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Carving up Nunavut
Electoral boundaries commission report due at month's end by Richard Gleeson
NNSL (June 09/97) - The shape of Nunavut's first territorial election will become clearer at the end of this month.
The report of the Nunavut electoral boundaries commission is to be delivered to the legislature June 30.
This week the commission and its staff are meeting in Yellowknife to start writing the report, which will recommend:
* the size of electoral districts
* which communities each district will include
* names for each district
A series of public hearings that took the three member commission to 16 communities ended May 29 in Iqaluit.
The commission was directed to come up with two sets of ridings for Nunavut -- one with 10 or 11 ridings, based on two-member constituencies, the other with 20 or 22 single-member ridings.
"It was going on concurrently, but gender parity, as we explained at our meetings, was not and is not within our mandate," said commission chairman and territorial Supreme Court Justice Ted Richard.
"The only related issue is the direction from the assembly that we include a model of two-MLA ridings."
The other two members of the commission are former MLA Titus Allooloo and Keewatin Divisional Board of Education member Sandy Kusugak.
Nunavut's first legislative assembly will be elected in January or February of 1999. In addition to the public hearings the commission invited written submissions from the public.
One they received came from Iqaluit MLA Ed Picco.
Picco tabled his plan in the legislative assembly last week, offering an outline of which communities would be included in a 20-ridings system. Picco offers no plan for dual constituencies.
Picco recommends three representatives be elected for Iqaluit and two for Rankin Inlet. One MLA would represent most of the remaining communities.
Pelly Bay and Taloyoak would compose one riding under the Picco plan. Nanisivik, Arctic Bay, Resolute, Grise Fiord and Little Cornwallis Island would combine for another.
Chesterfield Inlet and Whale Cove, Cambridge Bay and Bathurst Inlet, Cape Dorset and Lake Harbour would also paired. |