Memramcook-Tantramar legal challenge hangs over new riding
Daniel McHardie | CBC News | Posted: September 19, 2014 11:48 AM | Last Updated: September 19, 2014
PC Mike Olscamp and Liberal Bernard LeBlanc are running against each other in the newly-formed riding
When voters in the Tantramar-Memramcook riding head to the polls on Sept. 22 they will be casting their ballots in a new riding that, for the first time, joins francophone Memramcook and anglophone communities around Sackville.
While some in the southeastern riding hope the newly-formed riding has a chance to bring the two communities closer together, a lawsuit could ensure that the riding is broken up before the 2018 election.
The Tantramar-Memramcook riding offers many interesting storylines as election day draws near.
The election is being contested by two sitting MLAs, Progressive Conservative Mike Olscamp and Liberal Bernard LeBlanc.
Olscamp is a current cabinet minister and had represented Tantramar since 2006, a riding that has rested firmly with the Tories since 1998.
LeBlanc is a former cabinet minister and had represented the Memramcook riding since 2006. The Memramcook area has been a reliably Liberal part of the province.
The new riding is forcing both candidates to reach beyond their traditional powerbase in hopes of holding onto a seat in the legislature.
Standing outside of a Port Elgin gas station, LeBlanc is catching his breath after a long morning of meeting workers at a nearby manufacturing company. He is about to depart on another swing through several coastal communities.
“As you know I am very well known in Memramcook and I was not very well known in the Sackville area, so I have been knocking on doors in many many residences in Sackville, and all around. I’ve been to Murray Corner, I’ve been to Port Elgin and I’ve been to Cape Tormentine,” LeBlanc said.
By his own estimates, LeBlanc has knocked on more than 3,000 doors in the riding.
Olscamp’s schedule is not any less grueling with only a few days left in the election.
The Tory candidate has campaigned on Sundays, a practice that he avoided in previous elections. He agreed to an interview early on a weekday morning, prior to a rendez-vous with voters around Dorchester.
Staring at the new riding map and referencing former U.S. army general Norman Schwarzkopf, the former high school teacher said he has had to shake up his campaign tactics.
“I’ve split it about 50-50,” Olscamp said in terms of how he’s campaigned in sections of his old riding and the new riding.
“In the old Tantramar, they know me, so my preamble isn’t what it would look like in Memramcook. In Memramcook, it is incumbent on me to introduce myself. A lot of people don’t know who I am and a lot of people are surprised when I speak French to them, they thought I was an anglophone.”
New riding met with hope and uncertainty
Standing outside of a coffee shop on Sackville’s Bridge Street, Marilyn Walker offered her perspective on the opportunities that the new riding could have in demonstrating how the two communities, and linguistic groups can work together.
“I think it is necessary for any candidate whether they are successful in the election or not to recognize the diversity of this province. It is the only officially bilingual province in Canada, so any representative of this riding needs to take in both concerns,” the Sackville resident said.
“So I think it is a great opportunity to bring together issues and culture and people who have been seen as separate because of their language.”
Fred Arsenault echoed Walker’s sentiment. He said he hopes the next MLA can bring the two communities together, but he admits it may be a struggle.
“It doesn’t bother me one bit,” Arsenault said.
“If you turn around and look, I think the Maritimes is mostly bilingual. I don’t think it is an odd marriage, I just think it is more for one guy to handle, to be honest with you,”
In Port Elgin, Jim Trenholm said he understands that it would be impossible for everyone to agree with whatever changes were made to the riding.
He said the new, larger riding will be more difficult for the elected official, but he doubts the citizens will find a problem with it.
“They are not going to know the area and the people as well as before, but I’m sure they will learn,” Trenholm said.
“I can’t see there being an issue. You are not going to please everybody but I’m sure the majority will get along.”
The hope and optimism about the new riding in the Tantramar sections of the riding was muted a bit by the uncertainty of some voters on the other side of the riding.
Gerard Landry said Sackville and Memramcook are two different communities and deserve their own ridings.
“It’s two different cultures, it is completely different,” the Memramcook resident said.
“They will have a hard time,” referring to the next MLA who will have to represent the area.
Valmont Gaudet runs a barbershop on Memramcook’s main street. Gaudet has been cutting hair in the village for 55 years.
In more than five decades of talking to people sitting in his barber’s chair, Gaudet said he’s learned that change takes time.
“We will have to wait and see. that’s all we can do. The population isn’t here any more, it is over there. They are three times bigger than us,” Gaudet said.
“Something like that you have to wait and see, you can’t complain about something you don’t know nothing about."
Boundary commission cut ridings
When David Alward’s government ordered the Electoral Boundaries and Representation Commission to redraw a riding map with only 49 constituencies, down from 55, that meant every riding needed 11,269 voters, plus or minus five per cent, and ultimately that forced the boundaries to expand.
Tantramar, which has always included Sackville and many anglophone communities along the coast, had nowhere else to find more voters.
In nearby Memramcook, the riding could not move closer to the nearby city of Dieppe because of that area’s rapid growth.
The commission rejected the option of using a special clause that would have allowed a riding to be smaller than the legislated requirement. So the only option at that point was to merge the anglophone communities around Sackville with the francophone areas around Memramcook.
That prompted a legal challenge by the Acadian Society and the Association of francophone municipalities.
Frédérick Dion, the executive director of the francophone municipalities association, said he has had preliminary meetings with the government’s lawyers about their case.
He expects the challenge to be heard in 2015.
We are not in the United States, here in Canada the electoral boundaries are defined by other things than numbers. - Frédérick Dion, Francophone municipalities association
“We are arguing that the new riding does not protect, does not assure, that the community of interests are protected. We have some arguments found in the Charter of rights,” he said.
“It is not against the English whatsoever, we are just saying in Canada that there is a principle that minorities, and it could be the [aboriginal] community, French, or whatever,” he said.
“Minorities have the right to be able to be represented in the House of Commons in Ottawa or in their legislative assembly in their province.”
Dion said the problem is not with the commission but with the provincial government for tying their hands by only allowing the ridings to have a variance of five per cent from the electoral quotient.
He said Sackville would have had a legitimate complaint if it had been put in a majority francophone riding. He said the ridings should have been assembled with more care than a simple mathematical formula.
“We are not in the United States, here in Canada the electoral boundaries are defined by other things than numbers,” he said.
Final days of the campaign
Olscamp and LeBlanc are running against the NDP’s Helene Boudreau and the Green Party’s Megan Mitton.
Both candidates say they are not underestimating any of their opponents, but Olscamp and LeBlanc also talked about how it is different to campaign against another sitting MLA.
With a hearty laugh, Olscamp said he tries to ignore how much experience LeBlanc has when he campaigns.
“If I were to ponder on the fact that he has as much time in the House as I do and the fact he was in cabinet also, I might be a little nervous about it,” he said.
For his part, LeBlanc was just as deferential to his main opponent.
“I know Mike has been in my area...we sit in the same legislative assembly, we talk to one another,” LeBlanc said.
“It is going to be the people who decide, it will be the issues and how this riding is going to go and how they treated the people in the last four years.”