Communities in Northern Ontario may have a harder time accessing services through their federal representatives in the future, says Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus.
"This will limit their ability to get services, and that is really unfair," he said about remote communities, many of which are Indigenous or francophone. "We have to stretch what we already have." “I think it’s really not acceptable that the commission decided that Northern Ontario is growing, but it’s not growing fast enough to maintain the representation it has,” said Angus. “We’re not asking for extra special treatment here, we’re just saying that we are an under-represented region, we are growing, but we can’t be compared to the massive growth in Southern Ontario.”
“That’s a whole section of Northern Ontario, and that will require staffing, and we’re not provided with extra staffing to cover that,” said Angus. “Our staff deal with people’s , immigration forms, economic development, so this new section of the riding is going to put a lot of pressure on them.”“It diminishes the voice of Northern Ontario in the government and that’s really problematic,” said Angus.