that’s available to us, as well; you know, just don’t do anything with it. I think we have to be thankful for the work that was done. We gave instructions to the Electoral Boundaries Commission. We sent them on their way with looking at 18, 19 and 21 and they did come back with recommendations.

One of the interesting things is we really have to take the politics out of this going forward. You can just see it; I mean, it’s there. I don’t think politicians should be making decisions that will directly affect them. That should be taken out of our hands. The Electoral Boundaries Commission was commissioned and that’s supposed to depoliticize the process, but it doesn’t do that because the report comes back and politicians end up deciding. So we really have to look and find a way when we get into doing the next Electoral Boundaries Commission report eight years from now that these recommendations – of course, Members eight years from now will have an opportunity to provide input to the Commission – should be binding. They should be taken out of the hands of politicians. You know, we have a justice that chairs the commission. The directions are explicit; they’re direct. Whatever the commission goes out and comes back with, I think the people of the Northwest Territories, because that’s who the commission gets out and talks and speaks to are the people of the Northwest Territories, then they would come back with their report and that would be what happens. It would take the politics out of it. I think that’s what it was intended to do in the first place, but the politics gets back into it and it gets very complicated. Again, people can say they don’t have political agendas, but everybody has a political agenda that’s in this room. Again, I think it will serve us well in the future to depoliticize the process.

For today’s purpose, again, I wouldn’t support anything that is going to erode the representation that Yellowknife has in this House. I, first and foremost, would support the 19 Members as outlined in the report. Failing that, I would support a move to go to 21 Members. We are actively trying to grow our economy here. We have devolution, we have a lot of exciting things happening in the economy, and my belief is we are going to attract more people to live here in the Northwest Territories. I wouldn’t be frightened to go to 21 Members. I could live with that, but my first look at this is we should try to stay with 19 Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. General comments. The next person I have on my list is Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is my third go around with this type of report and debate. The hard issue that tends to get overlooked every time is the fundamental discussion of how many MLAs do we think we need in the Northwest Territories to run the government, and work back from there and design our system. We tend to want to follow the line of least resistance, which is either the status quo or just add more. It’s very similar to some of the budgeting processes where we very rarely cut government. We tend to just add more because it’s easier to add than it is to cut.

I know we have the smallest constituencies in Canada between ourselves. Nunavut is even smaller and then the Yukon. We are scattered over a broad geography, I would acknowledge, but we have to keep in mind we have about 42,000 people and our population is flat. I’ve heard it from some of my colleagues as well. In all my travels across the North and all of my discussions in this House during budgeting processes as we ask for things, be it addictions or be it full-service daycares, more money for highways, roads, I have yet to hear here, or anywhere that I’ve been, anybody asking us of all the things we need to do as a government, all of our priorities where we spend our scarce resources, we need more MLAs. I have yet to hear that.

The issue for me is very simple. We are a huge government. We have a lot of MLAs. We have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of employees. When you look at the Northwest Territories and you look at all the government that’s here, we are probably the most governed jurisdiction or one of the most governed jurisdictions anywhere. It is an issue of too big a government, too many politicians, too many other needs, and I was a proponent of why don’t we do something dramatic and look at adjusting down instead of up, which is where the 18 came from. There was enough support to at least get it looked at.

I can live with status quo or the adjustment to 19, but I just cannot bring myself to accept the fact that we have to grow government, grow the number of politicians at the expense of other things because it’s the easiest thing to do rather than living within our political means. So, Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to make a few brief comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next I have Premier McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, would like to thank the Electoral Boundaries Commission for the work they did. We asked the commission to look at the three options. In hindsight, perhaps we should have asked them to come up with options for each of the three options. That might have been able to encompass more scenarios.

I think, at the risk of repeating what others have said, we are 42,000 people here in the Northwest Territories with 19 MLAs. So when you average that out, the average population to have effective representation would be approximately 2,200 people. We all know that the Northwest Territories is the only jurisdiction in Canada whose population has been declining. It hasn’t been a significant decline. I think it has been 0.1 or 0.2 percent and 100 to 200 people per year. I think what’s been happening is the trends are people are moving from the smaller centres to the larger centres.

With regard to how many MLAs it takes to run a government, I think the answer does not lie in increasing the number of MLA seats. We should realign boundaries because population dynamics are shifting. We shouldn’t be increasing seats because the population is moving around, so to just resolve the problem, we’ll add one or two more seats. I think the answer lies in realigning the boundaries.

We are a consensus government. We don’t have political parties, so we don’t have to worry about gerrymandering when it comes to setting electoral boundaries. I agree that we should do our best to represent culture and language wherever possible, but we also need to have equal and effective representation as best as we can.

So my view is we gave direction to the Electoral Boundaries Commission. We should select one of the three options. I’m leaning towards 19 at this point. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Premier McLeod. Next on the list for general comments is Minister Abernethy.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Both prior to the interim report coming out and after the interim report came out, I had an opportunity to talk to constituents and residents across the Northwest Territories, to try to get a sense of what many people were thinking.

It is clear to me that what people want is better balance in the ridings through the Northwest Territories, including the under-represented areas of Yellowknife and Monfwi. We asked the commission to do something for us. We asked them to go out and provide recommendations on 18, 19 and 21, but we did provide a legal framework for them to do that in.

Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that every citizen in Canada has the right to vote in an election of Members of a Legislative Assembly and the constitutional right to vote is a right to effective representation.

We also know that the Supreme Court of British Columbia determined that there are constitutional limits on the unequal distribution of population between electoral districts and this sets the stage for the deviations that we all have been talking about, which is the plus or minus 25 percent. This concept was also supported and affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada.

