1992 Northwest Territories jurisdictional boundaries plebiscite explained

1992 Northwest Territories jurisdictional boundaries plebiscite
Date:4 May 1992
Country:Northwest Territories
Do you support the boundary for division shown on the map?
Yes:8347
No:7000
Invalid:124
Electorate:27852

A plebiscite on the boundary between Northwest Territories and the new territory of Nunavut was held in the Northwest Territories on 4 May 1992.[1] The proposed border was approved by 54% of voters.[1] A second referendum later in the year gave the final approval to the creation of the new territory.[2]

Background

A 1982 referendum had approved the division of the Northwest Territories and the creation of a new territory, later to become Nunavut. The federal government gave a conditional agreement to the plan seven months later.[3] In December 1991 the federal government reached an agreement with the Inuit on their land claims, with the "Parker line" (named for former Commissioner John Havelock Parker who worked on establishing the borders) set as the boundary between the existing territory and the new one.[1] The boundary roughly approximates the tree line in Canada.[4]

Results

ChoiceVotes%
For8,34754.39
No7,00045.61
Invalid/blank votes124
Total15,471100
Registered voters/turnout27,85255.55
align=left colspan=3Source: Direct Democracy

Notes and References

  1. http://www.sudd.ch/event.php?lang=en&id=ca021992 Northwest Territories (Canada), 4 May 1992: Border with Nunavut
  2. http://www.sudd.ch/event.php?lang=en&id=ca031992 Nunavut (Canada), 5 November 1992: Creation of Nunavut
  3. Web site: Building Nunavut: A Story of Inuit SelfGovernment . . The Northern Review No. 1 (Summer 1988) . 59–72 . Yukon College . February 16, 2009 . August 5, 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160805210410/http://www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham/jull/buildnun.htm . dead .
  4. Book: Heidt, Daniel. RECONSIDERING CONFEDERATION: Canada's Founding Debates, 1864–1999. University of Calgary. 2018. 978-1-77385-016-0. 263–264. a new Northwest Territories and Nunavut (“our land” in Inuktitut)—were created when the federal govern-ment redrew the boundaries in Canada’s North, splitting off the central and eastern Canadian Arctic north and east of the tree-line from the rest of the Northwest Territories..