Procedure and House Affairs committee  Believe me, I do not believe that the Carter decision from Saskatchewan was very helpful in telling us what a community of interest was. As an electoral boundaries commissioner, I've found no guidance from that. Regarding which constituencies should get special treatment, if any

Procedure and House Affairs committee  This is an issue that has come up repeatedly in electoral boundaries commissions. The fundamental principle that we're dealing with here is representation by population. A vote in suburban Toronto should be equal to a vote in any other part of Canada. Unfortunately, we don't have

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have one quick—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would like to make a quick defensive comment, as an electoral boundaries commissioner for Ontario. When we're talking about the population in Brampton West, or these ridings, I wish people would look at the populations as they were in 2001, not as they were in 2006, or as they

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It would depend on whether you had a cushion proposal in there or not, but effectively, if we kept the House at 308 seats and got rid of the grandfather clause, they would each go down to 10 seats. But if they weren't allowed to lose more than 15% of their population, it would be

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a very good question, Mr. Reid. In the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, there used to be a provision under which projected growth could be taken into account by the commissions, but Parliament removed that provision. The interesting question that remains is what the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My interpretation of it, sir, was that the projections were being used to add seats or portions of seats in urban areas, and members of Parliament from rural areas didn't think that was an appropriate way of acting.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Dion, I basically support that position. That was inherent in the presentation that I made. If you had a 15% cushion, a province couldn't lose more than 15% of its seats; it would have the effect of decreasing the relative strength of the faster-growing provinces. But I appr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I didn't respond at length to your factual question about whether I've consulted the governments and so I think I would like to respond to this point. If 30 members of Parliament are added, and if some provinces get none of those members, they are losers. So my question to you w

Procedure and House Affairs committee  And they think it's better? They don't think that they've lost representation?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  But they have less influence.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure, Mr. Chair.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It is a pleasure to be here, and as the chair said, I've served on electoral boundaries commissions in Ontario on three separate occasions and I have testified about this kind of redistribution issue on three or four other occasions in the past. Most recently, I wrote a paper on