SELECT COMMITTEE ON ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES
Hon. Michael Baker
By way of an introduction for those people who have never been at a select committee before, our hearings are recorded. Obviously all meetings are open to the public, so any member of the public has a right to be present and to listen to our proceedings. As I indicated before, the proceedings are recorded and will be transcribed for the benefit of the members of the committee in their deliberations. Obviously the submissions to the committee may be made orally today or at other hearings across the province. They may also be made in writing by sending correspondence to the select committee or by mail or via the Internet. We would encourage people who may not feel comfortable testifying or who have additional comments to make beyond those today to correspond with us accordingly.
With that I would ask the members of the select committee to introduce themselves and their ridings. We'll start with Mr. Epstein.
[The members of the select committee introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Unless any of the members of the committee have any preliminary suggestions, we have one member of the public who is scheduled to testify. Mr. Epstein.
MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Mr. Chairman, before we do begin hearing from members of the public, I wanted to correct something that I said at the first meeting we had. I was reading the transcript and I saw, when I went and looked at the final text of the resolution of the House that established this committee, that I was working from an earlier and draft version of that resolution. I wanted to correct, for anyone who is reading the transcript of the proceedings of this committee, the statements I made reading from that earlier draft. They were not correct because the draft was changed subsequent to the time I saw it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was quite sure it had been changed, but I didn't have the final draft in front of me, I was dealing with one as well. In any event, I think some of those issues have now been clearly set forth in our mandate. Unless there is any further comment by committee members, we will begin with the first presenter, Mr. Vince MacLean, a person who has some experience in electoral matters in Nova Scotia. Welcome, Mr. MacLean.
MR. VINCENT MACLEAN: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I want to make it clear at the outset that I am not here representing anyone but my own views. I don't know if the Party to which I belong will like or dislike them but I will present the views anyway. I decided to ask to make a presentation today because I have been listening over the past number of weeks about comments with reference to electoral change in the boundaries in Nova Scotia.
I was fortunate enough to have a very unique experience of spending 18 years in the Legislature in many different positions, and an even greater opportunity to travel this magnificent province from one end to the other on many occasions during each year that I was elected in those various responsibilities. During that period of time, I not only developed an awareness of the geography of the Province of Nova Scotia but also an awareness of the different communities, their various interests and their differences. The more I travelled the more I came to understand, or at least tried to understand, the differences that exist in the various regions. No matter where I travelled I came into contact with people who always treated me very well, even though they didn't always support the views that I advocated or at an electoral time the positions that our candidates took.
I learned a lot from those individuals and developed, as I said, an awareness of those differences. A lot of it is dealing with perception. People who visit Cape Breton Island perceive Cape Breton Island to be, well, it's Cape Breton. Those of us who live here know very well that you have three very distinct rural areas: Richmond, which is totally different from Inverness; and Inverness which is different from Victoria but closer, probably, to Victoria than most others; and then you have, of course, the main base in Cape Breton County, and that is different as well. If you take a look at it there's a saying in Sydney that it's 15 miles from Sydney to Glace Bay but it's 1,000 miles from Glace Bay to Sydney.
[3:15 p.m.]
There are very significant differences within Cape Breton, but it is perceived by people from the outside, well, Cape Breton is lumped together. It's no different than Clare and Argyle. People on the outside say, well, you know, they both have Acadian members at the moment, so they're both the same. They are very different, as you would find between Shelburne and your neighbouring county of Queens, very different; Pictou and Antigonish, totally different as well. You have those differences.
Those differences, I think, probably plant the question that you have to deal with, what kind of Nova Scotia do you want from an electoral-process point of view? Do you want to recognize the differences, do you want to maintain those differences, or, ask the question, are they worth keeping? I think part of it is answered in why people come to visit Nova Scotia. They come here to enjoy the music and culture and magnificent scenery and an extremely warm welcome. That's something you get across all of the Province of Nova Scotia, although I must admit that certainly the best fiddlers come from Cape Breton; there might be a question of whether they're from Victoria County or Inverness County, but they're certainly in that geographic range.
You have to ask that question, or whether or not you just simply want to say, well, let's make everything equal, divide the number of voters in the last election by 52 and come up with a magic formula of roughly 12,500 people per seat, divided equally across the province and make everybody equal. Of course, then, in making everyone equal, we certainly destroy some of the unique nuances that were orchestrated during the last redistribution. A formula like that would certainly destroy Argyle with 6,600 - I'm going to be talking about voters not population - Clare with 7,200; Queens with 9,200; Richmond with 8,300; Victoria with 6,300; and Preston with 6,200.
Each one of those was recognized by the previous commission as having something unique, different, worth maintaining and outside of the traditional 12,500 votes that would be necessary to have a member. Your question is going to have to be, do you want to maintain those particular differences? If you don't, and you just divide it, in that particular end you pick up a little more than two seats just by making those equal, because the numbers in those particular seats are roughly 28,000 short of what it would be on the strict rep-by-pop situation. You could gain two seats there, and immediately transfer them to metro Halifax. I don't know if anyone would be happy, but maybe.
The other point I think you have to take into consideration while doing that is, is there an argument to be made for maintaining smaller population bases in rural seats. I had the wonderful opportunity for 18 years of representing Cape Breton South in the Legislature. At that time it ranged between 15,000 and 16,000 members before redistribution the last time, when it was reduced. It was a wonderful riding to represent because, like most urban ridings, it had no fisheries, it had no forestry, it had no mining, it had no agriculture, and most
importantly it had no roads. I can see the rural members, roads alone, the phenomenal problems that rural members have with roads, and the amount of time and effort that it can occupy for members is nothing short of phenomenal.
The other thing is that, very easily, I could walk around Cape Breton South in a number of hours, whereas Kennie MacAskill or John Leefe, who at the time was representing Queens - or Guysborough County - it's a good day's drive to drive around those particular counties in a day. You are dealing with massive pieces of real estate. Of course, when you have the massive pieces of real estate you have all of those opportunities, fisheries, forestry, some areas have mining, agriculture and, of course, roads left to contend with.
The other problem you have in the larger areas that you don't necessarily have, for example, in the metro areas is that you have much higher unemployment rates. When you have higher unemployment rates, you have more problems. More people want to see their MLA, want intercession on behalf of their MLA than you do in areas where they basically have not full employment but at least close to full employment.
The other situation with reference to the difference between rural and urban MLAs, of course, if you are in metro you go home for dinner, you sleep at home, you're not spending a lot of time on the road, you're not spending a lot of time away from your family, and if you have constituency meetings in the middle of the week, if you have constituency problems, you can do them before you go to the Legislature, you have opportunities to meet with constituents, they can even come down to the Legislature to see you. It's a little difficult when you're coming from a rural part, whether you are from Yarmouth or whether you're from Cape Breton North, it's really difficult for you to do any constituency work, except on the telephone, during the week. That aggravates the whole matter.
As well, when you're in Halifax - and goodness knows I spent enough time there and I loved living in Halifax - one thing that happens is that you begin to think, when you're in the Legislature in Halifax, that everything rotates around what happens in Halifax. All of a sudden you get out into the other parts of the province and you realize that's really not what's going on at all. You listen to the press as they ask their questions in Halifax, and that won't be what the press asks you in New Glasgow, or what the press asks you in Cape Breton, or what the press asks you in Yarmouth, because they have all kinds of different priorities than what's going in the scrum in Halifax. It takes on a whole different ambience when you're outside of the metropolitan area.
Of course the other advantage you have when you're living in the metropolitan area is that most of the government is there, so if you have a problem you can drop in to see the person in charge to try to get the matter dealt with. It's a little difficult when you're in one of the rural ridings trying to deal with it. I don't know how you get through as MLAs, but the general public has a hell of a hard time getting through to get answers to various questions, and it's not just reflective of people who are in government now, this has been going on for
quite a while. It's hard to get through the bureaucracy and to get answers. That's why, in so many cases, they go to their MLAs to try to cut through the chaff.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I like the idea of trying to maintain a base in rural Nova Scotia. I believe that rural Nova Scotia's representation in the House of Assembly should not be diminished simply by trying to say, look, we don't have the magic 12,500 for each of the particular seats. Metropolitan Halifax has 40 per cent of the voters; they have 35 per cent of the seats. But when I take a look at the last elections, 1998 for example, in the 18 metro seats, 66 per cent of the people who were eligible to vote voted. In Cape Breton, as an example, 76 per cent voted. In almost every rural riding, larger than the provincial average of 69 per cent - which was the average for the province of people who voted in each seat - more than 69 per cent of the people voted. They voted because I think they value their representation, they know their MLA, they have contact with their MLA, they use the MLA's offices more than you do when you're in an urban area.
I remember I would be sitting in Halifax listening to respective members, whether it be Rollie Thornhill or Joel Matheson or Fogarty when he was elected, and all they said was, had a tough week, you know, we had a dozen people in to see us this week. Well, I used to have that before breakfast on Saturday. There is just such a difference in the quantity of service between urban and rural ridings.
My suggestion is, if it's not broken, don't fix it. You may need some minor redistribution of population in the metropolitan area of Halifax, because there is a significant number, some seats have 17,000 for example - I think the Minister of Education has 17,000 in her seat - and some are down as low as 12,000. Within the boundaries of Halifax County, maybe those 18 seats could be rearranged a little more evenly.
As well, I think it's important to maintain the seats that were set up not as Acadian seats but as seats that would have the opportunity of electing an Acadian, if they so desired, namely Argyle, Clare and Richmond. Richmond, for example, is currently represented by an Acadian; the last representative wasn't an Acadian. In Argyle, for example, there has been Acadian and non-Acadian representation. The same is true, of course, for Preston. Preston was set up with the opportunity of allowing a person of colour to represent that particular riding in the Legislature. Well, just after the seat was established Wayne Adams won the seat, then for the Liberals. Yvonne Atwell, the next time, a woman of colour, won the seat for the NDP. Now David Hendsbee is representing, a person not of colour, I suppose.
The situation comes down that the seat is there, and it allows an opportunity for individuals but it doesn't say you have to elect the person of colour, you have to elect an Acadian, it is not mandated. It is up to the voters to make that particular decision, if they so desire. I think it's important to keep that.
I also think it's important to keep areas like Victoria and Queens Counties, they represent very important parts of our heritage. They're very large counties and they're different as night and day and they bring a different perspective to the Legislature. If you listen to the representative from Queens County and listen to the representative from Victoria County you wonder if they're actually in the same province because the views differ quite substantially, but that's the nature of representing two extremely different rural areas.
So, in conclusion, my suggestion is that the questions that were asked, the composition of - I am not sure exactly who was involved the last time with Professor Landes, I think at Saint Mary's, I don't know if he operated alone or with others, but he certainly worked to achieve the rep-by-pop where he could, but he recognized the special entities around the province. I think that they haven't changed that much since that time.
Terms of the commission - basically keep things as close as possible to the way they are. The time limit - well, the quicker you do it and it could be ready for the next election campaign, if not it will follow the one after that. I rather see people, if you're going to give a clear, short and concise mandate, then the thing can be done very quickly; if you're going to say redraw all the lines, then it's going to be a long process.
I think it has worked well, it provides very diverse numbers of opinion in the Legislature and I think that if it were maintained that it would be well received by the bulk of the people in the Province of Nova Scotia. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. MacLean. Questions for Mr. MacLean?
