TRURO, NS: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) says its time for Nova Scotia to look at reducing the number of provincial politicians.

The Federation will formally make the recommendation at public meeting of theLegislative Select Committee on Establishing an Electoral Boundaries Commissiontoday.  

“Now is the time to cut the number of provincial MLAs,” said Kevin Lacey, Atlantic Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “With our province running a little over #300 million deficit and the government making cuts to health and education; it’s time to ask if we really need all these politicians.”

The recommendation follows from Utility and Review Board (URARB) decisions to cut the number of municipal councillors in the Cape Breton Regional municipality by 25 per cent and the Halifax Regional Municipality by 27 per cent.

“It’s time the province moves in the same direction. If changes are not made, there will be MLAs with fewer residents than city councillors,” added Lacey.

The CTF points out that without changes, after the 2012 Municipal elections 16 councillors will represent Halifax Regional Municipality. However, there will be 19 MLAs.

The CTF will also recommend that constituencies designed to represent minority populations should be eliminated.

“All Nova Scotia citizens should be treated equally, some groups in our province should not get special treatment over others,” continued Lacey.

There’s a great discrepancy in the size of minority population ridings compared to the rest of the province. For example, the riding of Preston, it had 7,880 electors in 2009 compared 19,154 in the near by constituency of Bedford-Birch Cove.

“Reducing the number of MLAs and making all constituencies equitable will make our system more democratic and will ultimately help save those scarce taxpayer dollars,” concluded Lacey.

A boundaries commission is initiated every ten years. The last commission started its work back in 2001 and reported in 2002. Saint Mary’s University President Colin Dodds acted as chair.