Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (July 28/99) - Electoral boundary discussion will continue past the next election if recommendations from the Standing Committee on Government Operations are accepted.

The report itself was unavailable by press time.

Still, committee chair Roy Erasmus' comments Monday at a clause by clause review session left little doubt the committee favours a "sunset clause" in their recommendations to change the bill that adds five additional seats to the NWT legislature in Yellowknife, Inuvik and Hay River.

That clause would repeal the five additional seats the bill proposes as of the dissolution of the next legislature.

"The vast majority of presenters before the committee agreed with this idea," Erasmus told the committee Monday morning about the sunset clause.

"A sunset clause would make it clear that the ridings put in place by Bill 15 are only a temporary fix to a legal problem, not a long-term resolution of constitutional issues."

Erasmus made it clear the committee would recommend the premier adopt a 2-2-2 model for cabinet make-up.

That model would hold for two members to be from Yellowknife, two from Northern ridings and two from southern ridings.

The debate centres around whether the 2-2-2 proposal be in legislation or be left unsaid.

"While cabinet is generally supportive of this proposal, it is our view that this type of representation is more properly established by convention," Premier Jim Antoine told the committee Monday.

Former premier Don Morin peppered Antoine with arguments against that stance before the assembly.

"There is no convention because we haven't done that (before,)" he said.

"Putting (the recommendation) in legislation would give the public the opportunity to listen to the debate."

Antoine answered that putting the 2-2-2 formula in legislation would unduly bind the hands of the next legislature while Morin essentially countered that the legislature could extend its own deadline by a stroke of a pen.

A final major likely committee proposal Erasmus addressed was the creation of a constitutional and electoral reform commission.

"Committee members feel that it is crucial that a process be set in place now to resolve our constitutional questions before the end of the next assembly," he said.

The committee was set to table its report in the legislature yesterday.