MR. EPSTEIN: A very interesting presentation. We have not, of course, yet seen the census data that's being gathered nationally this year, and I guess it won't be available until the spring. The idea of doing this every 10 years is to use the census data as part of the information that goes into the mix. I think you made your central point fairly clearly, but I wonder if you have any sense of what you think is a tolerable upper and lower limit in terms of deviation from the average in terms of numbers of population?
MR. VINCENT MACLEAN: Actually, I didn't deal with population - I dealt with actual voters because I wasn't sure what the census was going to say and I knew how many people were recorded as electors in the last couple of elections, so I dealt with that. Actually, the multiplier effect should probably come out fairly close to where your census is, unless there's a very large older population here in Cape Breton and a very large younger population in another part of the province.
It's hard to come out with the deviation because, for the most part, if you take a look at the seats and if you deal with them - for example, just say that the average of 12,500 is reasonable. Well, Annapolis and Antigonish are both around 14,000; Colchester North,
Truro, Bible Hill, Musquodoboit, they're all right on target; Cumberland North and Cumberland South, between the two of them, they have the target; Hants East and Hants West, basically when you come right down to it, the only areas that you're really looking at that are below - if you took a variance of even 10 per cent - the only ones that are really below it are Digby-Annapolis and Guysborough-Port Hawkesbury, which come in at 10,280 and 10,500. The rest of them, the Cape Breton ridings, all of the ones in Cape Breton County basically come in pretty close, they're all within the 10 per cent factor; most of them are all within 5 per cent. So, they're all very close in Cape Breton County. Inverness itself is right on target. You're dealing with Richmond and Victoria.
[3:30 p.m.]
If you set up a tolerance - and I think that the last time a tolerance of 20 per cent was talked about - that would cover all of the ridings, but you're still not going to deal with the situations of Clare, Argyle, Victoria, Richmond, Queens, and Preston. No matter what variance you bring in, you can't set it up to include those in it. You have to recognize that those seats are unique and should stand alone. Personally I believe every county should be entitled to one representative and I have stood by that consistently, so as far as a variance goes, I don't think it matters what - I think that even if you said 10 per cent or 20 per cent, it's going to cover 90 per cent of the seats; sorry, maybe 90 per cent is high, it's going to cover 75 per cent of the seats. You're going to have eight seats that aren't going to be covered by most variances.
As I said right off the bat, if you lump those six that I keep talking about, lump them together and expand them, you can make everybody equal, but I don't know if you're going to make anybody happy. When the people put this package together the last time, it took a lot of work, it took a lot of selling to the three Parties, people bought it and it has worked. Except for a little massaging, I would say leave it fairly close. Take your seats in metro, balance them up a bit. It may need a little re-balancing a touch in Cape Breton County, for example, but you have got enough numbers in both areas to maintain the seats that you currently have.
MR. EPSTEIN: I take it that except for those unique or special seats that you're talking about, you would advise us to think in terms of 10 per cent or 20 per cent variation, is that what you're saying?
MR. VINCENT MACLEAN: No more than 20 per cent, but I would say you're probably looking at, I think I did a factor of taking in 15 per cent and if you use 15 per cent, except for those six seats, there wouldn't be any changes. Unless my numbers are all wrong, but I am just using the reports of the electoral - by the way, you don't have any of this stuff on the government website. I couldn't even find the election returns on the Internet; I could find everything else about the government, but I couldn't find that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have a question, Mr. MacLean. It's about constituency boundaries crossing county boundary lines. Have you any thoughts on that subject?
MR. VINCENT MACLEAN: I don't like it. I don't think that Guysborough has anything in common with Port Hawkesbury. I don't know if that end of Digby County has a lot in common with Annapolis, but they were thrown in because I guess nobody knew where to put them at the time. The rest of Annapolis is quite large; it's not large enough for two seats and it's too large for one seat. Certainly I don't think Port Hawkesbury - Guysborough County, it would be a small population, but it's just absolutely massive and it's the hardest county in the province to get around because you still have to cross ferries, there are no direct routes, you have to go down to Canso and come all the way back up if you want to switch over, it's a very difficult place to get around. Now maybe with the offshore oil development there, communications links will improve and population may improve as well.
I would rather see one county a little larger and one county a little smaller. For example, there's a little area of Pictou County which is a little low and Antigonish is a little high. You could easily chop 1,000 voters out of Antigonish and put them in the corner of Pictou County but I don't know if you would make people very happy doing that. They have a quantifiable interest and a definable interest and I think you should try to keep that if you can.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any other questions from members of the committee? Thank you very much for you presentation, Mr. MacLean.
I believe there are no formal presentations set up now except, I understand there is someone coming back at 4:30 p.m. Perhaps the appropriate thing to do would be to recess until 4:30 p.m., unless there is someone from the public who would like to come forward at the present time to give a presentation? I guess there isn't, so unless there is any other business, I think perhaps the easiest thing for us to do is to adjourn until 4:30 p.m. and we will resume our presentation here at 4:30 p.m.
MR. PAUL MACEWAN: Mr. Chairman, I don't know if I should raise this but I think I will anyway. I see comments on the front page of today's Chronicle Herald describing Mark Parent, MLA and in The Daily News, on Page 3. His comments circumvent or contradict the terms of a resolution that was passed unanimously, as I recall it, by the House, which he voted for. So he votes for the resolution in week one, week two he is on the front page of the newspaper saying, it is no good, we have to do otherwise. I think that perhaps you, as chairman of this committee, could quietly make it known to brother Parent that he is out of line. I rest my case.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your intervention, Mr. MacEwan, however, I am sure you understand that from your experience as a legislator over many more years than I, that colleagues in the Legislature express opinions which, in often cases, are their own and for which they, themselves, will answer in due course. I note your - I was going to say helpful - intervention anyway. I would, however, for the benefit of the members of the public who are present, as you observed correctly, the House has voted unanimously to support in this next cycle - if you would like to call it that - a House composed of 52 members with the possibility of a Mi'kmaq seat. So as far as I am concerned, the House has clearly expressed its view and that is the definitive where I come from. I guess that is as far as I am going to travel on that limb, Mr. MacEwan.
MR. MACEWAN: I am anxious to be led down that path.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, I think that is a serious mistake. Mr. Taylor.
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, notwithstanding my disagreement with our colleague, it certainly would make for some interesting nomination conventions, wouldn't it?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, it would, very interesting indeed. I think we can wax eloquent on that at a later time. We will return at 4:30 p.m., thank you.
[3:59 p.m. The select committee recessed.]
[4:43 p.m. The select committee reconvened.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call the select committee back to order. We have with us Mr. Wes Stubbert who is, I believe, interested in making a presentation. I just wanted to indicate, because I don't believe you were here earlier, sir, these proceedings, of course, are being recorded. So with that, I would ask you to begin your presentation.
MR. WESLEY STUBBERT: Mr. Chairman and members of the Boundary Committee, I only realized today these meetings were being held here so I scratched this down rather hastily but, however, I think it gets the point that I want to make. With regard to the proposed downsizing of MLAs on Cape Breton Island and increasing Halifax seats as proposed by NDP member Mr. Epstein, as well as others, we have been battered by loss of industry, loss of population, loss of business and loss of revenue. It must be noted that Cape Breton MLAs have very large geographic areas such as Victoria County where it could take a full day to drive around the riding, while Halifax has ridings that could be walked around in half a day. Population cannot be the only factor in deciding ridings in Cape Breton or elsewhere in Nova Scotia.
Cape Breton MLAs are swamped with serious lack of employment problems, health care problems, social services problems, environment problems and much more. To reduce our MLAs where we have only 10 to debate with 42 mainland reps would further weaken our Island clout, we have little enough now, and our serious rural problems would not be addressed. We lost one MP and now have two for an area and it is an impossible job for two people. Our education system is cut to dangerous levels, yet the provincial Minister of Education refuses to come here to discuss and look at our system. Yet the minister says she does not know what is going on in some budgets. Well, if you don't look at them with the people who administer them, how would you know of any problems?
Is this study based on the fact that Cape Breton is represented by Liberal MLAs and NDP Opposition and the mainland by the Progressive Conservative majority? Is this a political decision to simply cut Cape Breton and increase Halifax's strength to the point where Cape Breton will not matter. We have lost much to Halifax. With a 40 per cent unemployment rate we need 10 MLAs. I, myself, have handled many appeal cases for Employment Insurance and Canada Pension applications as well as housing problems and so on because our MLAs are too busy to do so. Their workload in unbelievable because of our sad economy, and calls to Halifax and Moncton receive push 1, push 2, push 3 responses and recorded messages that do nothing for you.
It has been proposed that Cape Breton become a province, but I strongly believe in the proposal to do a 10 year plan to eliminate provincial governments and have federal-municipal governments only as in Scotland and other countries. Cape Breton would then get all its money due and not be siphoned off by Halifax. For now we must keep our 10 MLAs. Thank you for your time and consideration and respectfully submitted, J. Wesley Stubbert.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Stubbert. Mr. Taylor.
[4:45 p.m.]
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say to the presenter, Mr. Stubbert, that as a committee member, I have never heard of the proposal that you articulated here earlier on in your presentation. If that proposal is out there, perhaps I am uninformed because I haven't heard of that proposal. I can't speak (Interruption) No, I haven't read your column, Paul, either, but, anyway, I appreciate your concerns and thank you for your presentation. I just want you to know from this corner at least that I have not been formally advised of any such proposal.
MR. STUBBERT: Well, if you do some research, you will find the suggestions are there.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein.
MR. EPSTEIN: Mr. Stubbert, two things I think, one is I should probably put on the record, since I've been referred to, by you, specifically by name, and I think in the break I heard from others about what has been characterized as a proposal, I suppose I should say what it is that I believe I said on a previous occasion. What I did say was that if seats in the Legislature were assigned as equally as possible by population, it seems very likely that the population shifts that have taken place over the last decade since the last redistribution would lead to a recognition of greater population in metro and, therefore, greater seats and perhaps one fewer seat in Cape Breton because of a reduction of population here.
The important thing to note about that, of course, is the qualifier that if population is the only determinant. In my view, population is an extremely important determinant, but this is not something that this committee will ultimately decide. Ultimately, that's for the Electoral Boundaries Commission to deal with. So that's the first thing, but we do have to give some guidelines to the Electoral Boundaries Commission. That's really what it is that we're involved with. What I wonder about this issue is whether you think that there is some appropriate and allowable variation from the average in terms of numbers of population. Surely, there cannot be a freezing for all time of numbers of seats regardless of what happens in population. So I guess I am not sure what you think is an acceptable variation?
MR. STUBBERT: I guess what I am saying, Mr. Chairman, if I might, is that we have been losing population to Halifax for some years now. We have been losing school board budgets as a result of that; and students enrol in Halifax and Dartmouth and so on, that we lose the revenue and it goes to Halifax and that continues on and on. What I am saying is that simply doing it on a population basis, we will eventually have all the seats in Halifax and there won't be anything here. It seems to be that governments appear to be doing all they can to strangle Cape Breton. They keep moving things. They keep transferring. When they're not doing it, MTT is doing it and Nova Scotia Power is doing it.
