Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm very happy to be here today to speak to the proposals for the boundary redistribution in the province of Saskatchewan.
I figure I might as well start off by acknowledging that I am a Manitoba MP. I'm not here to pretend to be a subject matter expert on the province of Saskatchewan, but this is a process for MPs, and only MPs get to provide feedback at this stage in the process. As members around this table will know, there are MPs from only one political party in Saskatchewan. Some people feel more comfortable giving their feedback to members of other parties, so we have indeed received feedback from folks in Saskatchewan who felt it was important to have their views represented at this table. That's what I'm here to do today.
I will be focusing my remarks particularly on the proposal for the city of Saskatoon. The boundary commission's original proposal proposed three ridings for the city of Saskatoon, including the new riding of “Saskatoon Centre”. I think many folks in Saskatoon are excited at that prospect. Over the course of a number of boundary redistribution hearings, some folks in Saskatoon have argued that there's a significant community of interest among folks who live in the urban centre of Saskatoon, which has traditionally been carved out and then included in ridings that extend beyond the city borders into parts of rural Saskatchewan.
I'm here to ask the committee to consider looking at the original proposal by the boundary commission, which created one urban riding in the centre of Saskatoon, because I think there's an important principle. I think all of us are familiar with the very real divides that can exist from time to time between urban Canada and rural Canada, which indeed can sometimes be exacerbated by politics. I think that's an important divide to try to overcome.
However, one of the questions is whether it's best overcome by creating ridings where one representative has to try to represent those concerns at the same time, or whether it makes sense to have representatives who are able to speak to properly urban concerns and properly rural concerns and then try to mediate that. That's as opposed to having an election and perhaps having rural folks feel that the person who truly speaks to rural concerns didn't get elected and so they don't have a voice, or, alternatively, having urban folks in an urban-rural split riding, where a more rural representative was elected, feeling that their concerns aren't getting the kind of representation they would like to see.
I think there's an important principle there that's recognized in the guidelines. Of course, there are many guidelines that boundary redistribution commissions have to consider. One of them, and I think it's quite important and stands to reason, is that where they can, they should try to create ridings where that kind of significant community of interest that exists between urban areas and rural areas is well respected. I'll be speaking to that more general point again in the Manitoba section of this meeting.
That's really what I'm here to argue today. In fact, the commission itself recognized many of these arguments in its original submission. It recognized that significant communities of interest belong together inside the city of Saskatoon. That's why its original proposal included those things. I know the commission heard from folks who disagree, but it also heard from folks who thought the original proposal was a very good idea.
I'm here to communicate on behalf of those who felt that finally having a properly urban riding in the city of Saskatoon was a good idea, continues to be a good idea, and is something that the boundary redistribution commission should follow through on.
I'm happy to answer to the best of my ability any questions that committee members may have.
Thank you very much.