I'll keep it very brief.
If you look at this map, this is the city of Vancouver here, as you can see. I am very concerned that this part of the city of Vancouver is being chopped off completely. That's the reality we're talking about. That's Marpole. I agree completely with Mr. Davies about moving the line from Main Street to Ontario Street. Ontario Street is the natural dividing boundary.
Fundamentally, we need to recognize that communities of interest matter, and I draw the committee's attention to paragraph 15(2)(a) of the act. It says:
(2) The commission may depart from the [prescribed population for each riding] in any case where the commission considers it necessary or desirable to depart therefrom
(a) in order to respect the community of interest or community of identity in or the historical pattern of an electoral district in the province
In this case, Marpole has voted as part of a Vancouver riding for 100 years.
The city of Vancouver has used Ontario Street as the dividing line between east and west for over a hundred years. We are talking about communities of interest. We are talking about historical precedent, and all we are asking is that the commission actually adhere to the rules that they have been assigned by the legislation. That's what all of us are saying. All of us made minor tweaks to the proposal that was made to respect communities of interest, such as the Ontario Street argument that Mr. Davies and I have both been keen on, but in no world did we imagine that portions of the city of Vancouver would just be chopped off.
Those are my concerns. I think we all share the concern that the commission.... They've done very good work. I am not objecting wholesale to everything that's been done. I think we need to be mindful of communities. We need to recognize that they've done great work south of the Fraser, but they should be using the Fraser River as the line that divides Vancouver and Richmond, just as they're doing between Delta and Richmond.
Thank you.