I recall when the information highway was the big thing on the horizon at the time and I said at that time it would be a one-way street out of Cape Breton and as far as MTT and Nova Scotia Power Inc. are concerned it has been. So I think that when you are deciding, yes, population is certainly an important issue. But if you continue to cut the representation here and strengthen Halifax and you continue to have the economy go down, down, down here, then we won't need any representation because we will be a deserted island. We can't continue with that. On the other side, there has been some effort made to boost the economy of Cape Breton by call centres and so on, but as the CBC has noted, every time we create a job, we lose three.
I think, Mr. Epstein, you might look at the situation that if you have people who are in dire need of services and representation, they might number 5,000 in a particular area such as Victoria County, but they are far removed from many services, jobs, hospitalization and so on. They have to travel usually to Halifax if it is serious and so on. So all of these considerations have to be taken into consideration, not just we have 100,000 people here, so
give them five MLAs and we have only 20,000 here so give them one. To me that doesn't effectively represent an area or the seriousness of its problems.
Also, if you have an over-balanced representation where all the representation is from Truro or Halifax and there is very little east of that, then how does the problem get on the table? How do you sit around in a group like this and have 90 per cent of the people representing the mainland and three representing Cape Breton and get any effect in it. Your voice is lost. We have hard-working MLAs and we have had them in the past. I must say, Mr. Chairman, that I followed Mr. Epstein's comments very closely over a number of years and I respect his frankness and his direct approach to these things, but I don't always agree with him. I don't agree with him in this instance. I think the theory of the thing is fine, but in practice, it isn't going to work on Cape Breton Island, or you are going to simply shut us out of representation.
MR. EPSTEIN: Could I ask Mr. Stubbert if he could help us with one other aspect of the problem. The process that we are engaged in right now happens every 10 years. In fact, this is only the second time under this scheme that it's happened. It happened in 1992 and now it is happening again in 2001-02 and it won't happen again for another decade. So what do we do when we are thinking about districts lasting for a 10 year period? What do we do when we are thinking about population changes during that time? Do we take that into account, likely trends in population changes over the next decade?
MR. STUBBERT: Certainly, you have to take everything into account, but it can't be just population. It is like having a thousand patients for a doctor and all of sudden you only have 500. They still need a doctor. What I am saying is what seems to be lost in the affluence of Halifax is that our island has suffered so greatly. We are talking about representation, but I think the government is talking about cost - that if they can reduce one or two MLAs, they save a few bucks. But the budget is in the billions of dollars and it doesn't mean a thing, but it means a great deal to the people here and in particular, our rural areas that are being shattered and battered and jumped on all over the province, not just here in Cape Breton. Rural areas are getting the short shrift, including the phone companies who now want to jack up our phone rates because we happen to live five miles outside of town. So that is the consideration we have to have.
We have strong MLAs here and we have had them in the past on both sides of government and I think we have to maintain them. You talk about your 10 year plan, well in 10 years time, Cape Breton Island might have 500,000 people. You can't go on what might happen down the road because we all know that Cape Breton Island, some day, will be overpopulated, without any doubt because of the world population explosion. It is exploding at such rates that they have fear now of being able to feed the population and they are going to come here by agreement or by force.
I attended Sydney junior college at one time on a Municipal Affairs course and at that time, it was mentioned about immigration and so on and I said then - and that was 30 years ago - that Cape Breton and Canada would either have an immigration policy that was acceptable or they would simply come by force. What are they doing now? They are coming in containers. They are coming underground, overground, underwater, any way you can mention and they are landing here. Our population is estimated at 31 million. It is probably 32 million, with 1 million unaccounted for. So I think that for you to say, and I can understand your reasoning, but that 10 years down the road we might not have enough people, we could have twice as many people, also, especially with our offshore oil and gas proposals, if you don't take that all to Halifax and New York.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Stubbert.
Mr. MacEwan, please.
MR. MACEWAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Stubbert, I want to commend you for an excellent presentation here today. It was very well thought through. In just researching some of the last report of the select committee of 10 years ago, I find the Supreme Court of Canada agrees with you, sir. In 1991, they handed down a decision on a case involving the Elections Act of Saskatchewan, which had been challenged on the basis that it did not provide for everybody to get an equal number of seats in the Legislature. It didn't uphold the one person-one vote formula. It didn't view this as a mathematical exercise altogether, although that is part of it, but it is not the whole picture because the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, in that case, that the right to vote that was guaranteed by Section 3 of the Charter as a right to having effective representation, and that must be what all of us around this table are considered to be because the people elected us. So the people are giving the effective representation which requires relative parity of voting power - not absolute, relative parity.
Parity of voting power was not the only factor the Supreme Court said that was recognized as important for ensuring effective representation. Other factors like geography, community history, community interest, minority representation, rate of growth projections - Howard - and the difficulties of representing rural ridings - everyone else - as compared to urban ridings, were all recognized as potential factors which might have to be taken into account in drawing electoral boundaries to achieve effective representation. That is what the Supreme Court of Canada said. I take it, sir, that you would agree with the Supreme Court of Canada?
MR. STUBBERT: Yes, Mr. MacEwan, I don't see how the committee can go against the Supreme Court of Canada.
MR. MACEWAN: Well said, sir.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Are there more comments?
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I would like to indicate to the presenter that I am certainly under no predisposition and I would hope all committee members are of the same mind. I think it is very important that we listen to all Nova Scotians, irrespective of political stripe, but our mandate, I believe, is to listen to Nova Scotians that come before us. Yes, MLAs have views. We have MLAs in our own caucus who have views, perhaps, that we may not necessarily agree with, but we do respect all members in the House. I think that is a given. But, personally, I am more interested in views coming from people such as yourself, a former grassroots politician who is very close to the people. So thank you, very much.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I think, Mr. Epstein, you had a comment.
MR. EPSTEIN: I actually have one more question for Mr. Stubbert. A decade ago, when the last Electoral Boundaries Commission turned its mind to the question, one of the points that they were asked to consider was maintaining county lines but on the other hand, they didn't do that. There were a few instances where county lines are crossed, and I have in mind, of course, Guysborough-Port Hawkesbury here and I guess there is Chester-St. Margaret's and there is Digby-Annapolis. I am wondering if you have any observations for us that might help us think about this issue of county lines when we turn our minds to this issue of community of interest, history and geography?
[5:00 p.m.]
MR. STUBBERT: Mr. Chairman, county lines don't often mean very much. I represented Cape Breton County on municipal government for some 25 years. In the first regional government they swept away the county lines, they doubled our taxes and they cut our services. So county lines certainly are of value when defining the rural area but whether they can be applied in the case of 10 MLAs or not, I am not sure whether that would be feasible or not.
I know the area of Cape Breton County - and when you are talking about Cape Breton County you are talking about the whole industrial area now but I am talking about the rural Cape Breton County, the former Cape Breton County - there should be some recognition of the needs in those areas because they are very great. I could go on for 20 minutes on the needs of roads, water and sewer and so on and the concentration goes on in the towns and the former city rather than the rural areas.
For instance, right now in the Town of Sydney Mines - to their credit and to the credit of their representatives - I believe $1.6 million is being spent. There are nine communities in my former district, close to 8,000 people, and we got $40,000; that is not even the interest on $1 million. So county lines should be recognized and looked at but they may have to spill
over into the urban-serviced areas in order to create a reasonable representation from our MLAs.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. As a member of the Executive Council I would have to say - you mentioned there was a proposal by government to reduce the number of MLAs for cost-cutting - I am not aware of any such proposal. There may be a member of the government Party who holds those views, but for the record I wanted to indicate that that is not a government position, I believe.
MR. STUBBERT: No, this was not a recommendation from government. It was a recommendation from economists and people who sometimes do better planning than government - sometimes. I usually describe an economist as someone who guesses wrong. (Laughter)
I want to thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and the committee, for not only allowing me to appear but to take the time from your busy schedule to look at the situation, to come to Cape Breton. Some won't do that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, sir. I believe that is the last of our presenters until we resume at 7:00 p.m. Unless we have any other business, we stand adjourned until 7:00 p.m.
AN HON. MEMBER: Do have any presenters at 7:00 p.m.?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is there anybody scheduled for 7:00 p.m.? (Interruption) Yes. How many people do we have scheduled right now? (Interruption) One. Well, there may be more people who come in so I guess we will resume at 7:00 p.m.
[5:04 p.m. The select committee recessed.]
[7:03 p.m. The select committee reconvened.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to call this meeting of the committee back to order. We have two presenters scheduled for this evening. The first of our presenters is David Johnson. Mr. Johnson, would you like to come forward and have a seat, please?
Just for your information and for any other member of the public present, the proceedings here this evening are being recorded and will be transcribed for the benefit of the committee members. Obviously this is a public meeting. We thought that would be useful for those individuals present to know. As well, because some of the people who may not have been present this afternoon when we did introductions, I would ask the members of the committee, to introduce themselves and name their ridings.
[The members of the select committee introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Go ahead, Mr. Johnson.
MR. DAVID JOHNSON: Just let me introduce myself. I am David Johnson, and I teach political science here at the University College of Cape Breton. Just by way of introduction, I have long been interested in electoral distribution, electoral policy, election law, and before I took up the position here at UCCB I had worked on a part-time basis with Elections Ontario. I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight, and I wish you well in your meetings and discussions and deliberations in the days and weeks to come.
I think yours is far from an enviable task, but an important one. The members of this committee are called upon to help chart the evolution of the Legislature in this province and, as such, you are called upon to help chart the evolution of the democratic process in this province. This is all-important and very solemn work that you're charged with; of course I also appreciate it will not be easy. I am sure, as you'd know coming into this, this will not be easy. You will face many passionately held, yet competing viewpoints regarding electoral distribution.
Of course, electoral distribution engages many matters: matters of equality; the principle of representation by population; the integrity of the individual right to vote; the concept of fair representation; concerns regarding regional interest; community representation; and the collective interests respecting economic and social development, especially as it relates to the rural mainland of this province and Cape Breton Island.
I think in many ways the core tension in electoral distribution, as you're well aware, is a division of interest between individual elector equality based on the principle of one person, one vote, and collective regional interests, the community representation, community sustenance, and community development. This tension is palpable and how to manage it calls for the exercise of sound and wise leadership.
I have taken the opportunity of providing the members of the committee with a copy of an article I had published in 1994 in the McGill Law Journal. It's an article that although time-related in that it came out as an analysis of the still most-recent Supreme Court decision on electoral distribution dealing with the evolution of a sister committee, I guess I could say, coming out of Saskatchewan, I thought, looking back at this piece, some of the basic principles that are discussed in the piece are, in my opinion, worthwhile. I took the liberty of providing copies for the committee, for your reading.
Some basic thoughts here on the questions that were asked in the press advertisement for this committee. I am sure we will have more time to deal with some of these matters later, matters regarding the terms of reference of the distribution commission as to composition. I really would not have much to say other than encouraging the committee to look at
established provincial procedures in other provinces and what I see as a developing pattern of distribution commissions, namely the establishment of a tripartite commission under the leadership of a senior judicial officer, a second person being the chief election officer of the province, and a third person typically being an academic in the province. Looking back at how the matter was dealt with some 10 years ago, I note that Professor Jennifer Smith from Dalhousie was the committee academician.
As far as terms of reference for the committee, I would stress as a first and guiding principle the primacy of the equality principle. I would argue that the primary consideration of the commission should be the distribution of seats based upon the governing principle of elector equality, one person, one vote.