So the right to vote enshrined in Section 3 of the Charter is not equality of voting power, but more of a right to effective representation. These are the conditions that we placed on the commission when we sent them out to come back with some recommendations. The first condition to effective representation is relative parity of voting power, but this isn’t the only thing. It’s not the only factor that needs to be considered.

As you’ve heard from other Members today, other factors must be evaluated; factors such as geography, community, history, community interest, minority representation, all these things have to be taken into consideration.

In my mind, that has limited the ability of the commission to look at what may be part of what needed to be done, which is realigning boundaries. I talked to citizens, I talked to residents and I talked to constituents and they said, yes, more balanced representation, but please, please don’t add any more MLAs. We have enough MLAs.

So they’ve come back to us with three recommendations: 18, 19 and 21. I appreciate the work they did. I know they went out and heard from the residents of the Northwest Territories and I know they gathered feedback and thought long and hard about the recommendations that came forward. I, like others, wished there was more opportunity for more recommendations under each one – under 18, under 19 and under 21 – but there aren’t. We have to make a decision based on the three.

I have difficulty with the 18 because I find the amalgamation of the two smallest ridings of the Northwest Territories in the geographic areas they cover and the fact that they are covering a wide number of languages and a large area to be troublesome. I think that would be very difficult for any MLA who happened to be elected in that riding.

I am leaning towards 19, but I do have a problem with 19, as well, because although with some slight modification it could bring all of Yellowknife within the plus or minus 25, it does leave Monfwi out. So we have a problem.

But then if we go to 21, the problem doesn’t go away, it just moves to another riding. It moves to the Sahtu. Then we have the exact same problem that we have today. So going to 21 does not solve any problems for the Northwest Territories. It does give Yellowknife maybe a little bit better representation, but it’s all washed out by the fact that we’re going to have to then put in 22 seats and if we put in 22 seats, all of a sudden we need 23 in order to balance things out. Then we’re slowly, or rather rapidly getting up to our legal limit, which is 25.

Frankly, I know that some Members have said, what is the price of democracy. I get their point, but I tend to disagree. We are a small territory with a shrinking population. We have been challenged with increasing budgets, increasing costs. Probably with salary, employer’s share of salary, our other costs, it’s probably about $230,000 to $250,000 a year. You start adding that up for two MLAs, we’re talking maybe up to $600,000 a year for two MLAs. We’re talking about $2.4 million over the term of an office. For that money, we could rightly fund community justice coordinators throughout the Northwest Territories and provide them with a living wage. We could hire two more physicians a year. We could hire four or five teachers a year. We could put additional money into mental health and addictions. We could do all these things. We don’t have those dollars today, so to fund two additional salaries for MLAs and all associated costs, we have to take that from somewhere. There’s only one place that can come from and that’s programs and services for the people of the Northwest Territories.

I don’t believe people who are struggling from mental health and addictions or living in poverty or people that are trying to make positive steps in their lives, people who want a healthy economy, want more politicians. It’s kind of a difficult situation to be in.

I agree with what some of the other Members have said here today, which is we really need to take politics out of this. Six jurisdictions in Canada have made this process binding. The recommendations from the committee are binding and I think this is something that we seriously need to look at.

So keeping all of this in mind, knowing that 18 doesn’t really work, 19 is a bit of a status quo but it leaves us in a situation where Monfwi is continuing to be under-represented, which is a problem. Moving to 21 doesn’t fix anything, it just moves the problem that Monfwi is in now to the Sahtu, and then it’s just going to continue to roll and get larger and we’ll end up with more and more MLAs. I tend to lean towards 19, with a desire to move to a process where this is taken out of the hands of politicians and made binding.

I will end with an e-mail that I got earlier today from a resident of Yellowknife who said clearly we don’t need more MLAs. We are probably the most politically represented jurisdiction anywhere, with community governments, Aboriginal governments, school boards, health boards, Senators, MPs and 19 MLAs to represent 42,000 people. What we do need more of is medical professionals, teachers, not more politicians. I tend to agree. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Abernethy. Next I have Mr. R.C. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I welcome this opportunity to provide a few comments on the report. I would like, as many of you have done, to thank the commission for the work that they’ve done, and commissions in the past. I think the commissions in the past have tried very hard to have representation from all across the Northwest Territories in recognizing the different regions, cultures and languages. I think they’ve attempted to try and address that in the past.

I’ve heard a few Members talk about fair representation, good representation, more and better representation, effective representation, equal representation, and based on numbers alone, there is quite a discrepancy, just based on the numbers. If you look at the numbers in one of the ridings in the capital, for example, with 2,900 constituents, are they any less represented than the community of Sachs Harbour with their 127 constituents? I don’t think so. I think the fact that they have access to everything in the capital – they have access to seven Members, they have access to this building, they have access to all the departments and all the headquarters – I think they’re more represented than the small communities that are out there.

I tend to agree with Mr. Bouchard that those of us that have single community ridings – I represent half of Inuvik – we can walk our ridings and provide them with good representation. So if we just look at this report based on numbers alone, there is a discrepancy, but I think there’s more to it than that.

I agree with my colleagues Mr. Ramsay and Mr. Abernethy that we need to take the politics out of this. We need to take the politics out of this. I was fortunate enough to take part in the last discussion we had on the Electoral Boundaries Commission eight years ago. It was quite a debate then and we’re having quite a debate today. I do believe that we need to look at a binding report eight years from now when the commission is struck, and the Members of the day, I think, should provide very clear direction as to what they would like to see. Send the commission out to do their work, because it’s a lot of work that they put into this, a lot of work, send them out to do their work and when they come back that will give us an opportunity to have a discussion before they release their final draft, and I believe their final draft should be binding and I will be making a motion to that effect later on today. So, again, if you look at just based on numbers alone, the ridings with more constituents are under-represented, but I think there’s more to it than that.

