Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll keep my comments fairly brief, given the fact that Mr. Dykstra has already covered them off.
I want to add a comment with regard to Hamilton. I know it's been suggested by other members not from Hamilton—I believe there was a Liberal MP who stated it—that Hamilton should be changed.
All the members from Hamilton are unanimous that the changes that they proposed are fine. I want to reiterate that off the top.
The second thing is that I would reiterate what Mr. Dykstra said. That is, the first proposal would seem to make sense. One of the original reasons we were looking at it is to try to rebalance the riding.
My biggest concern is that I'm going from 115,000 to 85,000 people. I believe that Niagara should have four full seats, which we're going to get, but as Mr. Dykstra mentioned, we're going to have one seat that has more than 120,000, and I'm going to have 25,000 people fewer. While the new changes will certainly benefit my riding, based on the last election, I believe it would be nice to have a balance of population.
The other thing that I'll mention concerns community of identity. That was the second concept. Population was one; this was the second.
Certainly the southern part of St. Catharines doesn't necessarily have much to do with Welland. I think one of Mr. Allen's recommendations or thoughts was that Thorold didn't have a lot in common with the rural parts of Niagara, but I'd also venture to say that the southern part of St. Catharines does not have much in common with Thorold and Welland.
I state this for the record. I realize that what we think would make sense is to balance the population, although I realize that's been challenged by this whole concept of communities of interest. You have my letter; I'm not going to rehash it. I just want to put on the record that we certainly supported the first iteration of the recommendations, before we came out with the second and third options.
Thank you.