Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here.
I want to thank you for a really good summary of what this bill actually does. I think your opening comments clarified for a lot of Canadians some of the confusion that may be out there. Especially, you highlighted the ongoing long-standing commitment of our government in terms of allocating increased seats now and into the future to better reflect the population growth in Ontario, B.C., and Alberta. Then this second one, which is so important--in spite of Mr. Garneau's protest--that we maintain the number of seats for smaller provinces.... There's no way that we can get anywhere close to proportional representation by the formula that he's suggesting. Finally, to maintain the proportion of representation of Quebec according to its population....
In your opening comments, Minister, you indicated that the bill would set the electoral quotient for the 2011 readjustment at 111,166. I have some numbers in front of me from some of the ridings not too far from me that are significantly higher than that. Brampton West has 170,000 constituents. Oakridges-Markham has 169,000. I could go on. There are ten different ridings here, all of them with over 133,000 in population.
At the same time that we have those ridings that have such high populations, we have other ridings in the country that are around 40,000 or less. My question basically is this. Is it possible to ever get to a total representation by population under the current system? This proposal that you have here seems to me to address it as best we can, recognizing the previous guarantees to get closer to representation by population for these ridings. Currently the constituents in these ridings...their vote is worth one-quarter or less of the constituents in a riding of 40,000. Could you address that for me?