I welcome this opportunity to have been able to say a few words and I look forward to further discussion. As I said, I will be bringing a motion forward later on today. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Next I have Mr. Hawkins.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It has been said but it is indeed worth repeating that the people of Range Lake would like to thank the honourable Justice Shannon Smallwood, Mr. Charles Furlong and Mr. Ian McCrea for their independent, holistic and thorough analysis of this commission report we have before us. It was clear that early on in this process many, including members of the public and this House, took up compelling and galvanized positions. This, I assume, would have been challenging by the commission who concluded with three unanimous recommendations.

But let me remind everyone this was an independent commission, chaired by a judge, that looked at demographic data, census data, geographic data, self-government agreements, community boundaries, transportation, communication, language, culture, public input, 15 hearings in 14 communities, and of course, we’ve heard the legal guidelines set by the highest court in the land in relationship to the relative parity of 25 percent.

Yet with all this, in recent weeks and we’ve heard just recently that we felt an elephant in this room. That beast is the decision we will have to make about our electoral boundaries, and I can assure you, the elephant can’t stay with us and status quo is clearly not an option.

As difficult and complex as today’s mechanical exercise is, I wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the 50 shades of political grey, and concentrate on what I and many of my constituents believe that are the three issues before this House. From my constituents’ feedback, it boils down to the cost of democracy, the balance between rural and urban, and finally, the law before this House.

To the first part, how much is too much? That is, at what point do we say we have too many elected or too few? Clearly, some who spoke in the past and even today have clearly asked what is the ceiling of our adequate government, and what about the added costs that we’ve heard associated with adding elected Members to this House? These are all excellent questions, but yet, the actions of those who use such argument contradict in design. Let me explain. If we were indeed a good government and costs were important, as we were led to believe from Cabinet, then why does it appear that we are growing our public sector well beyond the current framework we are inheriting by the federal government and devolution?

Clearly, the federal government has been running things for decades on a basic framework, so what gives this government the golden touch to increase new responsibilities for an existing proven framework? To devolve is one thing, but to devolve and evolve on the same day. Good government, you say? Fiscally prudent? I’ll let the public decide. Clearly, if we were indeed questioning democracy strictly on cost alone, how can anyone denounce the addition of one or two seats of elected officials to a potentially explosive balance sheet of new senior positions with the new devolution model?

There is no denying we are under significant budget restraint, and I do agree there is a price to pay for democracy, especially if it means the addition of political seats. I further concur we don’t want more government for the sake of programs, but using the cost argument as a means of distraction to denounce voters’ rights is not a solid enough argument to make at this juncture.

To my second part of rural and urban balance, it can be said that equality of voting power is probably the most important talked about issue for Yellowknife residents and was cited a number of times in the report. Now, balance is the key word here, and this balance should encompass every voter, no matter where they reside, should have fair representation. Without getting to the legal aspect, which I’ll reserve for later, we need to keep in mind that this territory has differences in design. I recognize and fully appreciate the enormous challenges some of my colleagues must face with multiple communities when compared to Yellowknife Members. But I also must be cognizant that adding more Members will not equate easier access to such representation given our geographic hurdles. Unfortunately, the commission report barely addresses this, but it is obvious that we need to retool and rethink how we finance rural Members with these added barriers in reaching out to their constituents. My point is, let’s not confuse the issues of barriers to access with the issue of voter balance.

Finally, from a legal sense we know a number of things, the first of which is that status quo is not an option as we have five constituencies that are currently under-represented. Secondly, it doesn’t matter what the model we agree on today as each model in its design has at least one riding that is under-represented according to the legal definition, and third, the court has already told us that absolute voter parity may be practically impossible, and even if it was possible, it may detract from the primary goal of effective representation when geography, community history and culture are a factor.

It has been said that we, the elected representatives of this consensus House, function in two primary roles: one being legislator, the other ombudsmen for our constituents. As well, the courts have said set clear jurisprudence for us to govern with on the premise that our vast, sparsely populated country with all our varied culture distinctions have to consider that deviations from voter parity may be necessary to ensure effective representation for all.

I’m trying to sum up here. We’ve been given an independent commission chaired by a judge that has given us options for new riding boundaries, and it didn’t take long for every one of us to figure out that democracy can be a messy business, but we all know that it’s required. If we do not make changes, we will have one or more ridings under-represented by the standards set by the Supreme Court. If we reject that standard, we risk an expensive Charter challenge at the cost of the taxpayer.

In the end I don’t believe any one of us here today want to trigger such a court battle. As legislators ourselves, we cannot ignore the law. In leading up to today’s debate, it seems clear that some ridings in the Northwest Territories have to move away from boundaries encompassing predominantly one language or cultural group. This is a tough one as these are natural and long-standing boundaries to the Aboriginal people of our territory and they’ve been well served and represented in this Assembly. But today some land claims have been settled and negotiations are advanced for others. New systems of Aboriginal government are emerging, as well, and the distribution of population in our territory has been changing.

These are the facts we must reckon with. We have a duty to make difficult decisions according to the law of the land and we have a duty to make sure all NWT residents are fairly represented. Clearly, with today’s debate, we will have some differences among us on how this should be governed. I think we can change our electoral boundaries in ways that serve the people of the Northwest Territories, wherever they are, and live up to the principles of democracy that we hold dear. As Members, we have to live up to this challenge, because if we fail, we may have the courts doing our work for us and I don’t believe this is the intent of today’s exercise.

