Commission to try again on Nunavut’s electoral map

Voters and election workers watch the results come in at the Siniktarvik Hotel in Rankin Inlet during Nunavut’s most recent territorial election on Oct. 27, 2008. A new electoral boundaries commission is being assembled to look at possible changes to Nunavut’s 19 ridings. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

Wanted: two members for Nunavut’s electoral boundaries commission. Must be willing to work for 250 days, with the added risk that MLAs will throw out your final report.

Nominations close Oct. 8 for the commission, which will be headed by a current or retired Nunavut judge who will join with two other members to come up with changes to Nunavut’s electoral map.

That could mean Nunavummiut will vote in constituencies different from the last territorial election, held in November, 2008.

“This commission will start from scratch,” said John Quirke, clerk of the legislative assembly.

Quirke said he’s already received some applications for the post, which pays standard Government of Nunavut per-diem honoraria.

Commission members must be eligible Nunavut voters and “must demonstrate a thorough understanding of electoral law and administration and be able to analyze complex written information.”

The number of voters in each of Nunavut’s 19 constituencies is supposed to be equal within a margin of 30 per cent, with an exception for Sanikiluaq because it’s so far from the rest of the territory.

But Sandy Kusugak, Nunavut’s chief electoral officer, called for a redistribution in her annual report following the 2008 election. That’s because massive population growth since the current electoral map was originally drawn up in 1997 has created serious inequalities.

“The number of voters in the constituencies of Amittuq, Iqaluit East and Rankin Inlet North all vary more than 30 per cent from the average,” she wrote.

MLAs tossed out the work of the last electoral boundaries commission, headed by Justice Beverly Browne, the former head of the Nunavut court, after they decided they didn’t like the results.

Among those recommendations, which Browne’s commission made in 2006, were proposals to increase the number of Iqaluit seats to four and add one seat each in the Kitikmeot and Kivalliq regions. The total number of MLAs would grow from 19 to 23.

Fast-growing Arviat would have been split into to ridings, while Gjoa Haven would have gotten its own seat.

Taloyoak and Kugaaruk would form another riding, splitting up the current, unpopular situation in Akulliq, which overlaps two regions.

Kimmirut and Apex would have formed a new riding, while Cape Dorset would form its own seat, called Kinngait.

But in 2007, 11 MLAs, mostly from the Baffin region, voted to turf the report, mainly over objections it cost too much and that the boundary commission didn’t hear from enough Nunavummiut.

Iqaluit West MLA Paul Okalik, then the premier, said adding four MLAs would cost the Nunavut government an additional $2 million per year and that Nunavummiut were “already over-represented.”

And Iqaluit Centre MLA Hunter Tootoo, now the education minister, slagged the report as “a disjointed smorgasbord of options and scenarios, maps without substantive meaning and no evidence of consultation on changes to constituency names.”

Quirke said MLAs will vote on a motion to establish a new boundaries commission during the coming legislative session, which gets underway Oct. 19.

Once that happens, the commission will have 250 days — about nine months — to come back with recommendations.