Memramcook Mayor Maxime Bourgeois is calling for changes to the provincial electoral riding of Memramcook-Tantramar, to essentially undo changes made in 2013, when the riding was created.

Back then, an electoral boundaries commission added the village of Memramcook to the previous provincial riding of Tantramar, to create Memramcook-Tantramar. The move was made to correct an issue with the Tantramar riding, which had a significantly lower population than the provincial average. But, it meant that the French-speaking population of Memramcook would now be a linguistic minority within their own provincial riding, making up about 30 per cent of the population.

The electoral riding of Memramcook-Tantramar was created in 2013 after a report by a previous commission on electoral representation. Image: Elections New Brunswick website.

Bourgeois is asking the a new commission who started reviewing electoral boundaries this year move Memramcook back into a riding with its neighbouring city, Dieppe.

“It’s nothing against Tantramar,” says Bourgeois. “It’s just that if you look at the facts on the ground, we are a lot more aligned with Dieppe.”

“Most of the folks in Memramcook either work in Moncton or Dieppe, their kids go to school in Dieppe, and then most of them go to either U de M or CCNB, the French college, and then they go to work again in Moncton or Dieppe,” says Bourgeois. The connections continue through sports and cultural organizations.“I mean, some people do come to Sackville to either go to Tim Horton’s or Patterson’s, or even do their grocery, but the majority of the population is more aligned with Dieppe.”

Bourgeois says it’s not because of current representation that he’s calling for the change. “I have to admit, Megan Mitton has been fairly present in our community,” says Bourgeois. “I don’t think we’ve been ignored. Since the electoral map change we’ve been lucky, because we had Bernard LeBlanc, who was from Memramcook, and then Megan Mitton, who actually does speak quite well in French. So we’ve been lucky, but the chance of having a unilingual Anglophone MLA is still fairly high if the riding doesn’t change.”

“It’s not a new idea,” says Bourgeois. Back in 2013, Acadian activists mounted a legal challenge to the decision to lump Memramcook with primarily English Tantramar. The Brian Gallant government agreed that the next time an electoral commission reviewed the province’s boundaries, it would take language and culture into account, and allow for larger differences in electoral population, especially where communities of interest were being accommodated.

That "next time" is happening now, with an electoral commission due to release new draft boundaries for provincial ridings in mid-December. Public consultations on the issue happened earlier in September, and the electoral commission has promised a second round of consultations once a draft map is released.

“I do realize how difficult the task is for the commission,” says Bourgeois. “I think everybody at the Commission realizes that we are more in line with Dieppe. The problem or the challenge is, what do you do with Tantramar? Because the electoral population of Tantramar is so small that you can’t really leave them by themselves.”

The former riding of Tantramar had about 20 per cent fewer electors than the average riding in the province back in 2012. New legislation passed in 2014 calls for a deviation of no more than 15 per cent in either direction as a general rule, but also specifies that in “extraordinary circumstances” that deviation can go as high as 25 per cent. And those circumstances include, “the effective representation of the English and French linguistic communities.”

Detail from Elections NB document, Number of Electors, 2014-2022. Darker green means fewer electors than average, and darker purple represents more electors than average. Image courtesy of Elections New Brunswick.

“It’s not because we don’t want to be part of Tantramar,” says Bourgeois. “I mean, I personally love Sackville, I love Dorchester. I love Port Elgin.” Bourgeois got to know the predominantly Anglophone Tantramar region during the 2020 provincial election campaign in which he ran as the Liberal candidate for Memramcook-Tantramar. But he says that’s not what’s behind his push to see Memramcook return to a Dieppe riding.

Bourgeois says the change in ridings is something that “people from Memramcook have been wanting for a long time.” And the change has been supported by unanimous vote at Memramcook village council.

He acknowledges that the make up of the riding had an impact on his success in the provincial election, which he lost to Green MLA Megan Mitton in 2020. “I think it would have changed my chances for sure,” says Bourgeois, if only because Dieppe is known to vote Liberal. “But it also goes to show when you have a resident from Memramcook getting into provincial politics, he has to get known in Tantramar,” says Bourgeois. And that’s a challenge because “on a regular daily basis, we don’t deal a lot with Tantramar.”

“I was a lot more known in Dieppe than I would have been in Tantramar, just because we read the same newspapers, Le Monitor Acadien, L’Acadie Nouvelle, l’Etoile… And when you’re involved in your community, there’s a lot more events happening in Dieppe or Moncton, so you get to know more people in that area.”

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