I ask my colleagues to put away political pressures. We have been given an independent commission report with some very clear options. We cannot ignore these. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The comments in the House here are well put, well presented by the speakers. The commission went throughout the Northwest Territories and talked to the people. I want to thank them for their continuous support to do what’s right for the people of the Northwest Territories with the mandate they had. It’s because of us here in the Assembly that’s given the mandate to the commission.

I want to say that the report that came back certainly poses a lot of questions to us as legislators and that the numbers and recommendations that came to us certainly challenges our opinions and our philosophy and the right type of representation to the people in the Northwest Territories. It’s almost to a point of people telling us, do we need more politicians. That’s a very easy question for people to answer. Sometimes that’s not really fair because of the stigma politicians have in our communities in the Northwest Territories. However, when I look at the numbers here and I look at the representation and challenges ahead of us, as Mr. Dolynny has indicated, we are challenged with a court case if we leave it at status quo. Right away we know.

This land, as in my prayer this afternoon, talked about for peace and justice in our land and for the constant recognition of the dignity and aspirations of all whom we serve. That prayer talks about the people that we serve in our region, in our communities. We come from a diverse background of cultures. When I look at the recommendations and I see the potential of one culture, a nation of people that may not exist very long within our structure, in our representation, that scares me. I’m not going to support it if I have to do something to it.

When I see the overrepresentation, and I see some of them in our regions, for example in Monfwi, I see that it is plus-39 percent. I see that some of the numbers are fairly close to some of the other communities or other regions, and where they have two MLAs, I think if that’s the high number here, the numbers are pretty close. I think, is that fair? For me, as a representative of Sahtu, it is beneficial for me to go to 21 because I know in the future that I will have that discussion. Hopefully that discussion will happen.

When I look at programs and services and the financial cost to add in more MLAs, that’s a good argument, because we’re always asking for additional funds for programs and services and that’s a hard argument to counter against. Logic says yes, but are we doing any more than what we’re doing today? When you look at the budget, look at where we’re spending. There is always going to be a lack of money. So I can’t really weigh too much on that point.

When I look at in our government and our unique style of government, it’s the culture and the nation of people. Each nation of people, each culture needs to be represented in the Northwest Territories and that’s what we need to hang on to. That’s the fairness.

Just on voting turnouts in the last election, Yellowknife voter turnout was 30 to 40 percent. In the Sahtu we had only 50 percent. The other regions had 60 to 90 percent. If we have an extra MLA here in Yellowknife… The voter turnout was only 30 to 40 percent. That’s telling me something. I wanted to say that when we have a culture group or a nation group being looked at as being moved or changed, then I’m not for it. Even at 19, Mr. Bromley talks about Weledeh, Ndilo and Detah moving into Tu Nedhe. He told me that they don’t want to. We have to respect that. When I see Mr. Lafferty’s riding, Monfwi, being at 39 percent, I have to say well, yes, it makes sense. That makes sense for me. Maybe the Sahtu will change; I don’t know. But I think we need to look at what’s keeping our uniqueness here in the Northwest Territories.

If you go by numbers, Yellowknife will always get the numbers, and it is a little bit of politics, because when you come down to votes, the numbers count. The numbers do count and the numbers count when you want to prove something.

I’m going to lean to the number of 21. I was leaning to 19, but in the report it shows that we’re going to do something that’s going to cause some disharmony amongst a nation of people. For the prayer I said “for peace and justice on our land,” – we have to remember that – “and the constant recognition of the dignity and the aspirations of those whom we serve.” I serve the Sahtu people. You serve other people in your ridings. For me the report brings out a lot of questions. The least basic fact is that we’ve got to make a decision. The commission did the best they could with the mandate they have and the number of people they saw. So I want to thank them and say that they had a very tough job.

Now the buck stops here in the Assembly, it stops with us and we have to make that decision. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a very interesting discussion here this afternoon. I was happy to be speaking last because I had a chance to hear everybody’s concerns. I had shared with some of the Members that we had a discussion like this quite a number of years ago when we were discussing how many MLAs we were going to have, and I rushed in and sided with some other people in an attempt to not give an extra seat to Yellowknife and it went to the courts. It ended up instead of five we ended up with seven Yellowknife MLAs. At the time, when I think about it now, it was kind of politically motivated. Yes, the Yellowknife MLAs can thank me. Friends of Democracy I’m sure didn’t appreciate it after all the court costs.

I’ve been listening to all of the discussion here today and one thing that struck me that was repeated by several people is that the last thing the people out there are saying is that we need more MLAs, then we talk very passionately about more doctors or front-line workers or nurses. Let me suggest that two more MLAs in this House could be paid for by displacing two public servants of any kind in administration. We hire an assistant deputy minister like that for far more money than what we make as MLAs. We add to the public service without even a second thought and yet we sit here and disparage ourselves and the work that we do by saying, who wants more politicians. We disparage ourselves. Who wants more MLAs? I think MLAs…I think it’s an honourable job. I’m honoured to be called an MLA and to serve the people Anyway, I just wanted to comment on that because I heard that repeated by several people. They made it sound like MLAs were like a plague on the land or something.

Comments have also been made about the cost of democracy. It is costly, but I don’t think we count it in dollars. I mean, I think to put a price on this and say that we’re going to make a decision here based on budget restraint or fiscal policy is really missing the point completely. Once you start adjusting those boundaries on the ridings, it’s like a domino effect. So you do this one thing here and it affects something there. It’s a very tricky balance to find.

