The body responsible for adjusting federal electoral riding boundaries has rescinded most of its proposed changes for the electoral district that covers all of Northern Manitoba and 80 per cent of the province’s landmass.
The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for Manitoba released its report Dec. 6. The province will continue to have 14 ridings when the next federal election, scheduled for October 2025, is held.
The goal of the commission is to ensure that federal ridings within Manitoba are approximately equal in terms of the number of residents they contain, within a variance of about plus or minus fiver per cent from the average, determined by dividing Canada’s population by the number of ridings and adjusting for provincial population growth rates over the last 10 years.
In its initial proposal, the commission put forward a plan to bring the Churchill-Keewatinook Aski district, which extends from the southern tip of Lake Winnipeg in the south to the Nunavut boundary in the north and across to the Saskatchewan boundary south of The Pas in the west, closer to the average population by adding portions of the Dauphin-Swan River and Brandon-Souris riding to it. Doing so would have left the population about seven per cent below the average for Manitoba’s ridings. However, following written and oral submissions, including a presentation by Churchill-Keewatinook Aski MP Niki Ashton, the commission reversed itself and decided to keep the riding’s boundaries largely the same as they were during the last federal election, with the exception of moving the communities of Homebrook and Peonan Point back to the Interlake-Eastman riding.
Though basically remaining as is means the Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding has a population about 15 per cent below the average, the commission said other considerations had to be taken into account, including not only historical ties between areas but also practical matters.
“The MP for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski described how this vast expanse presents her with transportation and communications challenges for being in touch with citizens and communities in all parts of the constituency,” said the commission’s report. “There is also the added challenge of the extra time required to commute to Ottawa, with fewer flight options. While in our initial proposal we alluded to the ongoing communications revolution, involving the use of the Internet, satellites and cell phones, we acknowledge that such services are often not available in the north or are of poor quality.”
The commission’s report was tabled in the House of Commons Dec. 6. If no objections are filed with the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, it will be adopted as submitted and used to define Manitoba’s ridings for the next federal election.
