I'll start by saying that I'm still surprised at your surprise at the fact that there would be change out of a consultation, that when more than a thousand Nova Scotians wrote, and many more participated in the live hearings, it wouldn't result in a change. Of course it would. That's the purpose of consultation.
If you attended the in-person meetings, you would have heard the commissioner say that this was the beginning of the process, the starting point, that they were looking forward to community input and would change based on what they heard in the community input. That's exactly what they did.
Ms. Diab, there are lots of quotes from those public hearings and from two former city councillors as well who went and said that this part should not be in South Shore. The historical boundary, just so you know, is between Halifax County and Lunenburg County. That line goes right through the centre of St. Margarets Bay. That has existed as a county line for about 300 years. That's the line that was changed in the 1997 to 2003 redistribution, after being in since Confederation, because they are historically different but they are also municipally different.
There are a lot of quotes I could go through from those hearings. I have them here. I know that you weren't at the hearings, so you wouldn't have heard them. I know that you've received a few letters.
With regard to the issue raised about the plus or minus 25%, there is flexibility. In the initial proposal, all of the ridings were below a 10% variance, which came out when the consultation was on. The variance in the new proposal has widened in response to that public consultation, from almost 18% under in Sydney—Victoria to now only 10% over in Halifax West. The numbers, as you can see in the report, are all very different. That was the response to that.
With regard to Larry Uteck, the challenge there, as you know and we all know, is that it's the fastest-growing part of the province. That was the primary issue for the commission to face. It was the growth of that area through Bedford and how it causes a domino effect with the boundaries in the rest of the province.
First, I'm wondering if you could comment on the issue that consultation with over a thousand Nova Scotians apparently wasn't enough consultation, and that this consultation shouldn't have resulted in some sort of change. I don't know why not, when everybody at those hearings in Sydney said there should be a change. I think it's a great thing that they had so many people turn out. At the one in your riding, they didn't have room.
The commissioner also said that all written submissions have equal weight to the ones in person. All of your communities, and all of you as members of Parliament, had the opportunity to do that. Some of you chose not to do that.
Could you comment?