N.W.T. electoral commission's work not enough to fix broken consensus system: former MLA

The Northwest Territories Electoral Boundaries Commission has been reviewing the number, size and boundaries of existing electoral districts and is expected to table its report in May, during the next sitting of the legislature. 

In the first of a series of conversations on electoral reform, Trailbreaker host Loren McGinnis spoke with former MLA for Kam Lake Kieron Testart.

Testart was elected to the Legislative Assembly in the 2015 election and sat until 2019. He is a past president of the N.W.T. Liberal Party and has long championed the idea of territorial political parties – a discussion that stretches back decades. 

This discussion has been edited for length and clarity. 

Loren McGinnis: You have said the system isn't working as it is now, and I understand you believe that the consensus government, nonpartisan system in some ways stands in the way of real progress. What are your objections with the system we have now? 

Kieron Testart: I would go farther and say it's very much a broken system at this point. And although it is not party-based, it is deeply partisan. The divide between the regular members and the cabinet members is, you know, significant. And there's a sharp power imbalance in the House as well when it comes to staffing resources and the ability to influence public policy. And that's really what it comes down to. Northerners for many years have been, you know, demanding significant public policy outcomes, whether there are changes to GNWT's (government of the Northwest Territories) internal policies around hiring or larger goals like public housing, environmental protection, economic development. These things remain almost impossible to change, despite the fact that we've had high turnover in sitting politicians who ought to be driving those changes. 

And that's really what the crux is. The GNWT's bureaucracy are the ones who determine and execute public policy. There's no independent public policy being developed outside of the the government, essentially the bureaucracy, and being brought to the bureaucracy to execute. Everywhere else in Canada, you have political parties who do their own grassroots policy development. They get elected and then they implement their policies. And that does not happen in the Northwest Territories. So despite MLAs running on ideas and promises and commitments to do things differently, they end up doing things exactly the same way. 

LM: I'm not trying to get you to make anybody else's case, but what do you see as a strength of the consensus system? 

KT: I would say people tend to get along. But this current assembly has shown that that's not the case. Perhaps one strength is that the actual committees of elected officials who look over legislation, look over departmental budgets and travel the Northwest Territories, talking to residents to solicit their input, is very strong and it's not bogged down by partisan grandstanding, because that is an issue you see in other parliaments. 

In the Northwest Territories the standing committees are focused on talking to Northerners and they're focused on delivering good legislation. So that is probably the strongest part of the consensus government system that currently works the way it should. 

LM: So what's your sense of the appetite for moving away from consensus government right now?

KM: There an appetite for change. What that change looks like, I think, is up to the people who want to deliver it … So whether that's a slate of candidates who are going to run together as a team and offer a common vision for what they want to do if they get elected, or whether it's what we've come to expect in the Northwest Territories with independents, all kind of saying we'll do a better job than the last guys.

But this current government has not addressed the systemic issues that are holding the North back from reaching its true promise. We've been in a deep recession for a very long time now, and there's no real hope for economic growth on the horizon. The government is fixated on its own budgets, on its own spending and saving money for itself and its own purposes. And that's the fundamental disconnect. There's a separation between, you know, the GNWT as an entity and the people it's supposed to serve. 

And the politicians who are in there, are more interested in fighting with each other than actually doing that job … We've had two change elections back-to-back. But nothing has really fundamentally changed with how the North is doing … And instead of scratching our heads trying to figure that out, I think personally that the system that is working virtually everywhere else in the world, in a Commonwealth country, a system of parties that are able to take the ideas of citizens and turn them into public policy, is the best choice to move the North forward.