Again, I'm not here to be the subject matter expert in respect to Saskatchewan but just to relay concerns we've been hearing. I don't know that a full stakeholder consultation list has been published by the commission to date in terms of what they heard from folks after their initial proposal was made. I understand that we're aware of over 20 people who made submissions in support of Saskatoon centre.
My understanding is that the feeling there really is that there are.... When you're talking about an urban core, there are particular kinds of challenges and struggles, and infrastructure is required in order to address those things that is simply not the kind of infrastructure or challenge that you would experience in rural communities.
People know each other. People who live on the outskirts of the city or just outside of the city travel into the city and things of that nature. What they're looking for in terms of improvements to the community around their home is going to be very different if they live in a community just outside the city rather than in the city core.
The gist of those representations is that people who live in an urban core want to be able to have representation that doesn't feel divided between having to represent very different communities of interest with very different infrastructure needs. They would rather have the opportunity, in a Saskatchewan context, to have an urban representative able to focus and specialize on the kinds of issues that you experience in an urban core. I think that's really the main thrust of what people are concerned about.
Without getting into the full history of it—some members around this table know it better than I do—that's not something that has largely been true, because of the way ridings have been created in Saskatchewan over some period of time.
Saskatoon's population has been growing, and I think folks feel that the city is at a point now where it doesn't make sense to deny Saskatoon a properly urban riding. It's maybe not going to cover all of the city, although there are proposals that would see Saskatoon divided into three ridings pretty neatly without extending very far into rural areas.
I appreciate that because of the historical fact that you've had urban-rural split ridings in Saskatchewan, creating three ridings for the city of Saskatoon would require a significant rejigging of the electoral map, which is why that happened in the commission's initial proposal. You can't do that without making some significant change.
The idea that a growing Saskatoon means that the time has come for there to be a properly urban riding is certainly the view we're hearing from a number of folks in Saskatoon who made representations to the commission.
While Mr. Redekopp may well be right that, in the initial round, there were only four people, I think he'll find, when more detail is published on the public consultation process that took place after the commission's initial proposal, that there were, in fact, substantially more people who submitted in support of a Saskatoon centre riding. That's certainly what we've been hearing.