MLAs could vote themselves another year
Motion would extend term to five years to avoid conflict with federal election
Cody Punter
Northern News Services
Published Friday, March 7, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Those who are not happy with their MLA may have to wait another year before they can vote them out of office.
Hay River South MLA Jane Groenewegen gave notice Thursday that she will table a motion Monday to extend the legislative assembly's term by one year to October 2016.
The territorial election is currently scheduled to take place on Oct. 5, 2015.
Groenewegen said the reason for pushing back the election date was to avoid having federal, territorial and municipal elections, all of which are scheduled to take place next October, to take place at the same time.
"That's a lot of elections condensed into one month," said Groenewegen.
Groenewegen said there is concern that having that many elections coincide would negatively impact voter turnout.
Bill C-15 - the federal legislation that will bring devolution to the territory April 1 - already allows the GNWT to extend its election cycle to five years instead of four, once the current assembly has concluded.
Groenewegen's motion calls for the federal government to amend the bill to allow the existing group of MLAs to stay in power an extra year.
Yellowknife MLAs Daryl Dolynny and Wendy Bisaro said that fact alone should give the public cause for concern.
Dolynny said he supported allowing future assemblies to extend their terms to five years, however, he was adamant that MLAs should not be allowed to do anything that benefits them personally during their term.
"When people put an X on the ballot for me, that was for a four year term - period. By me doing anything to incorporate or encourage an environment of extending that goes against the principles of democracy - period," said Dolynny, who called the motion "unethical."
Bisaro echoed Dolynny's concerns.
"We're adding a full year, so we're extending our term by 25 per cent," said Bisaro. "To a certain extent that's taking away the right of the voter to turf me if they want to."
Dolynny added he does not believe pushing back the date will increase voter turnout. In fact, he suggested that having residents vote for all three governments at the same time could potentially increase voter turnout.
"If everyone has to come to one set of polls and votes for three levels of governments, who knows? That might be an effective way of using all resource management at one time," he said.
The motion is scheduled to be voted on in the assembly on Monday. If approved it would then have to go to the federal government, which will get a final say on it.
