Commentaire 21 (11 juillet 2022) – commentaires et rétroaction

Philip Charbonneau

Hello there,

I'd like to first off thank you for all your hard work on coming up with new proposed electoral district boundaries. I can't imagine it's an easy task balancing population distributions, community integrity, and forming natural feeling boundaries. I have included a few suggestions and points of consideration for any revisions of the current proposed boundaries.

Provencher: This large urban riding currently encompasses a number of historic rural francophone communities and bilingual municipalities. However, the new boundaries split these communities even further by transferring the southern communities of St Malo, St Pierre-Jolys, St. Elizabeth, Letellier, etc to neighbouring Portage-Lisgar. The integrity of these minority language communities, and the continuation of their culture and language are at risk. My suggestions would be to try and clump as many of these rural francophone communities together to try and maintain their electoral weight. This may give them a better chance of being heard during elections, and their unique and culturally/linguistically specific issues being addressed by their electoral representatives. I recognize it is not easy to group these communities together as their communities are spread out through the province, but the area around Steinbach and the Red River can be grouped fairly easily.

Winnipeg West: Like the name here, but I don't understand the inclusion of the rural communities to the west of the city. This area only adds around 5000 people and so seems unnecessary to top up an under populated urban riding. Additionally, it's a bit of a disservice to the rural communities to be lumped in with just an overwhelmingly urban riding as their interests and needs will differ significantly from the rest of the riding. My suggestion would be to revise the western border of this riding to match that of the older riding. This would provide continuity for the urban boundaries of Winnipeg, keep the riding explicitly urban, and not impact population distributions between ridings (and maintain the provincial electoral quotient balance) dramatically. The rural portions of this riding could be included Portage-Lisgar as they were in the existing riding boundaries.

Churchill-Keewatinook Aski: This northern riding covers vast areas of the province and is one of a few federal ridings with a majority Indigenous population (at around 75% according to the AFN). However, the new proposed boundaries add a significant southern area previously a part of Dauphin-Swan River. I see this as a problem for two reasons. First, the riding was already quite large geographically. Adding even more territory for candidates and elected representatives to cover will only make their job more difficult and reduce effective representation. Second, it will effectively reduce how Indigenous the riding is. As Indigenous candidates in previous elections have commented on (see comments from Buckley Belanger from neighbouring Saskatchewan ridings of Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill river in the last election) the politics of southern non-Indigenous can come to dominate the riding making it more difficult for Indigenous candidates to be elected, and Indigenous issues to be heard. Add to this the remoteness of many First Nations communities in northern Manitoba, and the effective capacity for democratic engagement of First Nations communities in the north is more limited. Additionally, the proposed boundaries (and current boundaries for that matter) split First Nations Tribal Councils between ridings. My suggestions would be to maintain this riding as geographically small as feasible, and seek to adjust boundaries around the tribal councils to ensure First Nations communities are represented together.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Philip Charbonneau