Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 12th, 2013

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

—but their common interest might be Lethbridge.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Right.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's the idea.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

We heard from the previous witnesses that most of the roads go north-south, right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Right.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So instead of having the ridings extending east-west, these ridings sort of follow the roadways.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Well, certainly, and you can see Calgary north of it. You would think that the roads would be heading towards Calgary, from Lethbridge to Calgary and from Medicine Hat.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

As far as transportation goes, it seems this would make more sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Right.

Are there any further questions on this?

Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'm just wondering if our guests from Elections Canada have software that allows us to superimpose on one screen so that we can see what's proposed in the second report, and then just layer the change on top? I think I've kind of now got it, but going from screen to screen....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You will see the differences.

Can you do that?

[Benoit Montpetit]

I can figure something out, yes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Just to get that final argument—because I don't think our witnesses necessarily made this—you look at that map and now you look at the Bow River riding and say that's a huge big chunk of Alberta there, but it makes sense because all those folks have that one thing in common, which is that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

They circle Lethbridge.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

For the logistics of any serving MP for that area, you would have to go from Cardston County, at the border, all the way up to Kneehill County or these places quite far north. I'm looking at the highway system, which we talked a lot about, in northern Alberta. I've driven those roads, but never driven those roads thinking about how you would do constituency outreach.

The communities of interest factor is that they all connect to Lethbridge. Lethbridge remains a whole city in and of itself.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Right, but this riding circles it.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So their community of interest remains the fact that they all service out of Lethbridge.

Is it fair to say that Bow River is an entirely rural riding? Taber, Milk River, these are very small towns.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Yes. I don't think there's anything very big in it.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I guess you would notice a population growth of 67 in these places.

Interesting. It's a big riding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

According to the documents given to us by Elections Canada, after doing it Bow River would be 105,000. It has a fairly good population. But you're right, it has a fairly good number of kilometres too.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

One hundred and five is still a little bit under—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Yes.

What is that? It's 1.46, so it's pretty good for numbers, considering the drive.

It's a new riding.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

There's nobody saying—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Someone who gets it would be very happy to be the MP.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

—I don't want to drive around that.

What's that riding right now?