HALIFAX, THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2002
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES
3:30 P.M.
CHAIRMAN
Hon. Michael Baker
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to call the meeting to order. We have one item on our agenda. There has been a request from Dr. Dodds, who is of course the chairman of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, indicating that they would be pleased to entertain or receive an extension of their deadline for filing their final report until the end of August - I have a letter here, yes it is during the month of August.
I was going to suggest that it might be appropriate to take the amendment that was passed earlier and substitute where it says "strike out the 30th day of May", it would now read, "strike out the 28th day of June and substitute the 30th day of August." That would be the first line of that, because August 30th is a Friday, August 31st is a Saturday, and I somehow suspect they're not likely to file their report on a Saturday. Is there someone who would be prepared to make that motion?
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: So moved.
HON. NEIL LEBLANC: Just a question. How does this work, does this . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: It's done by our resolution; we set the terms of reference.
MR. PAUL MACEWAN: Do you need a seconder on the resolution?
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, I don't think we need seconders in the committee.
MR. MACEWAN: Are we permitted to chat on it?
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MR. CHAIRMAN: The floor is open for discussion.
MR. MACEWAN: My other friends may have some concerns they may want to raise. I have no difficulty with the motion and will support it. The other Liberal who's not here would also support it if he were here, so I trust I can cast two votes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure you can. (Laughter)
MR. MACEWAN: I have two concerns to raise. One, have we ever instructed this commission to give some time parameters in which they expect their recommendations to take effect? If the Legislature doesn't get some instructions on that and the bill is given Royal Assent and proclaimed, it becomes law immediately. If the bill is passed on Thursday and an election is called on Friday, technically the election would have to be held on the new boundaries, but there wouldn't be any time to set them up, to appoint the new returning officers, to survey the new polling divisions, to do all the infrastructure necessary to be able to hold an election, both from the electoral point of view - the elections office - and also from the point of view of the political Parties. It might be prudent to suggest to them, in a gentlemanly way, that they might consider a recommendation that once the legislation is passed it would come into effect, say, four months' hence.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Four years. (Laughter)
MR. MACEWAN: Or at some future time. I'm just saying the time needed to make this doable. That's point one. Point two is that their recommendations in writing and the maps they've circulated don't seem to always correspond, and maps of the constituencies that they propose have not yet been prepared or circulated, so we don't really know what we're dealing with right now. I know my good friend to my right has a map in his pocket that I drew, showing where I think his riding and mine will meet under the new boundaries, but it's not the official map. It would be good to get some further definition of what they propose before we go sending it to the Legislature.
One last point, my friend, Russell MacKinnon, tells me something I wasn't aware of, that the new riding of Victoria-The Lakes will be even bigger than we thought it was. It's going to go over into Cape Breton West and take the middle of Highway No. 4, which is the old highway back to Sydney, use the middle of that as a division, and everything that's on the Bras d'Or Lakes side of Highway No. 4 is also going to go into Victoria-The Lakes, out of Cape Breton West. I hadn't been aware of that, because I wasn't looking out for Cape Breton West, I was looking out for my own. Russell MacKinnon brought that to my attention today and said, is that what they want to do, because their maps don't show it? Therein I rest my case.
MR. LEBLANC: Two things. First of all, I concur. Since we are where we are, that we've adjourned for the summer, if they're looking for more time to reflect, I don't have any problem with that. I will support the motion to say that.
The other issue, in response to Paul's suggestion that we ask them when it's going to take place, I don't think that's the role of the commission. Their role is to define a redistribution. As to how we respond as this committee and I'm not really sure if it comes back to this committee, and I wouldn't mind having some interpretation from legal counsel on that - it goes to the House - as the bill is brought in, my understanding is that it becomes effective the date the legislation is passed.
MR. MACEWAN: It does, unless you say otherwise.
MR. LEBLANC: That's right. Those are issues, Paul, that I would tend to think that as we go through the Law Amendments Committee, that would probably be the place if people want to make amendments. The three political Parties would sit down and listen to those arguments in the Law Amendments Committee. The precedence I think is more that the legislation usually encompasses what is in the report, and I don't think we should be giving advice to the commission as to what their suggestions are. That's really going to be a decision of the House, as to whether there's a small delay or not. I'm not trying to prejudge what will come out of it. Those are the two points I make, Mr. Chairman.
MR. MACEWAN: It will be introduced as a bill, probably by you, Mr. Chairman. The government itself could make a stipulation to that bill, saying at least this provision will come into effect not earlier than January 1, 2002, or whatever your wish might be, we can debate that in the House.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm not sure. In the past, did the bill have a proclamation clause in it, the last one?
[3:45 p.m.]
MR. GORDON HEBB: I don't believe so. I can't, from memory, tell you exactly how it was dealt with the last time. I know that with respect to either the boundary changes or Elections Act changes, there has been a clause in either amendments to the Elections Act or the House of Assembly Act where it specified that it did not apply to an election that was held within a certain period of time. That certainly could be done. It has been done in the past. I can't specifically say it was done with the last electoral boundaries changes, Mr. Chairman.
