Thanks for letting me appear today.
My rationale is that in Prince George—Peace River, which is our riding name now, we have a significant portion of it that is termed the Northern Rockies as a regional district, but it's not represented in the current name. What I am proposing is that we add the name “Northern Rockies” to the original name, so it would be “Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies”.
I do have the support of the mayor of Fort Nelson, which is the main community within the Northern Rockies regional district. He is happily supportive of it and hopes that it'll make it through.
I did actually make this submission to the Electoral Boundaries Commission in October and I'm just going to read that letter out to you now. I apologize for not having it in French. We made it in English, so the French is actually being done as we speak.
Dear Mr. Justice J. E. Hall, I am writing the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for British Columbia today to propose changing the name of the electoral district of Prince George—Peace River to Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies. As the Member of Parliament for this riding, I do not believe the current name for this electoral district fully represents the people and communities that live within the proposed boundaries. According to the most recent census, the Northern Rockies Regional District has a land area of 85,111 square kilometres. This land area represents a significant portion of the proposed district and I believe changing the name to Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies would more realistically represent the riding as a whole. Thank you in advance for your consideration of this proposal. Should the Commission have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact my office.
Lastly, I did answer the question Mr. Dion asked previously as to whether I'd seen the six questions. I have.
What is the rationale for the objection? To me it recognizes the unrecognized.
Does your objection have community support? Yes it does; it has the mayor's support.
What are the demographic consequences of the changes you're proposing? There really are none. There are no travel issues or anything. It's actually a positive in that it recognizes them.
Is there a domino effect? No, it is the largest unrepresented region by name.
Is your objection a repeated argument made before the commission? As I said, I submitted the letter, which I just read, on October 16, 2012.
Have you talked to your colleagues about the proposed changes? Yes. When we originally went around to get signatures for support to make the change, I told the 10 people who I had sign my document what I planned on doing, and then they signed it. So they endorsed it.
That's it.