The second point. Dealing with the issue of giving consideration for concerns of territory and community of interest, I would warn an electoral distribution commission of the dangers of an excessively high-deviation quotient. It is understood we have permissible deviation quotients up to 33 per cent in this province. Previous commissions in this province, other provinces, the federal government have permissible deviation limits of up to plus-or- minus 25 per cent. The excessive use of such deviation quotients, the use of excessively high-deviation quotients, of course, has the practical impact of distorting the equality principle, providing for an imbalance in electoral representation in a Legislature and in the extreme threatening the democratic principle of majority rule.
The use, as you are well aware, of a plus-or-minus 25 per cent deviation quotient has been accepted by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Dixon case of 1991. I would simply say that the reasoning of the majority was and is still subject to serious criticism in that case,
and that there was a strongly worded dissent in that case.
To the question of what would the Supreme Court do today if presented with similar matters and presented with issues respecting the current practices and principles of electoral distribution, I don't know. One never knows what the Supreme Court will say or do until (Interruption) That's right. I do know that the greater one moves away from the principle of equality and the higher the use of a deviation quotient, then the greater the likelihood of a legal challenge made under the Charter.
As far as the issue of a special designated riding, I would question that. I would question the justification for that both on matters of principle and on matters of practicality. One has to be careful and I would warn a commission of being careful in establishing such special representative status for a distinct group. If one is establishing a specific riding explicitly based on race, for the Mi'kmaq nation - the Legislature can do that - one is opening a Pandora's box, though, I think. One is opening a quite important and grave debate about possible representation of other historically discriminated groups and whether the most effective way of dealing with past discrimination is the establishment of such electoral representation. I think there are grave debates and grave questions about that.
As far as the issue of an appropriate reporting date, I would leave that to the commission and to this committee. I have heard mention of next spring as an acceptable date for that and I would concur in that.
One thing I would just say in closing here is an important need to distinguish between matters of legislative representation and representation of interests - regional interests, group interests. I would warn an Electoral Boundaries Commission not to overload the role of legislative members, not to overload the purpose of the Legislature in dealing with regional interests and group interests. I think there are always alternative methods of dealing with particular group interests, particular regional interests, rather than laying great stress upon the shoulders of individual members of the Legislative Assembly. There are always alternative ways and means of accomplishing desired ends. Not everything has to be loaded on to the shoulders of elected Assembly officers.
Most of the detailed arguments on matters of deviation quotients, representation of geography and territory and community of interest are found in the article and I would encourage people to look at that.
[7:15 p.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are there any questions from the committee? I guess one question I would have, we've had a chance to just have a very quick glance at your paper. One of the questions I had, I guess, would be earlier today we had some presenters who believed that some of the factors such as geography, the ability to represent electors, the size of ridings were a significant factor and historical community interests such as the ability of common interests to be represented. Do you have any thoughts on those subjects particularly? The size of riding, for example.
MR. JOHNSON: I appreciate the concern. You've a difficult issue of debate between the principle of electoral equality - one person, one vote - versus territorial considerations. The territorial argument, as I understand it, is that it is physically more difficult to represent large territorially disbursed (Interruption) That's right, sure. And even in that case, there's much more of a concern for non-traditional ways of communication, to use some of that jargon, and that it demand that one uses the most modern, up-to-date communication techniques possible, video links, video teleconferencing and that type of issue and in that type of riding you simply cannot have the type of representation or the same type of rapport with electors as you would get in a downtown metro riding where you can simply walk around the perimeter of the riding in a number of hours. In that case you're just dealing with, you just have to get into alternative ways of communicating with constituents.
The argument that you have territory and so therefore areas that are more sparsely populated areas of the province deserve more ridings, the further you go down that road, the greater the distortion on electoral equality becomes in that the weight of individual vote in
the rural riding becomes distorted and greater than that in an urban riding. There comes a point where a commission has to draw the line. There comes a time when a court has to assess - if it comes to that - the legitimacy of those lines drawn. I would . . .
MR. MACEWAN: They have. It's right there. I have a summary of it here that's not that long, but it says basically the same thing. The majority of the Supreme Court of Canada feels that rep-by-pop strictly and mathematically is not the overriding consideration. It's not.
MR. JOHNSON: That's right.
MR. EPSTEIN: I have a question. First, thank you for your article and I wonder if you have a view as to what is a desirable, allowable percentage deviation?
MR. JOHNSON: I have long preferred the Saskatchewan and Manitoba position - 10 per cent, 15 per cent.
MR. EPSTEIN: Why do you see that as preferable to the 25 per cent that the court said might be strictly allowable if it goes to litigation?
MR. JOHNSON: The closer one gets to the principle of equality, in my mind, is the ideal. I appreciate it's impossible. Absolute elector equality is, of course, impossible in that people die, people move. There is transience in that sense of it. The absolute equality is impossible; even the American Supreme Court has recognized that but it is a matter of principle. If the key principle is one person, one vote - that is the key principle that elected democratic body is founded upon - it's that key democratic principle going up against other concerns and interests of regions, of territory, of communication patterns.
Given that there'll have to be some deviation from perfect equality, my argument would be that you want as limited deviation from the democratic equality principle as possible. Within this country, some of the leading provinces pushing for the equality principle are Saskatchewan and Manitoba, 10 per cent to 15 per cent. Again, the Supreme Court of Canada - you're right, Mr. MacEwan, I recognize that - has endorsed a majority decision, endorsed 25 per cent. There's a dissent, of course.
MR. MACEWAN: The majority rules, not the minority.
MR. JOHNSON: That's right. All I would say is that courts change their minds and if courts change their minds, Supreme Courts change their minds. Again, there will be some deviation quotient here, I know that, I appreciate that, and I imagine or suspect it will be higher than what I would ideally like to see. I appreciate that too. All I would warn the commission, any commission that's established here, is that again, as I've said, the greater the deviation and the higher the deviation quotient is set, the greater the likelihood of legal challenge. Again, whether that challenge is successful or not, I don't know.
MR. MACEWAN: Anybody can sue anybody. It doesn't mean they'll win.
MR. JOHNSON: No, that's right.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein, are you finished?
MR. EPSTEIN: A second question.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, go ahead.
MR. EPSTEIN: Did I understand correctly that you were suggesting to us that the commission that was set up should be a three-person commission?
MR. JOHNSON: That's how I understand most commissions in other provinces and certainly the Ontario experience that I am familiar with, or that I am most familiar with in practical terms.
MR. EPSTEIN: Yes, because, of course, when this was done a decade ago, I think there were probably about six or eight people on the commission. Was it six? Okay. And the three categories you suggested, judicial, academic, and the third category was?
MR. JOHNSON: The chief election officer.
MR. EPSTEIN: I see, okay.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Go ahead, Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Johnson. I think when we use the Saskatchewan decision as a precedent, and it seems to be quite popular here today, as far as I am concerned that decision rendered back then in 1991, it seemed as if it was predicated on territorial and communication concerns.
Quite frankly, in rural Nova Scotia - and this is no disrespect to previous and present governments - the transportation infrastructure, for example, has not improved a whole lot in the last decade. I have had the privilege of representing my constituency for nearly a decade and, you know, when you talk about courts today and courts of yesteryear, obviously, different people will render different decisions. But I know, for example, the previous two Liberal Governments adopted a policy, and in fact the present government adheres to it that, in terms of paving our secondary roads, we all recognize that our existing paved roads should be paved before we can start to pave some gravel roads.
That's not something that was developed recently. That has been in place for a number of years. I can speak, and I am sure Mr. MacEwan and Mr. MacDonald too would agree, that the infrastructure in rural Nova Scotia - I am not talking about the communication infrastructure, but the transportation infrastructure - you know, population increases, the demands on existing infrastructure are incredible. So I think that in terms of that one element of the decision, a whole lot hasn't changed, quite frankly.
MR. JOHNSON: In thinking of that I put that into thinking of principles, democratic principles here, versus really what I am hearing, with all due respect, is an argument about a need for better roads.
MR. MACEWAN: I don't want to butt in; put my name on the list to speak.
MR. JOHNSON: I appreciate the issue and the concern. My argument has long been that these concerns about communication are valid and important. Rather than distorting the principle of one person, one vote, there are other means to enhance the communication capabilities of elected members and their constituents. If it is a matter of better roads or CAP sites, or better Internet hookups and electronic video conferencing, teleconferencing over vast distances, these are the lessons that one does learn from the Territories, the Northwest Territories, and they are lessons that are well learned and well served.
MR. TAYLOR: But if I can, Mr. Chairman, I will just conclude. That seemed to legitimize, if you will, or justify, the Government of Saskatchewan being permitted to establish rural ridings with a smaller electorate, for example. It was a big consideration then and I guess I am just saying that it's a big consideration now. Yes, there are priorities and governments have priorities and they change, but I still would think that in rural Nova Scotia especially, because of, maybe, competing department interests, transportation still is perhaps not what we would all like it to be.
MR. JOHNSON: Yes, and then I could understand how representatives in metro Halifax would have competing and different concerns, simply making the argument for the difficulties of representing the big city and a big city community. Often where the neighbourhoods are large, people don't know each other, necessarily. You've got an influx of people coming and going. I know representatives of such large urban centres would say it's equally difficult to represent people in that type of neighbourhood.
MR. TAYLOR: That's correct.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacEwan.
MR. MACEWAN: I find myself beginning to agree with some of what I am hearing, which is a bad sign. But it is also a sign of aging too quickly, so never mind that.
[7:30 p.m.]
I think the basic premise on which the one person, one vote, and equal division of the constituencies is based is that the duty of the elected representative is the same in all cases, and that's not true in Nova Scotia. There are two types of ridings. Perhaps we can say three. There are those members who represent totally rural constituencies, like my good friend Brooke Taylor over here. Not a town, not a city, just straight rural areas. Then there are those members like my good friends at the far end here and to my left - no, he doesn't, just him - totally urban ridings. Then there are those members like my neighbours to my right and left,
and myself, who represent mixed ridings - partly rural, partly urban.
Now the job of representing those three types of constituencies is not the same, believe me, and I will tell you why - the most basic, transportation. I am the Transportation Critic for the Liberal Party right now. What a rural member has to do - like Frank Corbett or myself - is go out and get pavement. That is the number-one yardstick you have to meet. Whether you can get it or not, people will judge perhaps why you didn't or because the Tories were in power, or something like that, you see. You have to make efforts and be visible.
Now the member who represents an urban riding doesn't have to worry about that stuff at all, that is the municipality's responsibility. Blame the councillor, he used to be mayor, he used to be councillor, blame them but don't blame the MLA, it is not his jurisdiction.
Now that one fact in itself means that the rural member and the half-rural member has to work harder and be aware of all kinds of things: where there is a pothole, has it been fixed yet; has it been fixed in a way that will last all winter and not for just two days; is the ditch cleaned out on such-and-such a lane; is Madam So-and-So's culvert working or is it plugged up? Those are things that rural members have to spend much time worrying about which the urban members don't.
If you were to have two different jobs in your Political Science Department, one being a professor who taught 72 hours a week and another being a professor who never taught at all because he needs all his time for research, and you are to pay them equal money when they are not equal jobs, I say it is not fair; you have to bear in mind what the jobs are. If you give a rural member more work to do than an urban member and yet say that the urban members and the rural members should represent the same number of voters, considering the higher responsibilities of being a rural member, you are not going to attract too many people who want to do that for a job, in my view.
