Thank you, Madam Turmel.
This area, the western side—so the ridings of Oshawa and Durham—is considered to be the most eastern side of the greater Toronto area. As you get away from Toronto, moving east along the lake, the population slowly diminishes, and urbanization sort of slowly diminishes, into my riding of Durham, which is a suburban-rural split.
Oshawa has grown to the point where some of Oshawa will need to be in a riding adjacent to it, because its population is just too large. What Mr. Carrie and I have proposed, and what is overwhelmingly supported by regional and municipal governments, is to let Oshawa grow to the size it can, to the large end of what's permitted under the act. That allows it to keep its university whole and to keep Oshawa whole.
I will then just take a small portion, on the edge of my riding, to help relieve the population. By giving up a little more of Oshawa to Mr. Carrie, I'm also allowing Durham to have the population room to keep the largest municipality within that riding whole.
Mr. Norlock, who is on my east, agrees with that proposal as well, even though it means his riding, which is more sparsely populated because it's further from the greater Toronto area, will be slightly under the 106,000 target in Ontario.
All of these factors are permitted by the act to keep communities of interest, history, and identity together, but Oshawa is the largest challenge, because it's the most urbanized. As you go east or northeast into my colleagues' ridings, they're more rural or rural-urban splits, and have more counties and local governments within them.
We think this proposal has the support of all levels of government, federal, provincial, municipal, and the overwhelming support of the population. The result will be that Oshawa is a very large riding, but it's within the range permitted.