We have talked about the possibility of affecting a region or a people, as Mr. Beaulieu spoke to so passionately, that have traditionally in our territory maybe been overrepresented but have traditionally had an MLA. I think that there is some significance to that and some importance to that.

I know that the boundaries have changed. I know in Hay River there were all kinds of combinations in the past, but for a long time the people of Tu Nedhe have had an MLA and, okay, they’re overrepresented, but then that brings me to this analogy that somebody just put out here about three to one voting power.

When we come here I don’t think it’s just all about ourselves. When I come here, my gosh, well I’ve been here 18 years, but if you can come here and even be here for one year and not take on a territorial perspective on issues, then you probably shouldn’t be here. If you’re here only about your people that you represent and not everybody else, and I’ve seen that, everybody comes here with a territorial view, and there are days where we fight about this and that and we feel like sometimes we’re getting overpowered by rural and remote communities, or Yellowknife Caucus, there’s days that we feel that. But overall, and by and large, I believe that people come here with a perspective of the good of the territory. So in that sense, I don’t think we can count, oh well, they’ve got three times the amount of voice or three times the amount of representation in this House as somebody else.

It is such a small territory and if you want to play the numbers game with 41,000 or 42,000 people, really, I mean – I’m going to say something really rash here – maybe we shouldn’t even have a Legislature. We can just get annexed by Alberta, we’re just the size of small town anyway. I mean, if you want to play the numbers game seriously, we wouldn’t have Colville Lake or Enterprise or a lot of other communities if you just want to go by what is purely practical from the numbers point of view. That’s not what this territory is about.

We just sat this past weekend and heard all the Premiers’ panels about the evolution of how we’ve gone from a single Commissioner who went into the community with a chequebook and solved everybody’s problems and listened to everybody’s issues, toured into the communities, and how we devolved from there to having an elected, representative Legislature and Members sitting around this table.

So it’s an interesting debate today. I believe the process is flawed. You cannot call it an independent commission that went out there and looked at this because we were so prescriptive in what they could actually look at and what they could do. Ultimately, the decision comes back to us as legislators. I know that Mr. Abernethy said that six jurisdictions have gone to a completely independent and binding commission on electoral boundaries. I don’t know if I would support that or not. We generally tend to ask questions we don’t really want to know the answers to, from my experience on commissions.

I think that there may have been better options within the options if we would have not been so prescriptive in our instructions to the commission. Yes, there are a lot of ways we could save money. From a purely practical point of view, I served in this Legislature with 24 Members, and then after division I served with 14 Members, and then we went back to 19 Members, and something the public may not see is we do need to have a critical number of people just to do the work of committees. If you’re going to effectively consider legislation and take it out to the people for consultation, you do need a certain number of people to do that work. If you really want to save money, then I guess you could reduce the numbers for whatever, but it’s not really in keeping what the people I think really want and the work that needs to be done in this Legislature. If you’re going to have standing committees that are effective, I think you do need a critical number of people to do that work.

Right now we’re down to, on our main standing committee, five and six Members on there. It seems to work fairly well, but hey, we’ve got the desks, they’re just in storage. There used to be 24 desks in here. We didn’t throw them out.

So, Mr. Chairman, I am going to support the motion for 21 Members. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. We’ll go back to Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple quick comments and I appreciated the discussions and many of the viewpoints raised and I agree with many, if not most.

I’d say – without detracting from Mrs. Groenewegen’s point about the role of MLAs, which I agreed with – nobody wants more MLAs and a more expensive government if we can avoid it. That’s the key part. Yet, given our current process, just about the only way we can achieve fair representation is by adding MLAs.

I think Mr. Miltenberger laid out a very key point, we haven’t asked how much government do we need. Many of us have asked that informally, and certainly the public has asked that informally, and we know we have a large government. So that question is important, but we have not had the discussion about how many MLAs we need and what form the government should take. Without this we are finessed into considering the number of MLAs we need for fair representation under the current form of government. Mr. Bouchard made reference to that, as well, and how fair representation can be made to achieve it. So, without knowing the form of government with a reduced number of MLAs, for example, we’re buying a pig in a poke.

I know that many of us looked at previous debates in preparing ourselves for this discussion today and so I want to lay this out. If we don’t get around to it, I hope any future government that gets into this discussion, perhaps in trying to come up with directions for the Electoral Boundaries Commission, that they would have the discussion on what form of government; you know, how many MLAs do we need, how much government do we need, and can we come up with a form of consensus government that makes effective use of that number.

Mr. Bouchard, as I said, raised a point there, and it’s relevant. We need to have a balance between, Regular MLAs and Cabinet, and so it talks about its relevant to the size of the Cabinet we need and so on and their workloads, blah, blah, blah.

I just wanted to raise that point. One other thing was, I guess Premier McLeod raised the point that we need to be able to move boundaries around. I mentioned, as well, I don’t think we have had the fortitude to do that because it’s a tough job. The 25 percent has often been discussed condescendingly here, but it’s there to give us flexibility to deal with language and cultural group issues. When we exceed it, that’s when the flags are going up that we’re not dealing with those.

I’ll leave it at that. Again, in terms of resolving the representation thing, which is not the only issue but we want to consider language and cultural groups within it, the best improvement is the 21 issue. We’re left with only three and one under and over, or sorry, overrepresented and under-represented. The 19 is five compared to three overrepresented, and two compared to one under-represented. For the 18, it’s four and one.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Anyone else for general comments? Does committee agree we go to detail?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The light just came on. Thanks for the microphone.

I’d like to move a particular motion. I think we’ve reached that time and we’ve certainly allowed a fulsome discussion, so at this time, I’d like to now move a motion.