Now you may think I am wrong. I have done it for 32 years, sir, I know what I am talking about. I am not a passive observer from the spectator's stance. I rest my case.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Go ahead, yes, Mr. Clarke.
MR. CECIL CLARKE: David, just in following up on your comments, do you have an assessment, or have you done an assessment, or do you have an opinion on the current electoral boundaries within the province? If so, I guess the secondary item is, how would you have assessed Nova Scotia in relation to other jurisdictions you have studied?
MR. JOHNSON: I must admit I have not done that type of assessment. I will be looking forward to seeing what the 2001 census figures are when they come out. Certainly I know past literature on boundary distribution would have all of the Atlantic Canadian Provinces amongst the most mal-apportioned in the literature, the most mal-apportioned electoral ridings in the country, the greatest deviance from the principle of equality, again with Saskatchewan and Manitoba being, in that sense, the most well-apportioned.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: Do you think community interest should be permitted as a deviation form, if there are clear community interests?
MR. JOHNSON: The problem I have with the concept of community of interest is that, with all due respect, I find it impossible to define a community of interest. Everyone will define community differently and when a term is so vague and haphazard and open to variable definition, taking a look at a map and trying to draw community lines, I find it very difficult, and to draw lines that are sustainable, I would find it very difficult. You take a map and you draw lines, you create ridings and those ridings themselves become communities of interest that will then be defended by people 10, 15, 20 years later.
You take the community and if a community of interest is to be the defining principle upon which an electoral boundary is established, one could make an argument that the north end of Sydney is a community distinct from the South End, or one could make an argument that the north end of Halifax is distinct.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I guess the point, or I guess the question I was asking is whether or not you feel it should be a factor given consideration. I can speak - and I don't mean to be parochial - the only agricultural community in the Halifax Regional Municipality happens to be in my constituency. The rest of the riding, like the Upper Stewiacke Valley, Old Barns, and Lower Truro and that area is also an agricultural community.
Now the agricultural community is a big element of the overall community, if you will. Some people would say - most in the riding, especially those who go to the sale in Murrays Siding every Thursday, outside of Truro, that there is a big community of interest there and a community history there. A lot more in common than, let's say, in Halifax Chebucto, although we are part of the super-city. So that is what I am wondering, should the
community of interest have consideration or should it have no consideration? I don't think it is something you can cherry-pick. That is just one example I am familiar with, and I am sure Cecil and Rodney and Mike and Manning would have other communities of interest in their respective ridings, but should that be a consideration?
MR. JOHNSON: To me it is very difficult, and it is opening a Pandora's box in that different people would define communities differently and community of interest differently. Your definition would differ from others in your same area, I am sure. When you are opening up the community of interest as a defining principle of drawing boundaries, to me the concept of community of interest doesn't define, it doesn't provide a clearing of definition of what is the community.
You are speaking of a community of interest here, sort of an economic interest. One can also speak of students, is there a community of interest amongst young people that should be given weighing in drawing boundaries? Or is there a community of interest of the elderly? If one is getting into a concept of community of interest, one could actually begin getting away from territorially defined communities altogether. If we are moving towards a Mi'kmaq community, a race-based community, and if we have moved towards a Black community of interest the last time - if that is how we understand Preston to be - should we be moving further along in those lines? At which point do we begin speaking of gender communities of interest?
Once you open up the Pandora's box of community, other people - not necessarily me - will come before you with all sorts of other communities, of which they will argue very passionately and persuasively - or perhaps persuasively - that merit representation. At what point do you begin redefining the concept of community and linking in representation to community, because at some point one can get away from territorially-based communities altogether.
MR. MACEWAN: How would you do that - alphabetically?
MR. JOHNSON: No, it is not for me to do, but you will get those arguments coming. Historically Britain did have academic communities.
MR. MACEWAN: Yes, I know that.
MR. JOHNSON: That's right. Once one begins getting . . .
MR. MACEWAN: Oxford would elect a member, I know.
MR. JOHNSON: That's right. The concept of community is very loaded. My sense is that everyone will have a different definition of what that community is. I would just caution any commission to be very careful in its use of the concept of community.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I believe Mr. Manning MacDonald has a question.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Just a couple of short questions. This afternoon Vince MacLean made a presentation here and he struck a chord with me when he talked about replacing the word community with the word county. He stated today in his presentation something that I happen to believe in as well, that no presently constituted county should be left without representation in the Legislature. If you go by 'rep by pop', or if you go by some other criteria that may be put together in terms of the next makeup of the Legislature, that this could, in fact, happen, that a county could be left.
I will give you a specific - Victoria County is a good case in point, one that is familiar to me, one that is entirely rural with the exception of a small, semi-rural community in the Village of Baddeck. Other than that, it is very sparsely populated in some areas, although the area itself is huge, as you can see on the map.
I think in any redistribution of the seats in the province, given the fact that it is now a given that the makeup of the next Legislature is going to be 52, but we don't know where they are going to be or where the boundary lines are going to be. I think that Vince was right today when he said that no matter what happens, you should not disenfranchise an entire county with a member in the Legislature, as well as - and not only Victoria County but Richmond County and Inverness County are both in the same boat there. They are rural counties and I think there is a case for two or three others on the mainland - Queens - disenfranchise them to the favour of more urban communities such as metro Halifax.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you want to comment on that?
MR. JOHNSON: I hold to the position of the United States Supreme Court in Buckley, again, that people count more than territory, that land doesn't vote, people do and the ideal of the Legislature . . .
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Smokey would love to hear you say that.
MR. JOHNSON: Majority rule. The argument, the counterclaim would be that those people would be represented in weight of their population. Everyone in the province will be represented; no matter how you draw the boundaries, everyone is going to be represented. The argument is that a sparsely populated rural area deserves greater representation than metro Halifax.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: No, representation, period. In the case of some of these counties I am talking about, they have only one member now, like Victoria County. I don't think the people of Victoria County would be too pleased to find out in the next Legislature that they don't even have a member from the entire county.
MR. JOHNSON: Those people would have a member. The boundary would not be contingent upon the county.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Port Hawkesbury. So you wouldn't be prepared to deviate from your premise that representation by population is probably more important than representation by territory, even though the population could be affected adversely.
MR. JOHNSON: I hold to the principle of electoral equality.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: That's a start.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just one observation, I guess. I am aware of the U.S. Supreme Court case you are talking about, an Arizona case, I believe. Anyway, I remember the case you are talking about. Of course it established the proposition, it dealt particularly with the divergent, as I remember the case, the situation in the Senate seats, particularly in the various legislative assemblies in the States, which tended to not follow the 'rep by pop' model but tended to emulate the model used in the U.S. Senate, which, of course, is not a 'rep by pop'.
MR. MACEWAN: Some of us wanted to speak about that, the U.S. Senate, two Senators for every state - Rhode Island and California all the same.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That's right. I guess that is the point, the argument might be made that our constitutional system is not a 'rep by pop' system because, in fact, in a number of matters you have a voice in Parliament; for example, based upon the Senate where Nova Scotia has 10 Senators and P.E.I. has four Senators and Ontario - well, the biggest divergence would be between Ontario with 24 Senators and P.E.I. with four Senators. So we don't have a strictly one person-one representation system, and that is part of the constitutional framework that has been set up.
MR. JOHNSON: That's right. There is a problem; if there is concern for greater representation in your argument of territorial representation, I am not averse to that. There are always alternate ways of doing it. If one wants to engage in it constitutionally, historically this province had an Upper House. We could emulate the federal Senate; you could establish a legislative council that would represent Nova Scotia regionally, as the Canadian Senate does and as the American Senate does. Of course everyone is aware of the implications of that, that rather than having 52 elected Members of the Legislative Assembly, we would have an added-on council. Historically that is part of our tradition.
[7:45 p.m.]
MR. MACEWAN: In 1927.
MR. JOHNSON: That's right, but historically it was there. (Interruption) In theory, if we are looking at alternative ways of providing representation, as you mentioned, Mr. Baker, that is one option; one can do that. If one is concerned that it was simply lessening the territorial size of ridings, nobody likes this option either, rather than maintaining the status quo at 52 - and you will have an argument about whether it should be down to 40 - but if you want smaller ridings, you double the number of seats and divide the ridings in two and you have got smaller ridings. Again, nobody likes that argument of an assembly going up to 100-plus seats, 104 seats. There are these options. If you are going to put everything on the table, and we are not, we don't put all of the stuff on the table but there are options. If we are talking about - I know my points may sound odd to you because very much I am coming from a position of principle, I appreciate, Mr. MacEwan, I am not a practising politician, I am an academic and I . . .
MR. MACEWAN: I appreciate that point . . .
MR. JOHNSON: I deal with ideas, I teach ideas, I teach alternative ways of thinking to students, hopefully. As they are throwing the ideas out and getting as much stuff on the table as possible and thinking about it, you folks have the difficult task of establishing a commission with the real-life task of actually having to do this. I appreciate the problems you would have as a member dealing with people.
There are options. I think in terms of principles. Here the principle of electoral equality runs up against a concern and interest of territorial representation, geographic size, individual definition of community. There are those concerns. If you hold to those positions as matters of principle, that in principle counties should have at least one Senate representation and for effective representation, I could come back and say well no, if you really want effective representation for those counties, give them two seats or two members or three members, if you are trying to counter the balance of power in metro Halifax. If that is a matter of principle, you don't let money dictate your principles.
If we could get much more effective representation for Cape Breton, through adding seats to Cape Breton, as a matter of principle, provided that that principle was applied equally across the province, I would say go for it.
MR. MACEWAN: We can't, we are cut to 52 and that is it.
MR. JOHNSON: Yes. Then appreciate here there are these pragmatic, practical concerns that are vitiating principles.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. It has been very thought provoking and . . .
MR. MACEWAN: I could support the United States Senate, but you don't want me to talk about that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We can't determine the terms of reference for the U.S. Senate. So we could talk about electoral reform in Florida, too. It might be an interesting source of discussion, but thank you very much, sir, for taking the time to be present.
Our next presenter is Scott MacLean. Mr. MacLean, if you would like to have a seat. Whenever you are ready, sir.
MR. SCOTT MACLEAN: Hi, I am Scott MacLean. I am a citizen of what we'll call the former Sydney. I sit here tonight with a bit of mixed emotion.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: It's still Sydney.
MR. SCOTT MACLEAN: It is still Sydney. Some people like to say the CBRM. (Interruption) I sit here with mixed emotions. It's almost as if I had an enemy driving my truck over an embankment in that although I certainly do not want to see Cape Breton reduced by its representation with new territorial boundaries, my personal preference obviously would be I would like to see a new form of governance.
If we knew exactly what we wanted our MLAs to do, if we were able to write a job description which might help your group decide how many of you do we need to perform the task but, obviously, the differences in thought on what exactly is the task. Some would suggest we should spend more of our time working with our bureaucracies in a sense if we look at our good friend from Britain, Jeffrey Archer, who in one of his books referred to an elected politician is nothing more than a temporary inconvenience who sooner or later will be ejected by the voters. I wish to read something here to you, please.
