When the Government of Quebec created the RCMs, its goal was to establish an economic, social and cultural development framework that would make it possible, in order to deal with things like health services, for these RCMs to have a budget and to operate in alignment with regional interests. Often, when the commission's members look into redrawing the boundaries strictly on the basis of the number of inhabitants, they do not take this highly effective administrative structure introduced by Quebec into account.
For example, the Pierre-De Saurel RCM had some wind farms built, the only ones in Quebec, and they are owned by the community, not private interests. This brings in net earnings of $1.2 million to the RCM, which redistributes this money to address collective needs. If two municipalities from a neighbouring riding are added as a result of the redistribution, they will also want their share of the pie, even though they had not taken on responsibility for the loan and had not contributed to the project. That's how complex things like this can be.
Something should therefore be done along the lines of what the minister just said. It's very important to take these economic structures into consideration when redrawing electoral boundaries in the ridings