Exceptional Circumstances: Electoral Boundary Conflict in Canada's Territories

Abstract

This article investigates why electoral districting, which across most of Canada was reformed by the “electoral boundary revolution,” is instead increasingly fraught in two northern jurisdictions, the Northwest Territories and Yukon. While independent electoral‐boundary commissions and judicial rulings have depoliticized and professionalized districting elsewhere, the same developments in the territories have sparked lawsuits, legislative rejections, and political crises. Conducting a narrative analysis of a half‐century of legal, legislative, and archival documents, this article identifies three broader sources of territorial districting conflict. First, demographic concentration produces unusually acute urban‐rural tensions. Second, remoteness and small population size create distinctive representational challenges involving community‐of‐interest protection and constituency service. Third and most fundamentally, electoral boundaries have become entangled with unresolved questions of Indigenous self‐determination, constitutional development, and the political character of northern territories themselves. Together, these factors help explain why districting disputes in the North are more frequent, intense, and politically consequential than elsewhere in Canada. The article concludes that territorial districting may require distinctive legal and institutional frameworks capable of accommodating demographic realities, Indigenous rights claims, and the constitutional fluidity of Canada's North.