New bill means culture and language could help shape N.S. riding boundaries

The Nova Scotia government is giving those charged with redrawing the province's electoral map far more leeway to accept much smaller or larger constituencies.

The norm has been to form ridings of roughly the same population, give or take 25 per cent.

But a bill introduced Tuesday in the Nova Scotia Legislature makes it acceptable for members of the Electoral Boundaries Commission to allow for deviations from parity for historical, cultural or linguistic reasons, or to match existing political boundaries.

The proposed law would also allow for the creation of a constituency with parts that are not connected geographically.

Together, the changes go well beyond what have been the accepted practice in Nova Scotia for creating new election maps.

"We just want to open it up to give the commission as much freedom and flexibility, elasticity as we can," said Liberal House leader Geoff MacLellan.

The Fédération Acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse launched a court action after three protected Acadian seats and one protected African-Nova Scotian seat were eliminated in 2012 by the previous NDP government. 

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal sided with the group, and the current Liberal government was spurred to create a three-member panel to look into the issue. The panel made its recommendations in January.

But Marie Claude Rioux, executive director of the Acadian federation, is not happy with the proposed changes introduced Tuesday, specifically the clause allowing non-contiguous districts.

When MacLellan explained what a non-contiguous district might look like, he used an example that rankled Rioux.

"Richmond and Chéticamp are obviously separate, but the idea that they were part of the same riding, that would be a non-contiguous riding," said Rioux. "For us, this is not practical. This is very concerning to us."

The Acadian federation is worried that by allowing geographically split districts, the commission might choose to lump together Acadian communities in the same riding rather than creating new ones.

"We didn't do all that process, and we didn't appear in front of the past commission, and we didn't appear in front of the legislative committee, and we didn't try to discuss with the premier, and we didn't do all those steps to get less ridings," said Rioux.

Rioux is also unhappy the commission will be asked to create a map using the current 51 seats as a guide to how many MLAs there should be.

"We want to have our past Acadian-protected ridings and we want to have added to that Chéticamp because we really feel that Chéticamp has been left aside," said Rioux.

Even before MacLellan introduced the bill, he was already sending the signal the McNeil government is ready to amend it to ensure people are happy with the terms of reference the commission will use to redraw the electoral map.

"If non-contiguous doesn't work to sort of get the right outcome here for this process, then we're certainly wide open for that," he said. "We're not pushing forward on any of these [changes]."

The next step is for a committee of MLAs to pick the members of the commission that will begin the work of consulting with Nova Scotians in order to redraw the map to their satisfaction.

That commission must include representatives from the Acadian and black communities.