If we had the benefit of Joseph Howe and the rep by population, it would be kind of interesting to see what his viewpoints would be today based on the way the change in the population has been deviated from the communities of his time. How often has the question been asked and asked in vain, why is it with the resources Cape Breton possesses that the Island, instead of improving, is going from bad to worse, the value of property daily decreasing? To make such a derogatory statement now may seem absurd because it has been so often put, so thoroughly canvassed that the words, although very simple words, have been divested of their meaning in the eyes of Cape Bretoners. They now draw forth but a cool shrug of the shoulders and observation, ah, we know all that, but how is it to be helped? There is no necessity to recapitulate the many evidences existing as to the melancholy fact.
There is no need to repeat the old, but too true story of revenue-absorbed claims, ridiculed capital withheld, and energy prostrated to mainland Nova Scotia.
It was worse than useless to repeat, to go over this again, because there is no man whose opinion is worth having who does not know that the depression of Cape Breton is to be traced to the illegal act which this Island, a part and parcel of Nova Scotia, and any man who believes that this is no solution to the question, we would not be at pains of convincing to the contrary such a man's influence would be worthless on either side.
Although that may sound modern to some people, that was written over 200 years ago in the spirit of the times. What we're facing here are the many things that you deal with as to what constitutes a boundary. We talked by rep by population. You talk about territorial - economics and the economic concerns are very important and the equalization that has been noted here. Murray Sale of the New Yorker, 1995, referred to Canada as warm-hearted, stable, fair to its many minorities, staunch in the cause of justice and democracy. Canada is one of the most highly respected countries. This is in no small part due to the fact that Canada has an equalization system since Confederation in 1867.
The Premier of Nova Scotia, John Hamm, in his October 2000 speech to the Nova Scotia Chamber of Commerce outlined this moral nature of equalization. If you could listen to the words and exchange the word Canada to Nova Scotia, and Nova Scotia to Cape Breton, equalization is not a bare-handed grab from the haves for the have-nots. It is a constitutional embodiment of equality. Equalization is more than fiscal arrangements. It is a bold statement by all Canadians that we share a common vision, a common destiny, and that being Canadian is about tolerance, generosity and fairness. That vision brought Canada together, a common vision of society predicated upon equity. It must grow stronger in the future if we are to remain one nation. It is the glue that binds us together.
I am one who would like to almost consider at some point that we would like to consider what I will call the Chinese model. I sometimes feel that because of the constitutional difficulties of leaving this province, or dividing a province, that we should take on maybe one province, two democracies. Well-known author and economist Jane Jacobs warns us, however, that equalization is a morally justified dependency set up, but is never a vehicle of economic development. In theory, equalization is not charity. It has been intended to rejuvenate the economies of poor provinces and help them become self-supporting, but it has not really worked out that way. The poor provinces remain poor. Nevertheless, the funds distributed from Ottawa make poverty easier to bear and to disguise the economic stagnation in poor provinces. The poor are the Atlantic Provinces, on the receiving side of the ledger.
Neither the have-not provinces nor the haves are in a position to think seriously about independence. The have-nots are too dependent on the federal government. The federal government is too dependent on the haves. Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia are thus
somewhat in the position of family breadwinners who have taken on heavy responsibilities for their dependants. They may complain about the burdens. They grumble and they insist on having their way sometimes but, morally and practically, they cannot walk out on their dependants. The dependants for their part may grumble in envy, may even accuse their benefactors of having trapped them into economic dependency. They often accuse Ontario of having done just that, but the dependants can't walk out either - what would they live on?
Notwithstanding moral arguments to help those in need, if Jacobs is correct, then two economies exist in Nova Scotia, one being Halifax or within an hour's drive, the other one being the balance of Nova Scotia. More to the point, capital moving from Halifax to the outlying regions, such as Cape Breton, might disguise stagnation, but it will never rejuvenate regional economics. Local economist and economic developer of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, John Whalley, has acted as the navigator for the municipality in the management of decline. His analysis would seem to confirm Jacobs' prognosis of Cape Breton when he states that any regional economic strategy that is developed must address the issue of critical systems in one form or another.
Economic transfers serve the purpose of providing the region with the resources to offset some symptoms of weakness in the short term. However, transfers, if they are not invested to revitalize the relevant systems, simply create dependence without addressing the cause of dependency. Furthermore, the investments in some of the critical systems can be largely wasted if serious weakness in other key areas is ignored. Any economy experiencing an unprecedented rate of unemployment of 20 per cent, a poverty rate of 25 per cent, a labour force participation rate of 50 per cent and economic dependent ratios of 60 per cent has weakness in many critical systems.
A brief evaluation of this critical system within the CBRM would confirm this. If equalization payments are somewhat to restrict local autonomy and thereby offer little hope in breaking dependency in city regions, where lies hope for the economic prosperity? Some would argue that the people of Cape Breton and elsewhere in rural areas should simply move to large cities.
MR. MACEWAN: The Gordon Commission recommended that in 1956, I believe.
MR. SCOTT MACLEAN: So as we look at where we are, I have mixed emotions. In some respects I would like to see our Island become more autonomous, then all you have to do is reduce our seats by one. I would like to have Richie Cotton as an ally, but that will be the spark to spark it all. We would like to see more - we talked about equalization - and that is partly of representation as well. You cannot ignore the territorial issues as raised by both MLA MacDonald and, of course, Vince MacLean this afternoon.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Questions from the members of the committee to the presenter?
MR. MACEWAN: It was a very well-thought-out and presented presentation.
MR. SCOTT MACLEAN: Thank you very much, sir.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have two more members of the public who have indicated that they would like to present. The next one is Louis Ihasz.
MR. LOUIS IHASZ: Ladies and gentlemen of the panel, I am sure by this time you've heard a lot of lofty presentations about the electoral district changes that are being considered. I am certain by this time if not all of them at least most of them are probably against any electoral changes or map changes, particularly in Cape Breton.
By the way, let me give you a little background. I am the president of the Victoria County PC Association and I come as their representative today. We met in hurried succession yesterday after having read in the newspaper that this panel was going to meet here tonight and we were going to have an opportunity to meet with you. We had very little time to prepare anything formally, but I felt, and our executive felt, that someone should come and at least put it on record that we are diametrically opposed to any electoral boundary changes that would affect our county, such as it is.
[8:00 p.m.]
As has been already said, Victoria County is completely and entirely a rural community. We have about 7,500 votes there. I read somewhere that the bottom line, when it comes to electoral districts, should be around 18,000. I may be wrong there. So we're way off the mark in that respect, but nevertheless, we feel that Victoria County is a community. We've always had representation; we've had for many years now and we feel that we would lose a great deal if, for instance, our county was somehow chopped up, sliced up, and distributed and added on to.
I am not saying that we wouldn't probably get some representation, but it would not be quite the same. We would only then become part of another riding, and we would lose a great deal. That concerns us and that worries us. I know that there are driving factors causing you to give this whole issue consideration. I know that economics comes into it somewhere. I know that there are larger populated areas that feel that it's not fair that a populated area of 7,500 people should have the same amount of representation as some areas where there are 18,000, 25,000 or even 30,000 people. But that's not the case. The small people, they count as well.
We just can't say let's tie them on to somebody else's coattail and they'll be looked after. We don't think we will. All things said about Victoria County and Richmond County and Inverness County - if we're going to be chopped up and united with them, each county has its own identity and its own concerns, its own needs and its own wants. We are all Cape
Bretoners, but nevertheless, as has been alluded to earlier, even one part of Sydney could be different from the other part of Sydney or one part of Halifax. It's the same with Cape Breton, but perhaps that's what makes us distinct as Cape Bretoners. We are different and yet we are Cape Bretoners.
We, as a group, as an association in Victoria County, would be very, very much distressed to say the least, if the panel or the government finally decided that somehow we should lose our one representative in Victoria County. Thank you for your consideration.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.
MR. RODNEY MACDONALD: Louis, I appreciate your words. I want to go back to something that the previous submitter had talked about and Manning MacDonald brought up, the issue of having a representative from a county. When I think of the Victoria riding, there's the potential that the representative could come from northern Inverness County. Actually, in the same instance, a member for Guysborough-Port Hawkesbury could be from Inverness County as well, from Port Hastings. So there is actually the potential now where we could have different counties not have a representative. I just wanted your thoughts on that - what your thoughts would be and what the thoughts of - it hasn't happened, but if somebody from northern Inverness County represented the riding for Victoria.
MR. IHASZ: Well, we have misgivings about that. What would happen is that you are going to take a riding that's big territorially, distance-wise, and make it even bigger. Say if part of Cape Breton went with Inverness, you're going to burden the representative for Inverness that much more. Because of the vast distances in our ridings right now, I am sure it would be impossible for him to do the job that he ought to be doing. That's a great concern of ours. It worries us.
MR. TAYLOR: I would like to concur a little bit with the presenter, when he speaks about the problems that potentially could be created by redistribution. I think right now in Nova Scotia there are some ridings where the member resides in one county and represents another, or represents that county plus the additional county, or may live out of the riding altogether and in some cases, many cases, the stigma is always there, whether it's real or perceived or whatever. So there's no question that it is a concern, but I guess if you provide effective representation, which I guess all members like to think that they do, it shouldn't make a whole lot of difference.
There's no question that it certainly would be a perception there. Granted, as Rodney mentioned, you could have somebody from Inverness represent the whole new riding. (Interruption) Already, yes. Exactly. Thanks for the presentation.
MR. CLARKE: Louis, just from your perspective and any of your colleagues', would you say, when we talk of the economics, that people have a positive economic outlook for Victoria County and its viability in the long term - that it's a healthy county and that there's activity happening?
MR. IHASZ: The only industry in Victoria County is the tourist industry; that's our big thing. We realize that. We rely on it. Everybody does, but that is not to say that we could not diversify and bring in something else. The potential is there, I am sure.
MR. CLARKE: I guess, Mr. Chairman, one of the things that has been brought up is economic viability. It can be rather parochial as well to Cape Breton, and not in a finger-pointing session, but to recognize that this month will see the end of the second, or one of the two main cornerstones of our economy here on this island. This is the closure of both Sysco and Devco. So people would say that we have hit the bottom, in terms of how far the economy has gone down. Yet at the same time, we see positive movement like we saw in Victoria with the water or the sewer treatment plant. We had millions of dollars in development permits waiting to go just on some new infrastructure going in.
I guess one of the things, when we talk about economics and territory, a positive thinker would say that places like Cape Breton have actually stabilized at a low and hopefully we are actually going to grow in the future, and that that be a consideration. I think that is something that the County of Victoria feels a great sense of confidence in.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein, I think you had a question.
MR. EPSTEIN: I actually just wanted to offer the witness a small correction on the numbers he was using. I think the average number of voters is about 7,500 in Victoria County, but the number you ought to be comparing yourself to is about 12,500 voters. The 18,000 number you were using, I think, is about an average population, not voting numbers. So it is not as wild a deviation as you were suggesting by your numbers earlier.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Some would suggest it is too big, but it certainly is not a factor of two or three times. It is because most times people look at representation by population as being by elector, not by actual population, because, obviously, some areas may have a larger number of older people who are electors, whereas another community may have a larger number of younger people who are not electors. Anyway, thank you. Thank you for your presentation, sir.
We have another presenter as well, Mr. Wilf Isaac.
MR. WILF ISAAC: How do you do? I am Wilf Isaac, the newly elected leader of the Cape Breton Party with a list of card members of 40,000, and we will be running members in the next election. So are you all calmed down now? Anyway, that is a theory. Watch it; it might be coming.
