; "Voters urged to get engaged in newly created Acadian riding in northern Cape Breton")
Voters in northern Inverness County, Cape Breton, are being encouraged to take part in this month’s byelection in the newly created riding of Chéticamp-Margarees-Pleasant Bay.
Philippe Hache, a liaison officer with Université Sainte-Anne who’s helping organize one candidates’ debate, said there are plenty of political issues to discuss, including the need for roadwork, affordable housing and improvements aimed at health care and tourism.
But he said the potential for voter apathy is a big concern.
“People have kind of lost faith in the whole election system, so our goal now as community volunteers is to try to promote a debate that will be happening next Monday that gets people informed on some of their real challenges and why their vote is so important,” Hache said.
“There’s a whole bunch of different problems that we knew that we had, but this byelection really forced us to look deep and see exactly what needed to be addressed.”
Hache said the creation of a new riding should get people excited about voting for the person who will become the 56th member of the legislative assembly.
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The government passed legislation in April to establish the new electoral district by splitting the previous Inverness riding.
“Our MLA was doing a really good job, but his territory was so vast,” Hache said.
“Now that we have such a small riding, I think people will be more connected to their MLA.”
The new constituency was created after a 2024 Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruling that said another protected riding was needed to provide better representation for Acadians.
Chéticamp-Margarees-Pleasant Bay is considered an “exceptional” riding because of the low number of electors that will be represented. With about 3,900 voters, it will be the smallest in the province.
Other exceptional ridings in Nova Scotia include Argyle and Clare, which have significant francophone populations, and Preston, which is a protected African Nova Scotian riding.
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Darlene Doucet, a community volunteer concerned about health care, said until now, the area has been represented by an MLA based in or near the town of Inverness.
“We’re in a region that isn’t really engaged in many elections because our representative is usually [in the] southern part of the county,” she said.
“So we needed somebody who understands this particular part of Inverness County. From Pleasant Bay to the Margarees, we have a distinct culture. Now at least we’ll have two MLAs in Inverness County — one for the northern part and one for the southern part.”
Ambulance response times a concern
Doucet said in addition to housing and roads, northern Cape Breton needs better access to health care.
She said statistics gathered by the local fire department show ambulance response times last year averaged 35 minutes.
The Facebook group Northern CB Emergency Response contains “stories of individuals that had to wait an hour or an hour and a half, two hours, or an ambulance didn’t come at all,” Doucet said.
“We need to fix that.”
In an email Friday, a spokesperson for ambulance provider EHS said after discussions with the Northern Cape Breton Emergency Response Task Force, Chéticamp has become a priority posting area and if an ambulance from that station is dispatched on a call, another will be sent to backfill the area.
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The possibility of having a more local MLA is generating a renewed interest in politics, Doucet said.
“I think the fear was if we fought for a protected riding that we would have no candidates come forward and we have [had] many candidates come forward … all bilingual, all from here, that can speak on behalf of the riding,” she said.
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Constituents are being urged to cast ballots in the upcoming byelection for Chéticamp-Margarees-Pleasant Bay. But as the CBC’s Kyle Moore has learned, not everyone is showing interest.
Four candidates are running in the byelection: Claude Bourgeois for the PCs, Denis Cormier for the Liberals, Trevor Poirier for the NDP and Nik Boisvert for the Green Party.
“All of a sudden there’s a lot of talk and candidates are going door to door and you know who they are and you can ask them questions and you can expect real answers from them because you know them,” Doucet said.
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Cape Breton University political science professor Tom Urbaniak said with the government based in Halifax, voters in the Chéticamp area need an MLA who’s close to the people.
“This riding is as far as you can get from the provincial capital and so representation matters,” he said.
“The MLA will be someone who will have a personal connection with most constituents.”
Urbaniak also said the candidates will have to spend a lot of time on their ground game.
“This is a situation where potentially every vote does matter. We don’t have any scientific opinion polls to test what the vote might be after polls close on June 23. So this election will be won on the doorsteps.”
Debate scheduled for Monday
Monday’s debate at Conseil des Arts de Chéticamp begins at 6:30 p.m.
During a roundtable discussion with CBC’s Information Morning Cape Breton earlier this month, the candidates said provincial budget cuts had emerged as an early issue in the byelection campaign.
Constituents can vote at the returning office in Grand Étang until the final voting day June 23 and at community polls open until Saturday, June 13, at St. Patrick’s Parish Hall in East Margaree and at the Whale Interpretive Centre in Pleasant Bay.
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