Former premier, former MP to chair N.B. election boundary commission

A former premier and a former MP will lead the redrawing of boundaries for New Brunswick's 49 provincial election ridings.

Roger Clinch, a former Bathurst mayor and one-term Progressive Conservative MP for Gloucester will-co chair the commission with former Liberal premier Camille Thériault.

Two weeks ago, Green MLA Kevin Arseneau accused the PCs and Liberals of "collusion" in coming up with a list of appointees that excluded names chosen by his party.

The other appointees are: 

• Josée Rioux-Walker, deputy mayor of Drummond and a project co-ordinator for the Women in Leadership initiative for Women in Business New Brunswick.
• Krista Ross, CEO of the Frederiction Chamber of Commerce.
• Emily Teed, chief of staff to the Atlantic regional managing partner for Deloitte.
• Roger Ouellette, a political scientist at the University of Moncton.

Provincial law requires a redistricting of the election map every 10 years to account for shifting population figures.

Under the law, the all-party legislative administration committee chooses the commissioners, and the provincial cabinet must appoint its selections.

Green concerns

Arseneau said earlier this month that Premier Blaine Higgs's chief of staff, Louis Léger, asked the Greens for names so they could be reviewed.

The Green MLA said he refused to provide names to the Premier's Office to review, because the law only mentions the legislative committee's role in picking names.

Instead, Arseneau put forward two names chosen by the Greens at the June 9 committee meeting. But he said he was rebuffed, and the six names chosen by the PCs and Liberals were adopted.

The lack of other appointees could allow PCs and Liberals to make tradeoffs as they redraw the riding map.

The electoral boundaries law sets out a process that calculates the average number of voters in each of the province's 49 ridings, known as the "electoral quotient."

The commissioners are required to draft a map in which ridings are "as close as reasonably possible" to the quotient. They can deviate by up to 15 per cent to accommodate what are called "communities of interest" and other factors.

And in "extraordinary circumstances" such as the need to ensure fair linguistic representation, the commission can deviate from the quotient by up to 25 per cent.

The legislation requires the commission be in place two years before the next provincial election, which is scheduled for Oct. 21, 2024.

Higgs had mused after becoming premier about reducing the number of ridings from 49. But that would have taken an amendment to the Elections Act, and his government did not act on that.