Northern Ontario will have one less member of parliament after the next Federal election. The new election boundaries for Federal ridings are now in effect.
The new boundaries of Sault Ste. Marie – Algoma will also include communities such as Wawa and Dubreuilville and as well as St. Joseph Island, Thessalon, Blind River , Elliot Lake , and Spanish.
The move leaves one less voice for Northern Ontario ridings and makes the riding one of the largest in the country and one of the least populated with just over 113,000 voters.
Carol Hughes, member of Parliament for Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapukasing will lose her seat in the new election boundaries.
According to Hughes, the loss of a seat and combining two major ridings together will create too much ground to cover.
“Having an MP office in almost every corner of every 10 blocks in the city is different than having an office hundreds of kilometres away in a rural area,” Hughes told the CBC in July.
Hughes was one of four MP’s nominated for the Speaker of the House, but lost out to Gregory Fergus, making the Liberal Party lawmaker the first Black Canadian to hold the post after the previous speaker quit over unknowingly inviting a former Nazi soldier to parliament.
The Constitution of Canada requires that federal electoral districts be reviewed after each decennial (10-year) census to reflect changes and movements in Canada’s population. The current federal redistribution process began in October 2021. It is led by independent commissions working separately in each province to establish electoral boundaries.
