Niverville boundary suggestion fuels Francophone frustration

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2018 (1955 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Niverville’s solution to the puzzle of provincial riding boundaries isn’t sitting well with two Francophone municipalities, who say they want to remain right where the commission in charge of updating the boundaries initially placed them.

On Oct. 9, outgoing RM of De Salaberry reeve Marc Marion wrote to the Manitoba Electoral Divisions Boundaries Commission asking to remain in the resurrected Carillon constituency.

De Salaberry council was “unsettled,” Marion said, by a proposal from Niverville mayor Myron Dyck, who argued at a September hearing that carefully cultivated ties to the Winnipeg metropolitan region would be jeopardized if the town was excluded from Carillon.

Dyck suggested all or part of De Salaberry could take Niverville’s place in the expansive rural riding of Sandilands.

Outgoing St Pierre mayor Mona Fallis followed suit three days later, writing the village, too, wished to remain in Carillon, for reasons of Francophone unity.

Marion said dividing De Salaberry would make it difficult for council to address local issues with MLAs, while Fallis noted all municipalities in Carillon belong to the Association of Manitoba Bilingual Municipalities.

Facing a Dec. 31 deadline for its final report, the five-member commission must now decide whether the cultural and linguistic commonalities emphasized by St Pierre and De Salaberry trump the capital region priorities highlighted by Niverville.

This week, new St Pierre mayor Raymond Maynard said inclusion in Carillon will also help preserve regional lobbying efforts to get Highway 59 twinned to Highway 52.

Dyck was unavailable last week to comment on the letters.

Maynard said St Pierre council hasn’t reached out to Niverville, but said “it wouldn’t be a bad thing” if the two councils talked.

Boundary changes stemming from the commission’s final report will be used in the next provincial election in 2020.

An interim report, released in May, put forward significant boundary adjustments for the Southeast, where pockets of intense population growth over the past decade have caused riding imbalances.

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