To come back and answer your initial question more fully, the challenges that large, populous provinces face with their commissions—Ontario and Quebec being prime examples, and B.C. somewhat—is the number of hearings they must hold across the province, which means you can't hold them all within 30 days, which is why they need to spread them out.
To answer your second question, I want to explain the process. For the 2001 redistribution exercise, software was developed whereby you tell your computer to give so many ridings here, while respecting the present configurations of ridings to the fullest extent possible. What will happen at this exercise, in Ontario, for example, is that computer will spew out ridings that are going to be geographically smaller in size, but they will try to stay within what exists now.
I remember one member of Parliament writing to me and saying, “Mr. Kingsley, my riding is okay. Please don't touch it.” Well, they will all be touched; there's no doubt about that.
That's the type of thing that that computer can do. Then, the commissions start to look at that and say, “Well, that doesn't make sense.”
I should also explain that the other reason why this tool was developed was that while the commission is sitting, the commission can say, “Well, move that line a little bit over here.” As it's moving, the numbers will change, and that line will tell you that you've just moved 3,500 Italian Canadians, or you've just moved so many people of Catholic ancestry, or whatever. It will tell you all these demographics so they are able to take that community of interest, initially, into account. This greatly facilitates the initial swath—the initial task of creating the initial boundaries—so they can be reviewed by the commission, analysed by the commission, and then put out as their first draft, which is public, on which they will get public comments.