A A

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. —

A change in the voting age from 18 to 16 could well be on the table as a new committee on democratic reform is approved by politicians.

On Wednesday evening, the House of Assembly voted unanimously to disband the existing all-party committee on democratic reform and strike a new one.

The motion was brought forward by New Democratic Party Leader Alison Coffin and seconded by Progressive Conservative Leader Ches Crosbie.

The previous committee was struck by Justice Minister Andrew Parsons in February and was comprised of four Liberal MHAs, two Tory MHAs and one NDP MHA. The new committee will see two Liberal MHAs, two PC MHAs, two NDP MHAs and one independent MHA tackle questions of campaign contributions, the voting system and the age when people are allowed to vote.

Coffin says the new committee is more democratic than the previous arrangement.

“The first one hadn’t met since the last sitting of the House. It was a committee that was resting with the Department of Justice. It was chaired by a Liberal, it had a majority of Liberal members and a few members from the other parties, and no representation of independents,” she said.

“True democratic reform ought to be democratic." — Alison Coffin, N.L. NDP Leader

“True democratic reform ought to be democratic. We thought this would be a better composition for a select committee and it moves it out of government and into the entire House of Assembly. It’s more representative of the people and the current members that are elected.”

From here, it’s unclear how the committee will progress. Coffin says it will be up to the House leaders of each party (Liberal Siobhan Coady, PC David Brazil and the NDP's Jim Dinn) to determine the composition of the committee and start working on terms of reference.

There’s no timeline at the moment for when the committee will report, but Coffin says she’s hopeful the committee could ultimately become a standing committee and not be dissolved upon issuing a report.

“Once we determine what goes in those terms of reference, we can start looking at priorities. This is likely not going to be solved in six months. Hopefully, it will be solved before the next election, though we don’t know when that’s going to be,” she said.

“It may be a much longer process. There might be some things that are low-hanging fruit that we can agree on quickly, maybe other stuff that can come later.”

Twitter: @DavidMaherNL

RELATED