I am interested in politics, but not knowing a lot about politics, listening here tonight and looking at your electoral map and trying to find out - every 10 years now, you get a situation where you want to rearrange the boundaries because of economic reasons, money costs, a population migration, things like this. I suppose the two things you have to look at here are: one, cost; and two, migration.
Now because the federal and provincial governments have decided to make Halifax the central metropolis of the Maritimes, especially Nova Scotia, this has led to the demise of the populations in a lot of other counties in Nova Scotia. That out-migration may be the reason why Cape Bretoners are worried about whether they are going to retain the seats that they have right now or lose them due to the fact that Halifax has become the metropolis and Cape Breton has become the submarine. So we are sinking here, a little bit at a time. So that is the one thing that concerns me right now. I believe probably Halifax, right now, with its population explosion, is looking for more votes, more people to represent the number of constituents in that area.
I look at another factor here also. The more influence you have from multinational corporations in your province or in your country - they also like to control governments and having lesser representatives throughout Nova Scotia and the concentration in the Halifax area allows multinational corporations to concentrate their controlling powers from that one particular point, which means they don't have to go out and expand through the province while they are looking for control of the province and whatever interests them in that particular province. Right now, in this province, it is the gas and oil off the Scotian Shelf, the gas on the Sydney Bight and the gas over in the Cheticamp area. So everybody is looking to think that the gas and oil are going to be the future of Nova Scotia. If that is the case, then you are going to have an influx of multinational corporations. Like I said before, that is going to cause a huge migration from the rural and urban areas into the metropolitan areas.
Now people migrate, problems don't. You have 50,000 people in Cape Breton; 20,000 leave, the 30,000 left there still have the same problems as the 50,000. They have the problems of representation. They have the problems of roads. They have the problems of industry, jobs, unemployment, health. So looking at that, we have to understand what the government wants here. Do they want to increase the number of representatives in the metropolitan area by decreasing the number of representatives in the rural areas and urban areas, due to the fact that the migration is being concentrated in that metropolitan area? Or do they want to save money because they can't meet the budget that they promised they were going to reach, and maybe by cutting a representative here or a representative there, they might be able to reach their budgetary comments or promises or whatever?
In any event, when you are looking at that, I think that when someone said, if it is not broken, don't fix it, I don't think anything is broken here and if anything, it could be, maybe, improved upon. I don't think that by cutting representation you are going to improve anything. I think maybe by rearranging representation and not rearranging it to a point where you are going to allow certain areas of the province to be less represented - less vocal, in a way, so that they are not going to be able to get their concerns looked after because their representative might also be representing an urban or a metropolitan area where his concerns might lie, his interests, more in that particular situation.
So we have to be careful that if you are going to divide up this map and chew it up again, you have to be careful how you are cutting it up to a point where you are not taking the essential representation away from one particular area like our rural areas. Nova Scotia is hugely rural, as you look at that map there.
So in essence, I would say that the rural areas actually are the most important part of Nova Scotia. The metropolitan area, well that can take care of itself, due to the fact that it is well-populated and a lot of the industry front offices and whatever those metropolitan areas attract are there. So you don't have the problems of rural areas, like health problems, doctor problems, nurse problems, road problems. You don't have those problems.
[8:15 p.m.]
One situation was, I think, over in Wreck Cove or Middle River, where a bridge washed out last winter. A snowplow hit it. It was the main artery for people to take to the main highway, rather than detour a certain number of miles the other way. There was another road in, but it was a long distance. The government didn't think it was that important, that because it only served a few people, it wasn't that important. That's the situation that we have. Eventually, I guess, through the local representatives and the media, enough attention was brought upon the area to have the bridge repaired.
You have to understand that when you are looking at electoral maps, rearranging the electoral districts and ways to cut expenses and things like this, you can't allow people's rights to proper representation just to say, oh, he will be represented by Joe Blow over here, who is another 3,500 miles away; he is going to get the same representation. That's not the case we're looking at here. You have to make sure that the guy's in tune with the community.
You're the Tourism Minister, aren't you? Where are you from?
MR. RODNEY MACDONALD: Inverness County.
MR. ISAAC: In a situation like that, the man probably grew up around tourism so, I mean, he is in tune with tourism. But how many other people? If you take a person, a representative in the fishing industry, where you have Ernie Fage looking after the fishing
industry - I don't know if he has had that much opportunity to understand what is going on - and then you have somebody fighting in the same government, representing another category of workers in the oil industry. So what you have is a conflict of interest within your own government. One representative is trying to satisfy the fishing industry and the other representative is trying to satisfy the oil and gas industry and they're fighting each other, whereas those two representatives should be one. You see? Because it is all industry, whether it is the fishing industry and agriculture or whether it is the gas and oil industry, it is industry. So that's one situation you can look at there. If you want to make a few deputy ministers after that, fine.
That's the one thing I find, that you know, Cape Breton and your decentralization maybe of your governments, you have an awful lot of things, like you wonder why you have the out-migration. You have cut back on the stevedores in North Sydney; Maritime Tel & Tel is pretty well dead in Cape Breton; Nova Scotia Power is pretty well all moved out; your airport personnel, I mean there are no more jets that arrive here. So when you drain an industrial area or a community and then you turn around to slap them in the face and say, well, you don't have enough population now, you don't need a representative. You cut the mines out, you cut the steel plant out and you say, well, you don't have that many workers there any more. You don't need a representative there any more; you don't have anything. We took it all. We're taking everything, and we're going to take that representative and we're going to put him in the Halifax area and we're going to have him there. Well, you can't do that. That's not democracy.
So my idea is probably to leave it the best way, leave it the way it is. If you are going to arrange anything at all, then arrange it in the metropolitan area. If anything, cut from the metropolitan area and give more to the rural districts.
The subject of the Natives in representation. I don't know exactly what the Natives want or what the government intends to allow them to have. One minute you're talking about having them a representative there. Are they going to be a representative of a Party? If you're going to be in the Legislature don't you have to be representative of a Party?
MR. MACEWAN: No, you do not.
MR. ISAAC: You don't have to be a representative of a Party?
MR. MACEWAN: No. I was an independent member myself for about 10 years; I know.
MR. CHAIRMAN: There's an expert on this. Mr. MacEwan, I think, he is the leading expert in the room on this.
MR. ISAAC: You were an independent. Independent of what? Independent of any Party?
MR. MACEWAN: Independent of the other Parties.
MR. ISAAC: But were you a Party yourself?
MR. MACEWAN: They all wanted me except one, but I was independent. (Laughter)
MR. FRANK CORBETT: Which one didn't want you, Paul?
MR. MACEWAN: I don't know. (Laughter)
MR. ISAAC: It is difficult to understand what the Natives want. In one situation you have the federal government with the Marshall decision and then you have the Nova Scotia Government having to make intrusions on that in accordance with the fishermen that they control in their own area here.
What is the idea of Native? Do they want a member of the Legislature? Do they just want a representative there? What's the story? Is it just one representative for every single band in Nova Scotia? If that's the case, where the people are saying well, all these rural areas have different problems, so even though they have different problems, you're thinking well, they're rural areas and they don't need that much representation, so we can combine these two areas here and cut that guy out there and take the southern part of Nova Scotia there and combine those two and cut him out. What are you going to do with the Native bands?
Each individual Native band has different needs. Are you going to say, well, you're only going to have one representative? What if they want six representatives? Are you going to say, no, you can't have that? Why? What excuse are you going to use for them not to have six or seven or eight or one representative from each band there? What's the reasoning behind allowing one but not allowing five? What if they go up and say, this guy up there is not representing me properly, my band is bigger than his band, how come he is in there?
If somebody said that you are opening up a can of worms here, you're liable to get it. They are probably going to be night crawlers, so you have to be careful what you're doing here.
So that's the situation that I am looking at right now. Hopefully, the powers that be will take into consideration that we do live in a democracy here. It is not necessarily all the time where one person, one vote usually acts here. There are a lot of times that one person and one vote really doesn't get you anywhere. In a case like that, we have to look at the whole situation here, we have to look at fairness here, and we have to look at democracy here. We need democracy back in Cape Breton and we need democracy back in Nova Scotia.
The only way you're going to do that is to give fair representation to the people. If you don't do that, then you're not after democracy here; you're after a situation where you're going to have multinational corporations controlling your government from a centralized area in the province, which is Halifax. So you have to think of that very carefully. I thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Are there questions of our presenter, please?
MR. ISAAC: That's it. No one wants to ask me a question. I came up here and I spent a half hour talking and you don't even have a question for me? I missed the hockey game and by the time I get home, I am going to miss Archie Bunker. (Laughter)
The problem with this situation is you don't do things right here, usually with governments. You should have announced that you were going to cut one seat in Cape Breton, two seats in southern Nova Scotia, then you would have had a crowd here. Even if it wasn't true, you should have said it anyway. It would have gotten the people here interested.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think you're confusing interest with a lynching. (Laughter)
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Wilf, regarding your comment about the Mi'kmaq seat in Nova Scotia. I believe that back in the previous committee of 1992, there was some suggestion that perhaps a seat should be set aside . . .
MR. MACEWAN: One seat.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: . . . for the Mi'kmaq community at that time. Input from the Mi'kmaq nation would then be solicited and asked to come before the committee to agree or disagree with that. Now, as I recollect, at the time, the elders in the Mi'kmaq nation met and decided that they would visit the issue. They would then determine among themselves what the composition of that seat would be if it was going to become a reality. That didn't happen, you know, so the opportunity is again out there for the Mi'kmaq nation to sit down and decide whether or not they want a seat in the Nova Scotia Legislature, bring that suggestion before the Boundaries Committee, and, if they want, before this committee before we finish, but that's up to them. I mean the seat is there if they want to do that.
Now, I just want to finish off by saying this, Wilfred. We didn't determine that there should be a seat there. The interest came from the Mi'kmaq nation originally and that's fine, but it now is incumbent upon them to follow up and decide whether or not they actually want it and how it's going to be achieved.
MR. ISAAC: In a sense like that, I am looking at Cape Breton here, okay. If, for example, the Mi'kmaq were to approach the government and say, okay, we're looking for a seat here. Now if that seat comes from Cape Breton, for example, and I understand that Cape Breton has the highest population of Mi'kmaq in the province, right?
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: That's correct.
MR. ISAAC: If they're going to take that seat and make it a Mi'kmaq seat, they're going to say, well, these votes that the Mi'kmaq have are not going towards the Tories; they're not going towards the Liberals; they're not going towards the NDP. So that population you don't have anymore, you see.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Or the confederacy.
MR. ISAAC: Well, you know, one thing or the other.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: I mean, they've got two nations there too.
MR. ISAAC: Yes. So if the government says, well, look, you know, you've lost that voting base so you don't have to represent these people anymore; they're going to have their own representative there. So what are you going to do in the case if they come to Cape Breton and say, well, in view of the fact that the Mi'kmaq nation has taken so much of the percentage of the vote away and you don't have to represent them anymore, then why should you have an extra person in there? So you have to realize that situation also here for Cape Breton. I am not saying it would be used, but if the numbers look at it and if the numbers are there, you know, government is going to look at it and say, hey, it's justifiable. So we've got to be careful about that situation also because it affects Cape Breton and not Nova Scotia, not mainland Nova Scotia.
