New Brunswick electoral redistribution, 2006

• June 9, 2005 - The Electoral Boundaries and Representation Act is introduced in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick.
• June 30, 2005 - The legislation is amended to alleviate Opposition concerns and passes.
• July 14, 2005 - The Legislative Administration Committee of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick meets and agrees to the seven members of the Commission. The names will not be made public until the nominees have agreed to appointment and the cabinet ratifies them.
• August 11, 2005 - Government House Leader Brad Green announces that cabinet has approved two co-chairs and five commissioners whose appointments will take effect on August 22.
• August 25, 2005 - The Commission concludes its first meeting at which the co-chairs express concern about the short time available for them to complete their report. They also announce that the first round of public hearings will be held in the month of October and that they will soon launch a website.
• September 20, 2005 - The commission announces the details of their first round of public hearings. They will visit 12 communities from October 11 to October 28.
• October 11, 2005 - Public hearings to assist the commission in the drafting of its preliminary report begin.
• November 21, 2005 - The commission files its preliminary report outlining a proposal for a new electoral map. As expected, there are significant changes to almost all districts, though most are kept as minor as possible with one new district added in each of the Fredericton and Moncton areas and one district lost in each of Charlotte County and the Madawaska-Restigouche area.
• February 20, 2006 - The commission files its final report, making changes to 20 of 55 ridings from its preliminary report. Individuals have 14 days to file an appeal to the final report but such an appeal must be signed by 2 members of the legislature. If an appeal is filed, the commission has 30 days to respond.
• March 24, 2006 - The commission announces that it received 15 valid notices of appeal within the 14-day public response period; it has reviewed them and completed its work. In the end it makes 3 minor changes to electoral districts. The legislature may now only make recommendations with respect to changing names of electoral districts; the boundaries cannot be changed until after the next census.

On November 21, 2005, the Commission released its preliminary recommendations for new electoral districts. Despite the fact that the vast majority of existing ridings were outside of the +/- 10% population range, most were retained in the new distribution through minor adjustments to their boundaries. In all, 46 of 55 districts are largely unchanged. There are five essentially new districts, three of which resulting from a merger of previous districts or large parts of previous districts.

Only one district was created using the "extraordinary circumstances" clause of the legislation which allows districts to be less than 90% of the provincial average population. This was the district of Tantramar, which is an anglophone area surrounded by water, Nova Scotia and francophone areas. The Commission argued that the only way to maintain a community of interest was to leave the boundaries as they were. The districts of Nigadoo-Chaleur, Saint John Lancaster and Saint John Portland were the only others to have no changes whatsoever to their boundaries.

These proposals will be taken to the public in a series of hearings in January 2006, and may be subject to change before the commission tables its final report on February 18, 2006.

† represents a proposal that was altered in the final report

The commission released its final report on February 20, 2006. The commission altered the boundaries of 20 of the 55 districts from its proposals in its preliminary report, though many of the changes were minor. It also changed the proposed names of three districts whose boundaries remained the same as in the preliminary report.

There was some question as to whether or not these boundaries will be used in the next general election, there has been much media speculation that the government may fall by April 7, 2006 which would be just two days after the period for appeal of the commission's work will have ended. Government House Leader Bev Harrison has suggested that should the government fall then, it would be unlikely for the government to enact the regulation required to finalize the new boundaries so as to prevent confusion for voters and party officials. The Opposition House Leader, Kelly Lamrock, has suggested he would agree with such a move. However, Premier Bernard Lord went on to say that the boundaries would be used if at all possible as they are more equitable than the old boundaries. The election was not held, however, until September, and these boundaries were used.

The legislation governing the electoral district reform process allowed for appeals to the final report which were signed by two members of the legislature. The commission received 15 such appeals.

After considering the appeals, the commission discarded most of them saying that the appeals did not provide further justification beyond those arguments that they had already rejected or that accepting the changes would cause a domino effect requiring a massive redrawing of the boundaries.

They did however accept three appeals:

• Seal Island had been omitted from the original report and would now be added to the district of Charlotte-The Isles
• The village of Norton had argued that its community of interest required it to be in the district of Hampton-Belleisle, as it had been originally, as opposed to the district of Kings East as recommended by the commission. The commission decided to place those parts of Norton north of the Kennebecasis River in Hampton-Belleisle and those parts south of the river in Kings East.
• The community of Saint-Léonard-Parent was included in the district of Grand Falls-Drummond-Saint-André while Saint-Léonard was in the district of Restigouche-la-Vallée; the appellant argued that both communities should be in the same district. As a result, the commission moved Saint-Léonard-Parent to the district of Restigouche-la-Vallée but this caused the Grand Falls-Drummond-Saint-André district to become too small in terms of population so part of California Settlement was moved from Victoria-Tobique to Grand Falls-Drummond-Saint-André.

The Electoral Boundaries and Representation Act forbade the Legislative Assembly from making any changes to the boundaries of electoral districts, but it did allow MLAs to change their names. On May 12, 2006, the Legislature decided to make several changes as follows:

• Commission website
• News releases from the commission
• Office of the Chief Electoral Officer