I'll give it my best shot.
I'd like to thank you for having me here today.
I would also like to thank the clerk for the eleventh-hour translation and for sending the documents around. Essentially we'll be splitting our presentation. I'll be going through the community objections to the Burnaby North—Seymour configuration in the report. Then Peter will talk more about how we propose to fix this.
Really I just wanted to stress all the way through my presentation how unpopular the decision essentially to cross the Burrard Inlet is. When we get to the maps, I can show you exactly what I mean. We're asking the committee to recommend to the commission that they not go ahead with this change.
Again, I will stress that I feel that the commission's work was integral; I just feel they made a mistake in this situation.
If we look at the first map, that's the current configuration of the riding of Burnaby—Douglas. Once we pull up the Burnaby North—Seymour map on the other screen you'll see what the commission has proposed. You can see that the new Burnaby North—Seymour riding goes across the Burrard Inlet. The only way that those two communities connect is through the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge. Almost unanimously the many people who have been coming out to the commission meetings and writing letters to the editor have objected to this configuration.