Advice on riding hearings worried judges
Idea of seeking out minority groups is seen by some as ‘social engineering’
OTTAWA — Judges heading up the commissions that are redrawing Canada’s federal ridings were concerned with suggestions they be “proactive” and invite minority groups to public consultations, with one going so far as to say it amounted to “social engineering” when they met in Ottawa this past February.
More than one judge at the meeting questioned whether the commissions had the resources or mandate to under- take “fact-finding missions,” and whether doing so would open them up to Charter of Rights challenges for contacting some groups and not others, according to a ministerial briefing note released to Postmedia News using access to information laws.
The note summarizes the Ottawa conference, which included talks from chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand and Graham Fraser, Canada’s language commissioner.
The commissions were set up this year to redraw federal voting districts in each province based on population growth and shifts over the past 10 years.
Each commission has three members: a current or retired judge as chairperson, and two voting experts.
Fraser’s lunchtime speech to the conference on Feb. 22 caused a stir when he said the commissions, as federal bodies, should be proactive by seeking out minority language groups to encourage them to come to hearings or submit comments.
“That to me was pretty dicey,” said David Smith, who sat on the last electoral commission in Saskatchewan and also spoke to commissioners in February.
Smith said he and others in the room felt they could be open to legal challenges about contacting some groups and not others — perhaps being viewed as favouring one group of people over another.
Few of the commissions have directly targeted minority groups to invite their feedback, as public consultations either continue or begin on the new look of electoral districts, including the addition of 30 new ridings, in the coming weeks.
None is legally required to seek out specific groups for feedback under federal legislation guiding the process. Smith said the biggest concern judges had was the legal implications of deciding which groups to target: linguistic, ethnic, aboriginal or even socioeconomic groups such as farmers.
Commissions will file their final recommendation to the Speaker of the House of Commons by the end of the year.
In all, there will be 30 new seats added to the House of Commons in the next federal election. Ontario will receive 15 new seats and Quebec earns three more, while British Columbia and Alberta will each receive six new seats.
Quebec’s new boundaries, with three new seats around Montreal and moving a rural seat into another urban riding, reflect “the new reality of Quebec with the current trend toward higher density urban centres instead of suburban sprawl,” the commission wrote to explain its proposals.