MR. CHAIRMAN: There's just one comment I would make. You used the phrase government, and I suppose if you make that in a very broad sense of the word, but I just want to refer to the fact that the Government of Nova Scotia, meaning the Executive Council of Nova Scotia and the Progressive Conservative Party, the decision about doing these things is not a decision of theirs. It's a decision, obviously, of the committee, which is a Committee of the House, not a committee of the government. And also, of course, with respect to the Electoral Boundaries Commission, I think in the past it has been composed after some consultation between all the parties involved so that it's not a government in the classic sense that it's the . . .
MR. ISAAC: But it's government-appointed, I presume?
MR. CHAIRMAN: It is government-appointed but . . .
MR. ISAAC: Well, you have to understand, you know, I might look like cabbage, but I am not green, let's put it that way. I don't care what committee you have that's set up by the government. The influence behind the tables, behind closed doors, comes out somewhere. Now, if anybody is going to sit up there and say no, that's not true, well, I am sorry; I am not going to believe that. But you know for a fact that there are the powers that be, are going to say, listen, we don't have the money to put extra seats out there and we need extra seats here. So get out there and do it. I don't care how you do it, but do it. So this is something that I think is going to happen and I hope it doesn't affect Cape Breton, that's all.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Walter, let me follow up on what the Chairman just said. He is absolutely right, but he left out one thing, that the governing Party of Nova Scotia has a majority on this committee. It's an all-Party committee, but the governing Party of Nova Scotia - he uses the terms government and Legislature, that's great, but the majority on this committee is the governing Party. So, you know, if we're putting together a set of references to go to the Boundaries Commission, they've got the vote.
MR. ISAAC: My personal opinion on this would be that you should have an MLA from a rural area who knows the story, an MLA from a metropolitan area and an MLA from an urban area. If you have those three types of people involved in divvying up, you know, discussing what's going on, then everybody is going to have to vote by consensus and everybody is going to get something out of it. It's like a win-win situation. So if you have those three different categories in there, you know, it's what they call compromise and win-win situations. The guy from the rural area is not going to say yes if he doesn't get what he wants.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: You're wishful thinking there.
MR. ISAAC: But I mean that's the situation I am looking at; maybe I am wishful thinking.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: It's going to come down to politics, you know that.
[8:30 p.m.]
MR. ISAAC: That's sadly enough, yes, but like I said before, you know, you can cause a lot of animosity here if things aren't done properly and because Cape Breton has suffered a tremendous out-migration of workers, and that's mainly to the Halifax area. I don't think that gives them the right to say, well, since they're all in the Halifax area now, you know, they deserve representation here. Like I said, the problems are still back in Cape Breton. So, people, with that, I will leave you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, Mr. Epstein, I think, had a . . .
MR. EPSTEIN: I would like to make a comment, not so much a question, I guess, concerning this whole question of how this committee operates. I think part of the intention is to try to reach consensus rather than to split along Party lines. We'll see how successful we are, but I think, given the enterprise that we're involved in, that would probably be quite important.
On the question of the possibility of a Mi'kmaq representative, we have not yet, of course, heard formally from anyone in the Mi'kmaq community about what it is that they might have in mind. At this point, about all we could do is recognize that even though a decade ago there might have been some expressed interest in the possibility of a Mi'kmaq seat, it's not clear that that is still the nature of the interest that the Mi'kmaq community might have in government. As I read some of the comments that are made in other contexts, it may be that being part of the Legislature might well not be of interest to Mi'kmaq leaders if they chose to see themselves as a nation of their own within independent constitutional status. We don't know yet what it is that they're interested in at all.
MR. ISAAC: And a reason for that could be also that a lot of what they get really, you know, is through the federal government anyway. It's either through treaties with the federal government or negotiations with the federal government. So maybe they see a provincial government as not really necessary to negotiate for whatever they need in this province. So that could be a reason also why they might abstain from having that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. At least you weren't disappointed, you got your questions.
MR. ISAAC: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: It was now worth missing the hockey game.
MR. MACEWAN: I would like to ask a question about the Mi'kmaq seat. I was on the last committee 10 years ago so I know a bit about this, and their recommendation was that there be one additional seat beyond the 52, to bring it to 53, if the Mi'kmaq wanted to have that seat. Now the idea, as I recall it - I don't have minutes here from 10 years ago to back this up - was that all Mi'kmaq reservations within Nova Scotia would be made one more Legislature seat - Eskasoni, Wagmatcook, Chapel Island, Millbrook, and all the different Indian communities within Nova Scotia would make it one more seat.
MR. ISAAC: All the different bands.
MR. MACEWAN: Bands, all right, yes.
MR. ISAAC: I would think from what I understood of what I knew about it also, that was the idea of it all.
MR. MACEWAN: Yes. Is it true that the Mi'kmaq didn't want to go along with doing that and so it didn't happen?
MR. ISAAC: That's what - and another thing I was thinking also is that when you have a number of bands like that, the thing is, well, you know, who runs? Is he elected? Is he appointed? In the Mi'kmaq nation nobody runs, I don't think. Aren't they appointed by the elders or whatever? (Interruptions) No, the chiefs have to run?
MR. MACEWAN: Have a band council election.
MR. ISAAC: Yes, yes, band council election. (Interruption) Right, yes; that's true, yes, yes. Yes, that's right; just have the band council, used to have a lot of problem with that.
MR. MACEWAN: If the Mi'kmaq wanted to have that seat we have the power to recommend to the commission which will do the actual dividing, and it will not be made up of MLAs at all but of commissioners we recommend for appointment by the Executive Council.
MR. ISAAC: I can see that could be a very difficult situation being the fact that they are spread so far over Nova Scotia, and every band has a different agenda.
MR. MACEWAN: No doubt. I just want to say . . .
MR. ISAAC: How could you ever have one representative representing the nation?
MR. MACEWAN: We have registered political Parties here in Nova Scotia; at the moment, as far as I know, there are three. If somebody else wants to start up a Party they can do that, but they have to comply with the provisions of the Elections Act; so I offer that. In any event, if the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia was faced with a 53rd new constituency that was sort of scattered around the map throughout the province, as another riding, well I would assume that our Party would want to nominate a candidate to run there. We already have an Aboriginal Commission in our Party set up as a separate organization for the promotion of Aboriginal concerns and affairs, and I think that is evidence of indication in that field of politics.
MR. ISAAC: I am just wondering if their concerns shouldn't be addressed by the federal government rather than by the provincial government.
MR. MACEWAN: That is their most usual response to this whole proposal, yes.
MR. ISAAC: Does the Nova Scotia Legislature have anything to do with dealings with other than electoral rights, or voting rights, or whatever, with the Native bands?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Absolutely. Without getting into a constitutional lecture, provincial laws of general application - now that is a lawyer's mouthful - what it means is general laws that are not specific to Indian communities apply on reserves. So, for example, Nova Scotia contract law applies on reserves, so the law that determines disputes between individuals on reserves is the same law that applies to disputes between individuals in a private contract off reserve. So that laws - contrary to popular opinion, people think of reserves as being islands of no provincial jurisdiction.
MR. MACEWAN: Federal jurisdiction.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, in point of fact, most laws of general provincial application apply. What happens is that there are in some limited areas, without giving a long lecture, in some areas such as for example land use and those kinds of things that provincial laws don't apply, but in general principle many provincial laws do apply. So there is an interest in issues that affect Nova Scotians generally affect Aboriginal people living on reserves.
MR. MACEWAN: The only thing I want to say to conclude was that the decision as to whether the registered Parties ran candidates in such a riding would be up to those Parties.
MR. ISAAC: Yes, but is it the Party that is going to run or is it the band themselves that is going run the candidate?
MR. MACEWAN: No sir, it would be under the Elections Act of Nova Scotia which gives any citizen complete certain procedures such as paying a $100 deposit to run, getting the signatures of a certain number of electors on nomination papers, and files a declaration from the Party Leader that he or she is accepted as the Party's candidate for Cape Breton Centre or whatever the riding is, that is how you get nominated.
MR. ISAAC: Yes, but are you saying that if you were to allow, let's say for example . . .
MR. MACEWAN: In any constituency.
MR. ISAAC: Let's talk hypothesis here. If you were to allow let's say a Native representative, are you saying that a Caucasian could run?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Absolutely.
MR. MACEWAN: This is a democracy.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The rules . . .
MR. ISAAC: I'm not saying that he is going to be elected. (Laughter)
MR. CHAIRMAN: That's right. It is important to say that I can run as a Nova Scotian, I can choose to run in any seat in Nova Scotia. If there were a 53rd seat in Nova Scotia, hypothetically speaking, I think that I could choose to run in that seat. The question of whether I'd be electable of course . . .
MR. MACEWAN: You put your name on the ballot, that's what we were talking about.
MR. ISAAC: Yes, but there is the can of worms that I'm telling you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm not saying that I'm going to do that now.
MR. ISAAC: The seat would be so diversified, I mean you would have 500 at the tip here, the seat, I can't run here in Halifax.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes you sure can.
MR. MACEWAN: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Absolutely.
MR. ISAAC: You have to live there, don't you?
MR. CHAIRMAN: No you don't.
MR. MACEWAN: No you don't.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You can run in Halifax.
MR. ISAAC: See, I told you I wasn't very up on . . .
MR. MACEWAN: You have to be a Canadian citizen.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Resident in Nova Scotia.
MR. ISAAC: A Canadian citizen or a British subject?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Right now it includes British subjects as well (Laughter) but that is a subject of some (Laughter) of which I have some personal feelings on. I won't go any further.
MR. ISAAC: You have to be a British subject I believe, isn't it?
MR. CHAIRMAN: At the moment.
MR. MACEWAN: You can run if you are a British subject, yes.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: I will make one last good case for you, what you are talking about there and how things can get confused. Preston was set up to give the Black people of Nova Scotia representation in the House, ostensibly, right? You remember that? And it was a good move I think. It was a large Black community in the Halifax area; right now there is a non-Black representing that very seat.
MR. ISAAC: Yes, but the area is Preston.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Yes, but . . .
MR. ISAAC: The area is not Preston and Halifax and Whycocomagh and . . .
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: No, the area is Preston.
MR. ISAAC: Do you know what I mean?
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: But the point is that anybody can run for the seat.
MR. ISAAC: Right, but how do you justify, what are the boundaries for the seat? You don't have any boundaries. If you are going to have a seat you have to have a boundary.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: It would be the Mi'kmaq nation. You would have to include all the reserves as one boundary.
MR. ISAAC: So, that is the situation.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Anyway, that is not going to happen unless they come and make some representation as to what they want; that didn't happen before.
MR. ISAAC: Well, like I said, most of my concern is the fact that I don't want, if anything I would like to see Cape Breton, especially in a few areas there - well there are two large areas there - a few large areas of Cape Breton that should have more representation actually, but you're not going to see that because they are trying to cut it back. In any event, I don't think that they should have any less representation there for sure. If you want to rearrange the areas and with the same representation, I can see that, but I don't like to see the fact that you are going to cut some representative from Cape Breton and rearrange the areas. That, I would be extremely upset about. Okay. Thank you very much.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I believe those were all the presenters who indicated they wished to speak this evening. We are about to wrap up here in Sydney. Our next meeting will be held tomorrow at three o'clock in Port Hawkesbury and it is being held in the Maritime Inn, Canso Room.
With that, unless there is any further business, we stand adjourned. Thank you.
[The select committee adjourned at 8:40 p.m.]
