Saturday, January 17, 2009

Larger, Spread-out Rural Districts

Charge: The larger, spread-out districts under STV will distance MLAs from their constituents. This remoteness could make it very hard to visit the office of their MLA.

The Northeast and Northwest ridings clearly involve the largest potential distances people have to travel to reach their MLAs. For a person living just on the BC side of the Yukon border, travel time to reach an MLA under FPTP is about nine and a half hours for both the Peace River North and Skeena-Stikine ridings. This distance does not change under STV so the time it takes to reach the closest MLA remains unchanged. The difference with STV is that there would be an additional MLA which would likely be in the next most populated town. To see the other MLA would mean an extra hour drive between major centers for the Northeast and an extra hour and a half drive in the Northwest. This extra travel time is not that substantial when you consider how much we have to travel up here already and also when you weigh in the benefits of getting an additional MLA to turn to.

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