New Brunswick’s Electoral Boundaries Commission is recommending that the Memramcook-Tantramar riding be split up, and revert back to boundaries resembling the situation before the 2014 election. The proposal would remove Memramcook and add it to a a riding with a small part of Dieppe. The riding of Tantramar would be made up of the new municipalities of Tantramar and Strait Shores combined, along with parts of the surrounding Rural District and a small chunk of Cap-Acadie.

Politics professor Mario Levesque says the commission “chickened out” on their task of realigning boundaries to consider varied population across the province, while also balancing factors such as community of interest. “They are kicking the real heavy lifting down the road in another 10 years time,” says Levesque.

Levesque says the commission chose to go along linguistic lines, and put predominantly English speaking areas together, and predominantly French speaking areas together. “From a democratic perspective, you can question that,” says Levesque. “People in Tantramar will have a greater say in choosing their person, because their vote is more powerful.”

The new riding of Tantramar will have 9058 electors according to the commissions calculations, based on data from Elections NB. That’s about 2600 fewer electors than the average across the province, and the lowest number of electors out of all 49 ridings in the province. Neighbouring riding of Shediac-Beaubassin-Cap-Pelé will have 13,317 electors, the highest number of electors in the province, and 4,259 more potential voters than Tantramar. The new Memramcook-Dieppe riding will have 12,230 electors, also above the provincial average.

Table from New Brunswick Electoral Boundaries Commission preliminary report, released December 2022.

In its last incarnation in 2013, the commission was tasked with mapping out ridings focussed on elector parity, and to keep the deviation from the average, or electoral quotient, within the -5% to 5% range. But this time, the commission was given much more leeway, due to amendments to the Electoral Boundaries and Representation Act made in 2015. The number of electors could deviate by as much as 15% in either direction from the average, and in “extraordinary circumstances”, it could deviate by as much as 25%. That is the current proposed case for Tantramar, which is 22,4% below the provincial electoral quotient.

The Act is quite specific about what constitutes “extraordinary circumstances.” Section 11(7) reads, “For greater certainty, “extraordinary circumstances” in subsection (6) includes the effective representation of the English and French linguistic communities.”

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 de l'Acadie du 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.

“I don’t think it would be very appropriate for me to try to weigh in and decide where the lines should go,” says Mitton. “What I think is really important is that the communities are listened to.”

Mitton first ran in Memramcook-Tantramar in 2014, and then won the seat in 2018 and again in 2020. She has put her bilingualism to good use in representing the riding, which is about 30% francophone and 70% anglophone.

“It’s been an honour to be able to represent this riding,” says Mitton. “It is kind of a microcosm, it has a lot of the things you’ll find across the province, including different languages, and the two official languages.”

“I’ve been happy to speak to people in English or in French, to do events in English or in French. And I think something to remember is that there are anglophones who live in Memramcook, and there are francophones who live in in Tantramar. And so similar to the larger province, we can’t just draw a line and think that some people are on one side, and some people are on the other. Our communities are quite diverse.”

“I think this makes good cultural policy,” says Mario Levesque, but, “bad electoral policy, long term.”
Levesque says that with concentrated population growth in the southeast, the disparity issues will get worse over time. He expects the Moncton region to grow faster than Tantramar, which means the current 22% deviation would grow.

“What they needed to do was to divide it up, so Tantramar goes with part of Memramcook, and perhaps more of the Beaubassin region, and have that go forward. But they didn’t want to tackle that, because that’s controversial between linguistic communities,” says Levesque. “So that’s why I said they chickened out, and why I said it’s the problem that won’t go away.”

“The southeast region is only going to keep growing in population,” says Levesque. “So in 10 years time, when we revisit redistribution again, this problem is going to be even worse. It’s not when or never. We will be addressing this. And we’re gonna see some radical changes, I think, in 10 years time to this map.”

One more round of public consultation

There is one more round of public hearings for the commission, to get reactions to its proposal. Eight virtual hearings are scheduled for January 11 though 14. People are also invited to submit feedback via email to CommissionNB@gnb.ca, with a deadline of January 15.

The commission says it will file a final report by March 12, 2023.