HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia Supreme Court has ruled the Chéticamp area in northwestern Cape Breton should have its own protected Acadian provincial riding.

Justice Pierre Muise says in a ruling this week that the lack of a district for Chéticamp is an unjustified breach of Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Muise has given the provincial electoral boundaries commission 20 months to draw up a new riding.

The Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse launched a court challenge in 2021 after it objected to Chéticamp not being declared a protected riding in a report released by the boundaries commission in April 2019.

In his decision Tuesday, Muise said the commission erred in not recommending a special electoral district based on the “speculative risk” that creating the riding would dilute the urban vote in the province.

He wrote that Chéticamp, a francophone community currently included in the sprawling riding of Inverness, “had been denied effective representation for about a century.”

Nova Scotia created protected ridings in the 1990s to ensure effective representation of Acadian and African Nova Scotian voters and to protect them from electoral redistribution.

The legislature currently has 55 seats, including three Acadian ridings — Argyle, Clare and Richmond — which the commission recommended be given special status in the 2019 report.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2024.

The Canadian Press