A motion has been made. The motion is being distributed. The motion is in order. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First off, I should inform the public, of course, if this motion passes, it actually doesn’t go back to the Electoral Boundaries Commission that had been established. It would cause the Board of Management to strike a new one.

The reason I moved the motion was, and I certainly hope I’m not the only one who feels this way, but there is some concern about how the three decisions have come about and how varied they are in such a way that it’s very challenging to accept. We’re well within our ability, certainly, our authority, and under time constraints we have the time to do it, so there’s no unnecessary pressure for us to immediately make a decision today on the Electoral Boundaries Commission report that’s before us today. By the same token, I think it would be a mistake for us not to consider that, in my view, and certainly in the view of many people that I know and I’ve spoken to over the summer, that the report was just too one-sided with all three recommendations. As I said in my earlier statement, even if you wanted less government, the only way to do it, according to the report, was go this route. And if you didn’t like that decision, then you were forced to then go look to the next one, and successively, and that’s been very, very challenging for many people.

For myself, I find that, as I said in my earlier opening comments, I felt that it’s not the commission’s fault in any way. I have great respect for the work that they had to do, and I suspect that they received an earful constantly from people about what they want and what people wanted in the communities and fair representation and the type of representation that they wanted.

The issue I raise here is not about necessarily more MLAs or less MLAs, but fair representation, and that is, I think, the fundamental question about how do we balance that. I think that’s the type of instruction we need to be giving the commission to ensure that representation is fair and depoliticized.

As I said in my earlier comments, and I used that by way of example, that perhaps maybe three judges could do this, one from our Supreme Court, one from our Territorial Court and maybe one from somewhere else. That is, how we get there I’m not exactly sure. Not to say that judges don’t have different opinions, I mean, the Supreme Court would always be voting in unanimity if judges were all of like mind. The challenges and the discussions they would have, I think, would be very deep and very concerned, certainly, in the areas of how fair representation should look like across the Northwest Territories.

Earlier we heard many colleagues talk about value, dollar value, that is, and what the cost of MLAs is. I think sending it back to the commission with the right instructions and perhaps, if there’s instruction later today coming through another motion that binds us to it, I think that would take that type of discussion away. The value of democracy is certainly a challenging one, and I think Churchill said it’s also messy, but by the same token, it’s certainly one of the best things that we have, and it’s one that we need to continue to cherish relentlessly even in its darkest days.

The issue before us now is we have to accept a recommendation for 18 MLAs, 19 or 21, and I don’t think it truly represents what the voices out there are saying. As I said earlier, without the varied considerations to it, we put ourselves in a very uncompromising position. One of the challenges we sent the commission out to do is come out with a decision that we can work with. Well, the problem is what if it’s unworkable? We often talk about trying to make sure, as politicians, oddly enough, to depoliticize our direction on these instructions. Well, it’s kind of like the old phrase of gerrymandering. I mean, we shouldn’t ever be in there saying, well, let’s just move the line over here and that will be better. I mean, there’s got to be substantial reason why we would nudge a line or two over ever so slightly in the context of balance and fairness but, I mean, we cannot be seen in any form as drawing our own lines for our own areas.

I don’t think that the instructions given to the Electoral Boundaries Commission were complete. Again, no fault of their own, but I think we can do that here today, and we certainly have that ability here today to do that. By voting for this, I think what we could do is certainly sit down and ask ourselves what are all the problems that got us here today with this report. I’m not talking about the problems of poverty or the problems of education; I’m talking about how we couldn’t provide clear instructions to get a simple reply back. As I said earlier, I think the ones to blame are government or, in the sense of the Members, why the instruction wasn’t simple and clear.

I think the best and only solution for our particular quagmire that we now find ourselves in is to redirect the next phase of this report to go back to the Board of Management, which can issue instructions to a new Electoral Boundaries Commission, and my hope, with clear, simpler and precise instructions, we can get exactly where we want. As we’ve all heard today varying points of view, I’m not sure more MLAs or less MLAs are the right solution, but I don’t think the solution that came forward was the one we need.

On that note, that’s all I have to say at this particular time.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to comment on the motion. As a member of the Board of Management, I don’t want the public out there thinking that the government sent the Electoral Boundaries Commission out without giving it some guiding principles. I think, first and foremost, the commission subscribed to some general principles. Voter parity was obviously the goal, where possible. Where voter parity wasn’t practicable, and there were significant community of interest considerations present, deviations from voter parity could be justified provided that effective representation wouldn’t be sacrificed. The community of interest considerations include geographical factors, the population distribution in smaller communities, common bonds such as language, culture and history, land claim and self-government agreements, and if inequality between electoral districts could not be avoided, wherever possible overrepresentation is preferable to under-representation. When the Member talks about fair representation, does that equal voter parity? I think that’s what he’s getting at.

