The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Flin Flon and Creighton's federal electoral boundaries may be changing. Independent commissions have been been set up in each province to review and redraw the electoral districts across Canada. Under the rules for allocating MPs, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are each entitled to 14 seats in the House of Commons. The main goal of the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Electoral Boundaries Commissions will be to re-adjust boundaries so that each of those ridings will have roughly the same population. This helps ensure all votes in the two provinces are of approximately equal value, though the commissions may depart from that goal to address concerns related to a community of interest or identity, or to geographic size. The commissions will draft proposals of new boundaries while taking into consideration factors such as population, communities of identity or interest, historical patterns, and geographical elements and the need to balance continuity and change. As a result, the Churchill riding of Manitoba, the Desneth_-Missinippi-Churchill River riding of Saskatchewan, or both, may be altered in time for the next election in 2015. After the commissions draft their proposals, new electoral maps will be published and members of the public will be invited to comment and make their own suggestions. Hearings The time and location for public hearings to discuss the proposals will be published in newspapers throughout the provinces as well as on a website (www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca/). After the views from the public are considered, the commissions will submit a report to the House of Commons, where MPs will provide feedback to be reviewed by a parliamentary committee. The commissions will consider the MPs' feedback and decide whether to make any final changes to their reports, which are submitted to the Chief Electoral Officer for preparation of a document called a 'representation order'. This final step allows the new electoral map of Canada to be officially implemented. The new map will be used at the first general election called at least seven months after the representation order becomes law _ likely the 2015 general election. Manitoba and Saskatchewan residents are invited to participate in creating the initial proposal by sharing their thoughts. Manitobans can e-mail [email protected] by April 27, while Saskatchewanians can e-mail [email protected] by April 15. Canada's electoral boundaries were last modified in 2002. As Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon constitute one electoral district each, they do not require electoral boundaries commissions.
