Finding a balance
Electoral Boundaries Commission reveals two sample mixed member proportional maps for public input
Creating sample maps of 18 electoral districts was a balancing act of finding parity while also keeping areas of interest together, says the chairman of P.E.I.’s electoral boundaries commission.
Islanders got the first look of what a mixed-member proportional map could look like on P.E.I. during a public meeting in Montague’s Riverhouse Inn on Monday.
The meeting was the first of five the commission is holding for public input on two sample maps.
Chairman Gerard Mitchell said the commission tried to achieve parity in numbers.
While they tried keeping municipal boundaries, school zones and fire districts within the same ridings, it was difficult to do so.
“You’ve got all kinds of different communities of interest, too, that sometimes overlap, it’s hard to accommodate everything,” he said.
“We looked at municipal boundaries a lot and we tried to keep schools together, but when you get bigger (districts) it’s just harder to do that.”
One of the maps achieved mostly parity said Mitchell, with all but one of the districts seeing around 5,600 voters. A second map saw some greater variation.
In both maps, the smallest district in the Evangeline area because it provides the province’s Acadians with greater representation.
Souris resident Brian Ching, and several others throughout the night, said he felt most Islanders would be happier to see larger variances.
“If we could increase the variance some, I think we could keep communities of interest together more and everyone would be happier,” he said.
Mitchell said while the legislation states variance cannot be above or below 25 per cent, it also has to be justified.
“The Supreme Court of Canada has said the first condition
of effective representation is parity. Yes, you can move away from parity, but you can only move as far as is necessary for effective representation,” he said.
“So just because (P.E.I.’s legislation) says 25 per cent, it doesn’t mean we can go to 25 per cent because it’s the Charter that governs.”
Mitchell said increasing variance in certain districts also brings up other challenges.
“People would say my vote is just as important as the people in that area, how come they have half as many people in their district,” said Mitchell. “It’s a balancing act, for sure.”
The commission was tasked in December with creating a map showing what P.E.I. would look like under a mixed-member proportional system, which was the winning choice in a 2016 electoral reform plebiscite. The map will be used as an educational tool for a referendum during the next provincial election.
The method would see 18 of P.E.I.’s MLAs elected through the present first-past-the-post system, while the remaining nine MLAs would be allocated based on each party’s popular vote.
Mitchell said the commission is not “married” to either sample map, and that all public feedback would be taken into account.
“People have local knowledge so we want to learn from that,” said Mitchell, who hopes the final map will be completed in early March.
A copy of the sample maps can be found online at www. electoralboundaries.pe.ca.