Sure.
It will be very short, because I understand what the commission is doing with regard to the boundaries. To put another riding in the northern part of Alberta is absolutely essential.
One of the things we looked at when we saw the first two maps coming out of the commission was that they were seized with the demographics, which is part of the criteria, but it's not all of the criteria. It's the communities of interest, identity, as well as historical patterns of the communities. I believe members of Parliament who live in those communities have much more information and understanding of how that would work.
Northern Alberta MPs got together and asked how they would meet the criteria for the commission and yet still meet the other criteria, which are historical patterns and communities of interest, and that's the map that is being proposed. It does change Yellowhead a little bit from theirs. The largest part of it is that there is a natural boundary between our riding and the north, or, let's say, the north part of Yellowhead, which would be the Whitecourt-Barrhead area and to the north. There's about 200 kilometres of bush, which is a natural break.
There are two communities in that, or actually three, if you want to look at the northern part of Yellowhead, which would be Grande Cache, Fox Creek, and Swan Hills. When talking to those communities there is a reasonable argument that can be made as to whether those communities could go north or south, because they do go both ways. To get the numbers, moving those into the north would be functional and would meet all the criteria. When you get down into Whitecourt, Barrhead, and Westlock, which are larger communities, they certainly don't go north. Their historical patterns are always south or east, and it would really go against the other criteria of the commission. Not only that, in the original map their populations are so large in those areas that they would dominate that riding. I believe it would be unfair for the northern area because then their representation would be weak.
If you look at the geographic size of that riding—I don't know if everyone around the table here can capture just how large that is. You're talking about 15 hours going from one end of the riding to the other, at 120 kilometres an hour, in a car; that would be on a good day, if the weather is good. There's no airport, really, other than in Peace River, which doesn't have commercial flights, just to give you an idea of the dynamics of that riding.