1 In this article I use the term “Aboriginal” to refer to Native peoples in the inclusive sense stipulated by section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 which reads, “In this act, ‘aboriginal peoples of Canada’ include the Indian, Inuit, and Metis peoples of Canada.” I employ the term “Indian” only in cases where explicit reference is made to the potential role of AEDs in the lives of those Aboriginal peoples who are legally defined as Indians under the terms of the Indian Act.

2 See Milen, Robert A., “Aboriginal Constitutional and Electoral Reform,” in Milen, Robert A., ed., Aboriginal Peoples and Electoral Reform in Canada, Research Studies for the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991), 3–65.Google Scholar

3 The proposal came originally from the Committee for Aboriginal Electoral Reform, composed of five current and former members of parliament. See The Path to Electoral Equality (Ottawa: Committee for Aboriginal Electoral Reform, 1991); and Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Reforming Electoral Democracy, 4 vols. (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1991Google Scholar).

4 The Committee recommended that AEDs be contained within provinces in order to avoid difficulties associated with the management of elections and to remain consistent with the constitutional assignment of seats to provinces.

5 Of the eight AEDs, one would have been assigned to Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta while two would have been assigned to Ontario and British Columbia.

6 For excellent discussions of the New Zealand Maori districts see Augie Fleras, “Aboriginal Electoral Districts for Canada: Lessons from New Zealand,” in Milen, ed., Aboriginal Peoples and Electoral Reform, 67–103; and on the operational difficulties associated with AEDs see Roger Gibbins, “Electoral Reform and Canada's Aboriginal Population: An Assessment of Aboriginal Electoral Districts,” in Ibid., 153–84.

7 Kymlicka, Will and Norman, Wayne, “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory,” Ethics 104 (1994), 354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Young, Iris Marion, “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship,” in Sunstein, Cass R., ed., Feminism and Political Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 124.Google Scholar

9 See Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 156–91Google Scholar; Cairns, Alan C., “The Fragmentation of Canadian Citizenship,” in Williams, Douglas E., ed., Reconfigurations: Canadian Citizenship and Constitutional Change (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 157–85Google Scholar; and Kymlicka and Norman, “Return of the Citizen,” 369–77.

10 Mercredi, Ovide and Turpel, Mary Ellen, In the Rapids: Navigating the Future of First Nations (Toronto: Penguin, 1993), 36.Google Scholar

11 See Swinton, Katherine, “Federalism, Representation, and Rights,” and Bercuson, David J. and Cooper, Barry, “Electoral Boundaries: An Obstacle to Democracy in Alberta,” both in Courtney, John C., Peter, MacKinnon and Smith, David E., eds., Drawing Boundaries: Legislatures, Courts, and Electoral Values (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1992), 19, 110–11Google Scholar; see also Gibbins, “Electoral Reform and Canada's Aboriginal Population,” 154–56.

12 Ibid., 161.

13 Committee for Aboriginal Electoral Reform, The Path to Electoral Equality, 14–15.

14 Ibid., 14.

15 Electoral Boundaries Commission Act (Sask.) (1991), 81 D.L.R. (4th) 16 at 35 (S.C.C.).

16 Ibid., 36.

17 Ibid.

18 On the implications current Charter jurisprudence has for the incorporation of group identities and interests into electoral politics, see Kent Roach, “Chartering the Electoral Map into the Future,” in Courtney, MacKinnon and Smith, eds., Drawing Boundaries, 200–19; and Roach, Kent, “One Person, One Vote? Canadian Constitutional Standards for Electoral Distribution and Districting,” in David, Small, ed., Drawing the Map: Equality and Efficacy of the Vote in Canadian Electoral Boundary Reform, Research Studies of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991), 3–91.Google Scholar

19 For detailed discussions of the proposed forms AEDs might take see Gibbins, “Electoral Reform and Canada's Aboriginal Population,” 161–67; Committee for Aboriginal Electoral Reform, The Path to Electoral Equality, 20–24; Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Reforming Electoral Democracy, Vol. 1, 169–93; and Fleras, Augie and Elliott, Jean Leonard, The “Nations Within”: Aboriginal-State Relations in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 86–92.Google Scholar

20 Committee for Aboriginal Electoral Reform, The Path to Electoral Equality, 14.

21 Fleras and Elliott, The “Nations Within,” 90.

22 Although the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing recommended a shift of the quotient from 25 to 15 per cent, the Fifty-First Report of the Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Procedure and House Affairs has recommended that the 25 per cent quotient be retained. See Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Reforming Electoral Democracy, Vol. 1, 154–55; Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, c.E-3, 6; and Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, Fifty-First Report (June 1995), 10.Google Scholar

23 See Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act c. E-3, 15(1). The 1985 Act has since been suspended by Bill C-18, the Electoral Boundaries Suspension Act, 1994, as the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs has been charged with the preparation of a new draft bill on electoral boundaries readjustment legislation. Presented to the House in June 1995, the draft bill proposes to uphold the practice of allowing deviations from electoral quotients of +/-25 per cent, but would narrow the criteria upon which deviations could be made. For example, the category of “community of identity” would be eliminated. Com-pare Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, c. E-3, 15(l)(b), with Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, Fifty-First Report, An Act to provide for the establishment of electoral boundaries commissions and the readjustment of electoral boundaries, 19(2)(b) and (4).