MR. MACEWAN: I don't mean to hold the meeting up. The feds do this now.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that the best I can suggest is that I suspect the bill will be introduced without a proclamation clause or a coming into force clause. I think that will be subject to discussion by all members of the House and all the Parties and Leaders of the House when the bill gets to the Law Amendments Committee. I think for the government to pick a date would invariably be fraught with difficulty, because whatever date the government picked, someone would suggest that if it were picked by the government that it was a date that would advantage the government. I'm being candid in saying that. Whatever date we picked would be wrong in someone's mind.
MR. MACEWAN: Well, we could have Janet Willwerth as an invited guest to the Law Amendments Committee, and ask her what she thinks on this, how much time does she need?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Those are all options, but I would just say that I anticipate the bill would be a stripped-down version. I also understand that ordinarily what happens is the Chief Legislative Counsel - and he can comment on this - would get, in drafting instructions, meaning from the commission in the sense that they would have detailed metes and bounds description. So, from his point of view, the bill is relatively simple to put together, and you can comment on that better than I can.
MR. HEBB: It's quite simple. I remember it from the last time. It's just a question of putting the new descriptions in as given to us by the boundaries commission.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Epstein and then Mr. Taylor.
MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: I think we should stake out a position on this right away, and it's this, although I think Mr. MacEwan has raised a perfectly legitimate point as to the necessity of the Election Commission having time to prepare, and I should add that point of preparation is equally applicable to all Parties and their constituency associations. Clearly a certain amount of time is necessary for everyone to adjust to new electoral boundaries in terms of preparation for another election.
The problem with including a clause that would provide that new electoral boundaries wouldn't apply for some set period of time, whatever that time might be, is that if that implied that an election could be held in the interim under the old boundaries, we would run up against a very serious problem. The serious problem is, first, given that there would be, out in front of the public, new boundaries, to call an election under old boundaries would, I think, not generate a lot of public approval.
The other part is that there may, in fact, even be a constitutional objection to the old boundaries. The problem is that they are so out of whack now that the variations, if they were to be used now - that is if boundaries that were set 10 years ago were to be used now - the
variations are so extreme that someone out there may well be tempted to go to court to challenge them, which isn't a very desirable set of circumstances either. (Interruptions)
I'm sure there would be disgruntled electors out there. So, I think I just want to flag this at this point. My hope is that we wouldn't be looking at an election called under the old boundaries (Interruptions) For those reasons. And that, as I understand it, to the extent that there has been much public comment on it, the Premier has indicated that probably there wouldn't be one this calendar year. It's up to you, of course, you have charge of it. I'm just going to say that I don't think we would be very happy with any kind of a delay and we wouldn't be alone.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Suffice to say that the date of calling the next election is the decision of someone not in the room. So I don't think there's any useful purpose of commenting on that further. The other issue that was raised by Mr. MacEwan I wanted to comment on, which was the accuracy of the present interim maps. My understanding is that - the commission has been I think pretty honest about that in saying that they recognize that the maps and the boundary descriptions in fact themselves don't necessarily 100 per cent always line up.
I know in the Lunenburg County area, which I'm most familiar with, there is a divergence, a lack of clarity between where the lines would be exactly, although you can tell approximately. You can lose several hundred voters in the width of a line in some areas, right, and there's nothing wrong with what they've done, it's simply a fact that they were designed to be interim and they weren't designed to be a permanent map for an election purpose. So I think what's going to happen is that Mr. Hebb will be getting, hopefully, much more detailed instructions.
MR. HEBB: I don't intend to draw the line.
MR. MACEWAN: You know, Mr. Chairman, if they could just be asked if they could release 52 maps of 52 ridings as part of their final report, it would be very helpful to get the picture.
MR. HEBB: The part that would be enshrined in legislation that we would use to draft the bill would be the detailed metes and bounds descriptions, not the maps at all. The maps would not perform . . .
MR. MACEWAN: A picture is worth a thousand words, Gordon.
MR. HEBB: But the maps are really there for our convenience only and not for the purpose of determining where the boundaries are.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Anyway, sorry, we cut off Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: I was just going to add that the Electoral Boundaries Commission reported last time, after I suppose you would say some insignificant changes at the Law Amendments Committee, the Act was proclaimed and it was passed in, I'm not sure if that was in the Spring of 1993 or the Fall of 1992.
MR. LEBLANC: The Fall of 1992.
MR. TAYLOR: But I do know, for example, the old riding of Bedford-Musquodoboit Valley was of course somewhat cut up and the Musquodoboit Valley was inserted in with Colchester South and it wasn't just the PCs, the Liberals and NDP were scurrying around to make adjustments like you're talking about there, Paul and Howard, and I don't know if you ever feel you have enough time, but all Parties were certainly treated equally at that particular time. So it is important to make the adjustments.
MR. MACEWAN: We had a commitment at that time, Brooke, from Premier Cameron that he would not call an election until the Liberal leadership was finalized. Do you remember that? He could have gone for the jugular when we were unorganized.
MR. TAYLOR: . . . very kind to you guys. (Interruptions)
MR. MACEWAN: Well, I just mention that as a precedent.
MR. TAYLOR: That was then and this is now.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, this is all very useful, but I'm not sure it's germane to the motion.
MR. TAYLOR: Question, let's have the question.
MR. CHAIRMAN: There being no further discussion, would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
[The motion is carried.]
That, I believe, concludes our business. Thank you very much. We have to all sign.
[The select committee adjourned at 3:54 p.m.]
