N.S. Supreme Court rules Chéticamp should have protected Acadian electoral district

People in and around Chéticamp could be voting in a new riding in the next provincial election, after a Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruling that the northern Cape Breton area deserves to have a special Acadian electoral district.

According to the decision, the lack of a protected district for Chéticamp is an unjustified breach of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court gave the provincial electoral boundaries commission 20 months to draw up the new riding.

Jules Chaisson, executive director of the Acadian group Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse, said the ruling was welcome after a long fight.

"If you consider the history of the province, it has always considered the Chéticamp region an Acadian community," Chaisson told CBC Radio's Information Morning Cape Breton.

"There's not as many voters as there are in other ridings, but it still has its own identity which should be preserved, and to help to preserve that identity, I think the Chéticamp region should have its representation in the legislative assembly. That's what we've been fighting for for the past 10 years."

Chéticamp is in Inverness County, in an electoral district called Inverness. According to the court ruling, the new riding is to include the village of Chéticamp and the larger surrounding region, which comprises the villages of Petit-Étang, Belle-Marche, Plateau, Point Cross, Grand-Étang, Saint-Joseph-du-Moine, Terre-Noire, Cap-le-Moine, Belle-Côte and East Margaree.

Fight dates back to 2012

The federation's fight dates back to 2012, when an electoral boundaries commission report recommended keeping protected seats for minorities in a reconfiguration of the electoral map, but rejected the creation of one for Chéticamp.

The commission included the existing electoral districts of Argyle, Clare and Richmond to encourage Acadian representation in the Nova Scotia Legislature, and the new district of Preston to encourage Black Nova Scotian representation.

The NDP government vetoed the recommendation though, eliminating the protected seats.

The federation launched a court challenge and in 2019, a commission report again called for the return of the protected ridings, but still left out Chéticamp.

The Acadian federation said in a news release this week that the commission "ignored the cultural and linguistic specificities of Chéticamp" in its report.

"Chéticamp has a unique culture," Chaisson said. "It's a unique community and it should be protected like the other ridings."

Chaisson said the court ruling this week is just a first step because there's always the possibility the province could appeal the decision.