A pair of Manitoba MPs from the Conservative and NDP parties are united in their opposition to a plan to move one First Nation and part of another one from their current federal riding and back to another.
Churchill-Keewatinook Aski MP Niki Ashton and Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman MP James Bezan appeared before the House of Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 2 to voice their objections to the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission plan to move Little Saskatchewan First Nation and part of Lake St. Martin First Nation out of Ashton’s riding, which they have been a part of since 2015, and back to the Bezan’s riding, which they were part of before that.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Ashton told the committee, noting that the objection was a joint one from herself and Bezan. “This is about respecting First Nations. We hope that this change will be reversed.”
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 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 Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman riding.
However, the proposed boundaries sent to Parliament in December also saw half of Lake St. Martin First Nation and all of Little Saskatchewan First Nation moved back into Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman, which was not part of the initial proposal.
“This proposal was never on the table to remove them from the constituency,” Ashton told the committee. “They didn’t have the opportunity to voice anything.”
Bezan said changing the constituency the communities are in for the second time in less than 10 years would be confusing to the people who live there and not make them more likely to vote in future elections.
“We can’t just keep bouncing back and forth,” he said.
Ashton said she appreciated the commission listening to her previous misgivings and deciding against adding parts of the Dauphin-Swan River and Brandon-Souris ridings to it in order to get it closer to the average population of Manitoba’s 14 federal ridings but felt these previously unannounced changes would have negative consequences, particularly the splitting up of Lake St. Martin.
“We’re not talking about two sides of a big boulevard in a big city where people know that they’re part of different constituencies,” she said, adding that the onus shouldn’t be on the communities in question to demonstrate their support for remaining in the Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding when there was no indication before the commission produced its December report for the House of Commons that moving them out of it was even under consideration.
MPs have until March to present objections to the commission’s proposal. Those objections will be considered by the commission in March and April.
