Progressive Conservative leader Jamie Baillie says the NDP have turned the job of redrawing electoral boundaries for the next election into a fiasco.

“The Province is supposed to, by law, allow an independent process,” said Baillie. “Instead the government has an embarrassing mess on its hands.”

Baillie says Nova Scotia used to have a respected system where terms of reference for redrawing boundaries were framed by all-party agreement, followed by public hearings through an independent commission.

Instead the NDP pre-determined the terms of reference in a secret, closed-door meeting over the Christmas holidays.  They ignored the views of the public expressed at the hearings of the Select Committee of the Legislature and they ignored the other two parties who objected to the NDP’s tactics. As a result, they created poorly-worded, one-sided terms of reference.

“The NDP put the members of the Independent Boundaries Commission in an impossible position,” said Baillie. “They had to choose to respect the views of the many people who made submissions, or they could bend to the will of the NDP.”

Baillie says that if the NDP had sought consensus in the beginning, they would not be in the embarrassing position they are in today.

“Unfortunately, all Nova Scotians are watching the embarrassing spectacle of the NDP government writing their own rules for the next election.”

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