Evidence of meeting #58 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was commission.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
I think you've hit the nail on the head. The difficulty also is the federal census and their methodology, which does not take into consideration places such as northern Alberta. It just does not.
How can you have a municipal census that is done door to door and shows a 25% greater number of people in the area than a federal census that doesn't do door to door? Yet the federal census is accepted, and the municipal census is not accepted. They show 103,000 people right now in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. It should be its own riding. There is no question that it should be, but the federal census is all that everybody seems to rely on, and as a result of that inaccurate data, I think exactly what you've suggested is very important.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Well, I think there has to be a filter that's put on across the country with regard to dispersed and rural communities. Think of the responsibilities that rural MPs have. They're different from those of urban folks, in that when the urban MPs want to meet with their municipal council, they have one council, which is often shared by several MPs. In my case, I have 26 municipal councils that I have to meet with, and I have 32 first nations leadership groups.
When I'm going to meet with these folks, it means that I have a significant number of folks to deal with. Meeting one-on-one with each of those is much more difficult. Even though half the population lives in one community of Grand Prairie, I also have over a dozen Royal Canadian Legions, so you can see the difficulty.
I think there has to be a filter, and there has to be a provision to understand that rural MPs with dispersed populations do have added responsibilities. There needs to be consideration of that.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you.
Can I make a small intervention following up on what Tom had to say? I'm not sure this room can accommodate it, but for the clarity of the conversation, we need clear maps. I too was trying as well as I could to follow between the old map and the one presented, and neither is good enough.
I don't fault our witnesses today, but we need something, an approximation that allows MPs greater clarity. Perhaps the PDF could be sent to us and we could all bring laptops or something.
We're going through very important work. I feel as though we're flying a bit blind right now, because when these gentlemen leave, we're going to try to make recommendations based on their testimony and on maps that I can barely read.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
We're not taking away from your time.
We did discuss it. In all of these cases, we could do it two or three ways. The way we originally started off—we didn't need to do it with Newfoundland and Labrador—was that we would have the members come in, and they would tell us their issues. Elections Canada would provide us with maps.
They have provided us with the maps based on the recommendations by the two gentlemen here, and printed in colour, which may stand out a little better than black and white.
We have also left time in each province for us then to—
Conservative
NDP
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
They were sent out yesterday. My crackerjack administration staff printed mine in colour, and it really makes a big difference.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Okay, but there is a solution here. Before we get back to the witnesses, if you like, we could try to do this in real time with Elections Canada here with mapping, right?
The problem was that we didn't think that would be as quick and as important as getting the testimony from the members and then doing a bit of research against the mapping. We've set aside days after each province to do that. We didn't use it in the case of Newfoundland because it was very clear.
It's your call, committee.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes, and the committee can discuss this later as we get through things.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Aside from the clearer maps, whichever way they come to us.... If we think these colour ones, which I haven't seen yet, are better, then great, or perhaps something like an overhead would work better. I would offer, though, that at least having an observer as well as someone who can speak from Elections Canada—not about a judgment call they made, but over a logistical fact such as a road—would also help us.
I think it's going to be difficult after the fact. If you look not at Alberta but at Ontario or Quebec, where the implications are going to be broad and moving targets, to hear all the testimony and then come back with an Elections Canada official and then try to parse through the testimony—
Conservative
NDP
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
You're right; they won't be at the table.
If that's the recommendation—and we certainly need to get through the testimony of these two gentlemen and follow up on it—we may have to move to a larger room in order to accommodate real-time maps for us.
I will go to Mr. Reid, and then we will go back to the witnesses.
February 7th, 2013 / 11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you. Of course I hope none of this is coming out of Mr. Cullen's time.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Okay.
I was confused and I was going to ask some questions when it came to my turn with the witnesses to clarify the maps I had in front of me. I had two; now I've discovered I have a third map from Elections Canada that bears no resemblance to either the one I had in the Elections Canada book in our large package or the one that was handed out today.
I might suggest—we did this ten years ago, and I would strongly urge that we do this from now on—that we have an Elections Canada person here, and that they have an overhead showing both the status quo and what their most recent report proposes that the ridings be. Then it's up to the witnesses to say what they are advocating. Presumably it would be something that is somewhat different from either of those.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
That's a perfect idea.
Mr. Jean, did you have something to add to that?
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
I agree 100%.
I think any maps you receive of rural Canada should show the roads. I do have Google Maps here, and if you have your iPad in front of you, I can point out exactly what you need to do, but I've been working on this for a while, and it's very difficult to print out the exact maps that we want. Whatever you do for rural Canada, you need to have the roadways, because it just does not make sense otherwise.
In particular, in my riding, I don't have any scheduled flights except to Fort McMurray, so anything I have to do is charter. I can't afford to charter anything, so I have to drive everywhere, which means I have to drive, in this particular case as proposed, from Fort McMurray—