WINNIPEG -- A Manitoba MLA has written to the independent body responsible for determining provincial electoral boundaries to demand a name change be reversed.
In his letter, Emerson MLA Cliff Graydon said the constituency’s name dates back to the late 1800s and “a group of individuals whom nobody elected have decided that the name of Emerson belongs in the waste bin of history.”
Under new boundaries laid out in a 2018 final report from the Manitoba Electoral Divisions Boundaries Commission, most of the area that was previously Emerson will belong to a newly named constituency, Borderland.
In his letter, Graydon called Borderland, “a term nobody identifies with and a term that carries no history of its own.”
In addition to making a change to the report in the interim, Graydon said further changes “to allow the people of the province a voice in the name of their constituencies” should also be considered in future, noting independence is needed to determine electoral boundaries but “the names can be and should be held sacred.”
Graydon sits as an independent in the Manitoba legislature after being booted from the governing Progressive Conservative caucus in October 2018, after apologizing for making an inappropriate remark to a legislative staffer. Further allegations against him surfaced the following month.
Shortly after being removed from the PC caucus, Graydon introduced a private member’s bill seeking to abolish daylight saving time in Manitoba.
See below for maps of boundaries set in 2018 (Source: Manitoba Electoral Divisions Boundaries Commission.)
