Thank you, Mr. Aldag.
I'll give you some numbers. The population of Vancouver, as used by the electoral boundaries commission and I think largely accepted as being the population of the city of Vancouver, is 682,000. That's the population. Divide that by six and you get an average of about 114,000. The provincial quotient is 116,000.
I showed the electoral boundaries commission how you could keep all six seats within the municipal boundaries of Vancouver. I just want to pause here and say that this is Canada's third-largest major city. With some very, very logical moving of boundaries, you could have each seat be 114,000 or 113,000.
In fact, it's 114,000 for Vancouver Centre, 114,000 for Vancouver East, 114,000 for Vancouver Granville, 114,000 for Vancouver Quadra, 113,000 for Vancouver South and 113,000 for Vancouver Kingsway, with virtually identical electors between the ridings and within 2,000 or 3,000 of the provincial quotient. You may know that the act permits a deviation of up to 25%. We're talking about 1.5% off the provincial quotient.
I also recognize that sometimes, as Mr. Albas said, you have to go across municipal boundaries. I recognize that, but that was not necessary in the case of Vancouver. When we put those submissions in, I have no idea.... The original submission had Vancouver South and Vancouver Kingsway popped over into Burnaby without any explanation. When they came back the second time, they moved Kingsway back into Vancouver. They took Vancouver South and put them even further into Burnaby, and then inexplicably took a piece of Richmond and grafted that onto Vancouver without any explanation. Just for them to say the words that, well, we have listened to everybody and we have taken into account the submissions—that is not sufficient.
I would conclude by saying that it seems to me that what the boundaries commission did was to slavishly adhere to the numerical equality of voters and not give sufficient attention to the equally important and legislatively required criterion of community of interest. That, I think, is what is underpinning all of our submissions today.