24 Electoral Boundaries Commission Act (Sask.). See also Dixon v. British Columbia (Attorney General) (1989a), 59 D.L.R. (4th), in which Justice McLachlin, then of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, gave a substantive definition to the meaning of section 3 which was to guide her later in the 1991 Saskatchewan reference case.

25 Electoral Boundaries Commission Act (Sask.), 35, 45.

26 Ibid., 39.

27 Robert G. Richards and Thomson Irvine, “Reference Re Provincial Electoral Boundaries: An Analysis,” in Courtney, MacKinnon and Smith, eds., Drawing Boundaries, 61.

28 Milen, “Aboriginal Constitutional and Electoral Reform,” 41.

29 As quoted in Ibid.

30 Fleras argues that one reason why the provision for separate Maori representatives in New Zealand has had difficulty maintaining legitimacy is because at their inception, separate Maori districts were seen as temporary measures to be eradicated once the Maori were assimilated. Fleras suggests that the stigma which accompanies Maori districts can be averted in the Canadian context if AEDs are offered as an authentic gesture in state power sharing towards the end of reinforcing Aboriginal self-government initiatives. See Fleras, “Aboriginal Electoral Districts for Canada,” 72–73, 88–89.

31 Constitution Act, 1867, section 91 (24).

32 Pratt, Alan, “Federalism in the Era of Aboriginal Self-Government,” in Hawkes, David C., ed., Aboriginal Peoples and Government Responsibility: Exploring Federal and Provincial Roles (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989), 23.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 52.

34 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Partners in Confederation: Aboriginal Peoples, Self-Government, and the Constitution (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1993), 41.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 36.

36 This study assesses the strength of the link between Aboriginal claims to differentiated citizenship and the commitment of AEDs to electoral equality. For both comparative and operational assessments of AEDs see Fleras, “Aboriginal Electoral Districts for Canada,” and Gibbins, “Electoral Reform and Canada's Aboriginal Population.”

37 For example, see the conflicting arguments advanced by Janet Hiebert, “Representation and the Charter: Should Rights Be Paramount?” in Courtney, MacKinnon and Smith, eds., Drawing Boundaries, 1–16; Swinton, “Federalism, Representation, and Rights,” 17–39; and Bercuson and Cooper, “Electoral Boundaries,” 110–27.

38 Gibbins, “Electoral Reform and Canada's Aboriginal Population,” 164.

39 For example, after the initial hesitant enthusiasm accompanying the release of the recommendations for AEDs by the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing in 1991, Aboriginal peoples turned their attention to the weightier matters of constitutional reform and Aboriginal self-government brought into focus by the Charlottetown Accord of 1992. Since the Accord's demise, the work of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples has been brought into sharper relief, yet here too there has been little indication that the issue of AEDs will be given substantial treatment. For example, the four discussion papers released by the Royal Commission between October 1992 and April 1994 failed either to mention or to give substantive treatment to the notion of AEDs. See Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Framing the Issues (October 1992Google Scholar); Focusing the Dialogue (April 1993); Exploring the Options (November 1993); and Toward Reconciliation (April 1994).

40 See Milen, “Aboriginal Constitutional and Electoral Reform,” on the general tendency of the non-status Indians, Metis and Inuit to regard the prospect of political involvement within parliamentary institutions with less hostility than status Indians.

41 See Fleras, “Aboriginal Electoral Districts for Canada,” 80–81, for an illustration of how, in the New Zealand context, party discipline severely constrains the capacity of Maori representatives to meet the needs of their constituents.

42 A comprehensive treatment of the problems associated with Aboriginal involvement in party politics is offered by Gibbins, “Electoral Reform and Canada's Aboriginal Population,” 172–75.

43 A possible strategy for overcoming this problem, as suggested by Augie Fleras for the New Zealand situation, would be to introduce a system of double voting for Aboriginal peoples. If Aboriginal peoples could cast votes in both constituencies, they would be able to lend symbolic and electoral significance to the fact that they find themselves embedded in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal worlds. However, given that the CAER dismissed this suggestion out of hand as contributing to a new inequality “infringing on the ‘one-person, one-vote’ principle underlying our electoral democracy,” it is unlikely that a double vote would garner much support. See Fleras, “Aboriginal Electoral Districts for Canada,” 96–97; and Committee for Aboriginal Electoral Reform, The Path to Electoral Equality, 33.