This week is the last chance for provincial voters to weigh in on changes to electoral boundaries that will see the Memramcook-Tantramar riding split up, creating a new Tantramar riding which will be the smallest in the province.

The commission charged with reviewing New Brunswick’s electoral boundaries is hosting eight online sessions between Wednesday and Saturday this week. A session on Thursday evening from 6pm to 8pm will focus on southeastern ridings, including the new proposed Tantramar district. There are also two sessions open to province-wide input. (Scroll down for session dates and times.)

At first glance, voters in Tantramar might not have too much to complain about, as their votes will carry more weight in electing an MLA in the next provincial election, according to Mount Allison politics professor Mario Levesque.

The proposed Tantramar riding would have 9058 electors, while neighbouring Shediac-Beaubassin-Cap-Pelé would have 13,317 electors, the highest number in the province, and 4,259 more potential voters than Tantramar. “From a democratic perspective, you can question that,” says Levesque. And the discrepancy in elector population will likely get worse over time, he says, as other areas of the southeast are expected to grow faster than Tantramar.

“They had an opportunity to more appropriately address this by using that deficiency in Tantramar to make each of these ridings more equal,” says Levesque, but the commission chose to “go along linguistic lines,” keeping predominantly French and English communities together.

The rules changed in 2015 to allow for a much wider deviation in the number of electors between ridings, especially in consideration of linguistic and cultural communities. Previously, the guidelines required electoral populations to be within 5% of each other, but since 2015 that deviation can go as high as 25% under “extraordinary circumstances.”

Next commission will have to rectify imbalances

Levesque says that makes good cultural policy, but bad electoral policy in the long term. “It doesn’t make sense to have hugely out of proportion ridings in terms of numbers of electors,” says Levesque. “You have to balance that in there as well. And this is kind of extreme.” The proposed Tantramar riding is 22% below the average number of electors in the province’s 49 ridings.

Levesque says that the next commission to evaluate electoral boundaries may be faced with changing the number of ridings to balance out population changes in the province. “What they’ll have to do is to redistribute the ridings in ten years time, which means making fewer ridings in the northern region, where the population is leaving, and giving more ridings to the southeast,” says Levesque. But because reducing representation is politically risky, Levesque predicts a future commission may recommend adding ridings to help with the discrepancies in population.

Mitton not surprised with changes

Current Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton says she was not surprised by the recommendation to separate Memramcook and Tantramar, and she was pleased to see that Francophone communities had been listened to.

The commission’s recommendation, and the boundaries act amendments made in 2015, came in reaction to feedback from the Sociéte Acadien de Nouveau Brunswick (SANB) and also from the mayor and council of Memramcook, who argued that people in the predominantly French speaking village had more in common with their Dieppe neighbours than their Sackville and Dorchester neighbours.

The deadline for feedback to the commission is January 15, and the commission says it will file a final report by mid-March.

Sessions:

• Wednesday, Jan. 11 – 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. – Northern (Electoral Districts 1-8)
• Wednesday, Jan. 11 – 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. – Miramichi (Electoral Districts 9-11)
• Thursday, Jan. 12 – 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. – Provincial (open to all electoral districts)
• Thursday, Jan. 12 – 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. – Southeastern (Electoral Districts 12-24)
• Friday, Jan. 13 – 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. – Southern (Electoral Districts 25-36)
• Friday, Jan. 13 – 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. – Capital (Electoral Districts 37-44)
• Saturday, Jan. 14 – 10 a.m. to noon – Upper River Valley (Electoral Districts 45-49)
• Saturday, Jan. 14 – 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. – Provincial (open to all electoral districts)

People may also submit feedback on the recommendations by email (commissionNB@gnb.ca) through the comment page on the commission’s website.