The instructions were straightforward to the Electoral Boundaries Commission. I don’t think it does us much good to say that, in all the people that spoke to the commission, the commission itself that went out and did the work on behalf of the people of the Northwest Territories and this government, we’re going to just say let’s do this all over again. Let’s have a replay. If we did have a replay of this, it would come back, in my estimation, to be pretty much the exact same thing. So either we deal with it today or we deal with it whenever a new commission could be constituted and get the work done, probably looking at anywhere between nine months and a year before it would get back to this Assembly for consideration. Again, I don’t think we would have dealt with getting the politics out of the electoral boundaries issue. Again, until we deal with that, I think it’s kind of fruitless to go back out and get a new commission established and out there. Again, I think they had instructions. We can try to change the instructions, but it’s not going to do anybody any good, I don’t believe. I think we have to deal with the report that we have and just move forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. To the motion. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would support this motion. I think that the instructions were not clearly laid out. I think that it was assumed by this Legislature that when you selected three individuals that those three individuals would look at language and culture as being something that was very, very important and something that was paramount in the decisions, and in developing the electoral boundaries that culture and language would be something that this commission would automatically know that was essential, was paramount in our decision. However, it was not clearly laid out in the guidelines. It only refers to exception where special circumstances weren’t exceptional deviation. That’s not clear enough. If exceptional special circumstances means language and culture should be maintained within the electoral boundaries, especially one of the official 11 languages that we have, then it should clearly state language and culture as being something that should have been in there. I think that if that’s what that meant, then for the most part, with the exception of 21 seats, which is unpopular because people indicate that the only option where language and culture is considered is 21 seats, which is unpopular because of all the things that were said, or anybody could stand here or sit here and say I spoke to people and no one wants more politicians. Well, I spoke to people, and people are saying, as opposed to losing our culture, we will be forced to take more MLAs.

So I would support this motion for them to go back and do their work properly. Make sure that culture and language is paramount. It’s up to us. It’s the goodwill of this government, and I represent people that have their own language, their own culture. It’s incumbent upon this government to make sure they consult with people where their ridings are affected. There are ridings that are not affected. People didn’t come out in some communities because their ridings are not affected. When the original report came out, the ridings that we are impacted tremendously were Deh Cho, Monfwi and Tu Nedhe, so people came out. That’s where the people came out. People came out in Fort Resolution. They made statements. People came out in Lutselk’e. They made statements about it because they’re affected, and when you’re not affected, then it’s okay to sit here and say oh, we can represent the people across, I represent all kinds of cross-cultural people, I do this and I do that. The point I’m making is they’re not impacted. So this commission has to understand that we have to have a report that recognizes language and culture and the language and cultural differences of the people that sit in this House and who they represent. I would support this motion just for that reason, because the only one that sees language and culture as paramount is 21 seats and that appears to be very unpopular. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next I have Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to go back a ways. I believe it was last year, before the commission was struck up, that during our Caucus meeting we all agreed that we would give the commission a scenario of 18, 19 or 21 Members in this Legislature and also to give us different scenarios or options that would work with those different numbers that we gave this commission to go out and do public consultation. So I don’t think that this motion would make any changes. The commission did do their job, what we gave them direction to do. I believe that this would just extend things further. I will not support this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. To the motion. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I just wanted to mention one item and that is that some Members believe that the commission did not take into consideration language, culture, history, land claim and self-government agreements. Under all scenarios, the commission did just that. Again, for the public’s perspective, I just want the public to know that that was taken into consideration. Some Members believe it wasn’t. It was, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member who brought the motion forward knows full well my thoughts on this. Unfortunately, I will have to share it here publicly.

When I looked at this coming to the table here, I had to really stop and think, what is this motion telling us, what is this motion telling the Members of this Assembly, but more importantly, what is this motion telling the public? You don’t like what we hear, we throw you out? I tell you, I’ll say this again, this is not how we should be governing ourselves. We’re better than that. I say this will all due respect. This was an independent commission chaired by a judge. Let me underline those two words again, independent and judge. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I disagree that culture and language was not dealt with. They were dealt with, as all areas that were explained in a lot of our statements earlier today, they took into consideration all of those parameters. I hold every one of those parameters to heart that they did take a look at that. They may not like what they hear, but they did take that into consideration.

Unfortunately, this motion I find a bit disrespectful not only to the commission itself, this motion is somewhat disrespectful to the House and any future appointment of anyone who wants to work for this House. Who would want to work for this House when we are going to throw your report out the window? We can’t do that. They gave us three unanimous decisions. I trust their judgment and I will be voting against this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to point out in the report under considerations that were taken by this commission, under Section 9 of the act it specifies factors that the commission must take into consideration, under Section 9(g), language, culture and other special community or diversity of interests of residents of any part of the Northwest Territories was taken into consideration. I just wanted to point that out to Members who feel that or even making accusations that the commission itself did contravene the act itself, that they covered all their bases and that’s what we’re making the decision on today.

To throw this motion out the window… As Mr. Dolynny said, if we don’t like your report, then you’re not working for us. I agree with that. We have a lot of strong debates on this, and I feel that we do have to make a decision today.

I stand strong with other committees who are going forward and making those tough decisions on behalf of residents of the Northwest Territories. That’s what we’re here to do, is make tough decisions and today is going to be one of them. I feel the commission did their job and I won’t be supporting this motion and going forward into voting on one of the motions that will be coming up later. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This motion here speaks to reviewing this whole issue again. This is a very important motion. The work done by the Boundaries Commission is very important. I feel the commission is just doing the numbers. It isn’t looking at the essence and importance of culture, language and boundaries of the land. When they make suggestions like moving two nations of people together, which don’t come to agree on a riding, that’s not good. That’s too constrictive, too limited. They should be really looking at the importance of the language and culture.

Madam Chair, we even heard last week in the celebration, a former leader in the past went to Ottawa to say we have a unique style of government in the Northwest Territories. We have a unique set of values and cultures that need to be recognized. This report for me really doesn’t take into consideration the hard work that’s been done before us. It’s based on numbers. When you can easily say we’re taking this group of people and putting them over here, that’s not okay. Those days are gone. We’ve got to have the respect for people that was fought for in the Constitution and recognized in the land and boundaries of our people in the Northwest Territories.

