Thank you, Mr. Chair. I certainly welcome the points made by my colleagues at this end of the table. I certainly welcome the dissenting report by one of the commissioners, David Marit, who heads up the SARM, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.
Mr. Goodale said that SUMA is very supportive, but that's not necessarily true. A good portion of the delegates to SUMA represent small towns and villages throughout my area, and they're certainly not in favour of this.
The biggest concern that I have, and that a lot of my colleagues in Saskatchewan have, is growing voter apathy. Mr. Anderson made the point that we will soon be changing back again to a hub-and-spoke method, because of the growing population base in Saskatchewan as a whole. The province has finally come of age.
Saskatoon and Regina are the first and second fastest growing cities in Canada, with the youngest demographics. We're in this for the long haul. So I welcome the dissenting report that reflects and builds on the 75% of applications before the commission that were in favour of the status quo, with some changes here and there to reflect today's growth.
What they didn't take into consideration at all were trade corridors, communities of interest. A lot of community satellites around Saskatoon and Regina are served by the city's water, sewer, and gas systems, and they don't reflect those trade corridors or those centres of interest at all.
I'm very concerned about voter apathy as we constantly change where people should go to vote. Serviceability of a riding is extremely important. Any one of us who represent large rural areas knows this. As my colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain said, his riding is roughly six hours across, point to point. Mine is similar in scope. Cross it with a few rivers that aren't accessible all year round and you have some serviceability problems.
People want to see their MP. I made this point at the commission, and Justice Mills said to just use Skype. Well, these are private issues in a lot of cases. People want to see you face to face, get to know their MP. I don't for a minute believe there are issues pertinent to the rural areas that aren't pertinent in the urban areas, or vice versa. I think there's a good cross-section of work that needs to be done. In my time here in the House I've found that the more knowledge you have of issues across the spectrum, the more important it is when it comes to votes in the House, because votes and the work that you do here are not divided on rural-urban lines. Not at all. I'm not sure why we do that to the voters.
I've never in my 16 years heard a complaint from anyone saying they're not being represented because they're rural or they're urban. I've never heard that. I think there are a lot of issues that are germane to this. From the Saskatchewan caucus perspective, we work as a team. We meet at least once a week, and more often than that if there are issues that we need to discuss to build a consensus on how we approach an issue, regardless of where it terminates or begins.
The problem we have with this new map is beyond the serviceability of the ridings. Once you isolate those urban ridings, you create a patchwork quilt to make the rest of it work. You can see how difficult it's going to be for people to identify with their MP when their community of interest has nothing to do with where the MP is based or where the office has to be. In some of them, the office will actually have to be outside the riding to give the best service. That's just untenable in today's society.
So I think a lot of things were completely missed. I know you have in front of you some letters from three city councillors in Saskatchewan. I had a discussion with the mayor of Saskatoon the other day. These letters are under the City of Saskatoon letterhead, but they're not authentic in that regard. One of them is a relative of a candidate, one is a campaign worker for a candidate, and the other one's a failed candidate. So take them from where they came.
I have a quote here from Mayor Don Atchison from Saskatoon:
It is my strong belief that the divisive plan before you now pits urban against rural, city against town and ultimately damages the relationships we have been nurturing. I believe in consensus and building on mutual trust. This plan promotes neither.
That's, in a nutshell, exactly what we're talking about here. We're hopeful that the commission will go back to the drawing board, take the 75% of applications that were made to heart, and leave us with the status quo as the basis for some tweaking here and there to give the voters of Saskatchewan what they need.