Confronting 'Kymlicka's Dilemma': Settler Voting Rights, Indigenous Representation and the 1998-99 Electoral Reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories
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Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories Item Type Thesis Authors Spitzer, Aaron Download date 10/10/2021 07:21:49 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6077 CONFRONTING 'KYMLICKA'S DILEMMA': SETTLER VOTING RIGHTS, INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION AND THE 1998-99 ELECTORAL REAPPORTIONMENT IN CANADAS NORTHWEST TERRITORIES RECOMMENDED: \IM AmyiLovecraft, Ph<D.| Graham White, Ph.D. lander, Ph.D. Advisory Committee Chair Mary Etirlander, Ph.D. Director, Northern Studies Program APPROVED: TodchSherman, M.F.A Deai/, C ollie of Ub£taf^rts fofin Efchelberger, PTi.D Dean of the^raduate Sch CONFRONTING ‘KYMLICKA’S DILEMMA': SETTLER VOTING RIGHTS, INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION AND THE 1998-99 ELECTORAL REAPPORTIONMENT IN CANADA’S NORTHWEST TERRITORIES A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Aaron John Spitzer, B.A. Fairbanks, AK August 2015 Abstract “Settler colonialism” presents a vexing challenge to voting rights theory and praxis in liberal-democratic states. I call this challenge “Kymlicka’s dilemma,” after Will Kymlicka, the political theorist who has led contemporary discourse on “minority nation” rights. As Kymlicka observed, members of a state’s dominant cultural nation, or staatsvolk, may, by exercising universal mobility rights, numerically “swamp,” and then, by using universal voting rights, democratically dominate, an Indigenous minority nation in its homeland. To prevent this, an Indigenous minority nation may seek to exercise group-based voting protections, such as guaranteed representation. Where “Kymlicka’s dilemma” arises - i.e., where minority group-differentiated voting protections challenge the voting powers of individual staatsvolk and vice versa - a constitutional conflict seems certain. In Canada’s Northwest Territories, from at least the 1970s until the separation of Nunavut in 1999, the specter of “Kymlicka’s dilemma” (mis) shaped the constitutional evolution of the territorial government. There, in what was long Canada’s last Indigenous-majority jurisdiction, decades of Indigenous political resistance to settler control hinged on the permissibility of Indigenous overrepresentation in the territorial legislature. In the 1990s, three developments portended changes to Indigenous overrepresentation in that legislature: Charter of Rights-inspired limits on electoral-district malapportionment, constitutional recognition of Indigenous group-based protections, and the amplified danger of settler “swamping” that would result from Nunavut’s separation. As if in a natural experiment, these developments created conditions for a potentially volatile constitutional conflict. This thesis analyzes the results of that experiment. It shows that a constitutional conflict did ensue, catalyzed by the territorial electoral reapportionment of 1998-99. This conflict involved a yearlong political clash over Indigenous versus individual rights. This thesis further shows that a controversial court ruling, and equally controversial political decisions, resolved this conflict, deciding “Kymlicka’s dilemma” by rejecting Indigenous group-differentiated voting protections in the territorial legislature. v Table of Contents Page Signature Page.............................................................................................................................. i! Title Page......................................................................................................................................iii Abstract......................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents...................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures..............................................................................................................................xi List of Tables................................................................................................................................xi Chapter 1: Introduction.............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Literature review and methods........................................................................... 5 2.1 Individual and collective rights..........................................................................................5 2.2 Voting rights and apportionment jurisprudence...........................................................9 2.3 Political and constitutional evolution of the Northwest Territories......................12 2.4 Methods................................................................................................................................ 14 Chapter 3: Individual rights, group rights and ‘Kymlicka’s dilemma’........................... 17 3.1 Multinationalism, liberalism and democracy............................................................... 17 3.1.1 Liberal democracy, statehood and (non) universalism...........................................19 3.1.2 Universalism and internal nationalism in multination states...............................21 3.1.3 ‘External’ and ‘internal’ national-minority protections......................................... 24 3.2 Divided states and non-universalism.......................................................................... 25 3.2.1 Direct non-universalism: direct consociation.......................................................... 26 3.2.2 Indirect non-universalism: federalism.......................................................................27 3.2.3 Non-universalism in Canada.........................................................................................32 3.2.4 Rights and settler colonialism...................................................................................... 35 3.3 ‘Kymlicka’s dilemma’......................................................................................................... 37 3.4 Summary............................................................................................................................. 37 Chapter 4: Apportionment theory and case law.................................................................39 4.1 Voting rights and apportionment.................................................................................. 39 4.2 Three axes of (il) liberal apportionment........................................................................40 4.2.1 The first axis: individualism..........................................................................................41 4.2.2 The second axis: egalitarianism...................................................................................44 vii Page 4.2.3 The third axis: universalism..........................................................................................52 4.3 Adjudicating apportionment in Canada: first- and second-axis questions........... 56 4.4 Adjudicating apportionment in Canada: third axis questions................................. 60 4.5 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 64 Chapter 5: The pre-division Northwest Territories: a background..............................65 5.1 Geography............................................................................................................................ 65 5.2 History...................................................................................................................................66 5.3 Demographics..................................................................................................................... 69 5.4 Devolution of power to Yellowknife............................................................................... 72 5.5 Consociational accommodations.................................................................................... 75 5.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 78 Chapter 6: Constitutional development in the pre-division NWT................................. 79 6.1 Settler and Indigenous visions for constitutional development............................. 79 6.2 History of constitutional development: 1960s ............................................................ 81 6.3 History of constitutional development: 1970s ............................................................ 83 6.4 History of constitutional development: 1980s ............................................................ 89 6.5 History of constitutional development: 1990s ............................................................ 93 6.5.1 Nunavut’s separation and resulting threats and opportunities........................... 93 6.5.2 The ‘inherent right’ of self-government..................................................................... 95 6.5.3 Implications of Charter voting-rights protections................................................... 97 6.5.4 Pre-division proposals for merging public and self-government........................ 97 6.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 99 Chapter 7: Representation in the NWT..............................................................................101