House concludes Sask boundaries hearings

As Parliament's Committee on Procedures and House Affairs wrapped up hearings last week on the new proposed Saskatchewan federal election boundaries, Tory MPs backed down on their bid to quash urban-only ridings.

The Saskatchewan Boundaries Commission report, which calls for three new urban ridings in Saskatoon and two in Regina, was tabled in the House of Commons in January. The proposal garnered notoriety as one of the three commission members, David Marit, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, wrote an unprecedented dissenting report disagreeing with the majority report by Justice Ronald Mills and John Courtney, a professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan Conservative members vowed to fight the proposed boundaries and 12 of 13 filed objections with the House Affairs Committee. Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu'Appelle), was required to remain neutral by virtue of his position as Speaker of the House.

On April 22, the Hill Times reported several of the MPs had resigned themselves to the fact major changes to the proposal were highly unlikely.

"I am a realist, and I believe the commissioners are going to come back and say we have to have urban-only seats in Regina, Saskatoon, and if that's the position they're taking, then at the very least I wanted to comment on what I felt should be the most appropriate boundaries within the construct," said Tom Lukiwski (Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre) according to the Times.

Lukiwski, who normally sits on the House Affairs Committee, but recused himself for the deliberations, is now proposing minor tweaks including to what would become his new battleground of Regina-Lewvan. He wants the commission to move the Cathedral District of Regina into Scheer's Regina-Qu'Appelle riding to "improve population variance."

In the proposal, Regina-Qu'Appelle's population is slightly less than the provincial quota, while Regina-Lewvan is almost eight per cent over. Lukiwski argues that new development south of the airport will add another 10,000 over the next few years. Moving the 6,000 Cathedral area residents would balance this out.

Conservative MPs are also asking for tweaks that would affect five other proposed constituencies including, potentially, Yorkton-Melville.

Brad Trost (Saskatoon-Humboldt) presented the changes to the committee. He said a northern section of the proposed Saskatoon-University riding should be moved to Saskatoon West. The two ridings are, for the most part, separated by the South Saskatchewan River, but the section in question lies on the west side.

Under Trost's recommendations an area of high-value acreages northwest of Saskatoon, home to approximately 500 residents currently slated for the new Kindersley-Rosetown-Humboldt riding, would become part of Saskatoon-University.

Also, Trost said, the Town of Humboldt and surrounding area should, at its own request, be including in either Yorkton-Melville or Moose Jaw-Lake Centre-Lanigan.

Finally, the Conservative changes would have the francophone communities of St. Louis and St. Brieux included in the new Prince Albert constituency, where there is another francophone area, rather than Kindersley-Rosetown-Humboldt.

The House committee has now turned its report and the boundaries proposal over to the boundaries commission for finalization. The commission is not obligated to make any changes, but both Mills and Courtney said they would approach proposed tweaks with "an open mind" according to the Hill Times.