I think that’s why, for me, it’s difficult to accept some of the recommendations. But to see this, I said no, no, no. If anything, we can expand the mandate or give them new marching orders to make it right. Let’s make it right. Let’s do the right thing and make it right. I know a riding is way over. We’ve got to make that right. So, for me, this motion says let’s do it again. Nothing wrong with that, to do the right thing, to say that we just want to disregard this and say it’s done already. We’re going to live with that consequence. That is something we really need to think about within ourselves.

So I’m going to support the emotion and say let’s do it right and in a way that’s respectful. I’m recognizing the hard work, the commission, the mandate and all that stuff that’s brought before us. It’s too constricting. It’s too limiting and it’s our responsibility to fix it.

So I want to say let’s go back and let’s do the right thing for the people. Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to be crystal clear; I never said the commission failed. I think it comes down to the instructions they began with. I could come up with great analogies and metaphors to describe that, but I think it really boils down to the instructions that could have been clearer and we don’t sometimes know that until we’ve launched this opportunity into wherever it goes. It travelled a journey. I don’t necessarily think the commission itself needs to go from corner to corner and corner to corner of the Northwest Territories – that’s four corners – I think it could go back, review some of the information and do the work.

I have to say with respect, back to Mr. Dolynny, who insists an independent judge chaired this, that was pretty clear because we all know and certainly respect that particular judge. In all fairness, judges’ decisions do get overturned and we do see conflicting positions even in the real world of courts.

It doesn’t mean that because a judge is sitting in the chair that it’s the best decision. Now we’re getting into individual decisions and I was trying to avoid that because I really think the commission did the best job they could under the instructions they were given. I want to be very clear. It’s not about any individual member. I think they did do the best job they could and I want to make sure that’s the message they hear. So I wish it wasn’t brought up and characterized that because a judge sat on the commission, the commission’s report is perfect. I hate to say it, but in my view and in the view of many, it isn’t perfect. We’re allowed to have these types of disagreements. It’s called Canada; it’s called democracy.

This motion is simply about one thing, but before I get to that one thing, I want to clear up something Mr. Ramsay had said when he said it will take nine months. We heard this morning – and he was in the same room I was – when the administrative staff member said it would take about six months to do this. So we have a minimum of a year to sort this out and we can do it if we really want to do it. If this is a priority of our government to get this boundaries issue correct the first time, this time, then we should be doing it. In six months, we could do this, if it was a priority. We could delay it if we wanted and, sure, it would take nine months/a year and then it will be too late, but we should not prejudice it already by automatically assuming we will get the exact same decision back.

I think the instructions refined, as Mr. Yakeleya has pointed out, and the perspective Mr. Beaulieu has brought forward… I mean instructions need to be refined. By kicking this problem down by just accepting one of the three present recommendations of 18, 19 or 21, down the road eight years from now saying don’t solve it, don’t worry, they’ll fix it, it isn’t ever going to happen. Someone has to have the political courage and I’ve seen that this needs to stop now. We could do this and say we need a crystal clear answer to our problem and here are the instructions. But the instructions are so vague that we didn’t get a good response to the problem, that is. I think we limited them with our instructions.

So this motion really only says one thing, let’s send it back to get the best decision we can because, quite frankly, I don’t think we have the best decision possible. I don’t think it’s doing the work that needs to be done. Those tough questions I don’t think were ever answered and today is our chance to do it right.

So to stay out of the discussion about why 18 is important or why 19 or 21 or whatever the case may be, I’m really focusing in on this. This is our opportunity to make a difference on one of the toughest choices we all have to make. This impacts people and it will impact all of us as Members. Madam Chair, I urge Members to reconsider to support this motion and we could get it done in a timely fashion if we were committed to it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I won’t be supporting this motion. I think we are here to make a decision. We’ve given them direction and we have some options before us. I believe we should be moving forward on this decision. This motion only clouds the decision-making before us. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for those succinct remarks, Mr. Bouchard. To the motion. Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, will not be supporting this motion. We’ve had an opportunity to at least discuss the terms of reference in terms of trying to guide this commission when it was set up. I think they’ve done their work. They’ve done their due diligence in consulting with the public and brought back a report and now we need to move on it.

I also reject this motion on the grounds that if we’re going to do things the right way, we have to stop denying that there is a need for constitutional reform in terms of ensuring that the public has a say in terms of how it is that the legislative bodies and the judiciary in terms of how this government is supposed to function, reflective of public institutions at the same time, with First Nations principles. That, I think, is the process that has been completely ignored. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. I just want to highlight a couple of things. First and foremost, we’re talking about the motion brought forward on 18, 19 and 21. Of course, I agree with 21.

---Laughter

I just want to speak to the whole instruction. I am very puzzled. It says “Considerations” language and culture will be taken into consideration, public input will be taken into consideration, and so on, as well as land claims and treaty land entitlement agreement, self-government.

What it boils down to is that again reiterating that they’ve listened to the people of my riding, Behchoko. So they came up with option 21 due to that fact. I’m glad they did, but at the same time if we were to consider option 18, for example, we would have two Members. We only have three fluent Aboriginal speakers in the House and two of them would be competing for one seat. Only one winner will come out, so we are going to be losing one of the languages, whether it is South Slavey or Chipewyan.

Those are key factors. It says here they are taking language and culture into consideration. I clearly do not see that with these two positions that will be competing, two people competing for one seat, current Members. Going to 19, again amalgamating two different nations. There is Tlicho, Chipewyan, Cree, three different languages. I just want to reiterate that, because it says they are taking into consideration language and culture. I clearly don’t see that with two of the options being considered.

I just want to make it clear to this House that a process is in play, but at the same time it’s not being considered. I just want that on the record. Mahsi.

Thank you, Minister Lafferty. Mr. Menicoche.