Mr. Speaker, we probably owe you an apology for not communicating directly to you on that point. I am sure that members of the House will be absolutely delighted to know that I can now give them the long answer to the hon. member's question rather than the short answer.
I believe his points were well taken. With respect to Prince Edward Island, now that the causeway is going ahead perhaps the population of that area of the country will increase to justify more representation.
I believe his comment with respect to other countries, particularly our neighbour to the south, is very interesting and very appropriate where a much larger population appears to be well served. In fact, some people think it is still over-served by a much lesser number of representatives than we have here in Canada. I believe that their Congress is not a whole lot bigger than our House of Commons even though they have 10 times the population. That is one argument I have certainly heard advanced by many Canadians against expanding the membership of this Chamber.
I would like to touch on another aspect of this in response to the hon. member's question as to whether we really need more representatives. I think this goes to the root and scope of our representation here in the Canadian Parliament. On this side of the House we have argued rather strenuously and will continue to argue that the scope of our representation in this Chamber is very circumscribed. In other words, we really do not have the freedom we think is necessary to represent the wishes and directives of our constituents as should be available in a representative democracy through things like free votes. Quite often we find in the House members are voting and acting in accordance with strict directives from their party.
If that is going to continue to be the case, I would suggest that indeed there could be fewer of us simply responding to directives from the executive portion of our party. If we are going to truly solicit and actively represent the concerns and wishes and directives of our constituents then we would have much more legitimacy, especially with respect to numbers than we do today.
Last, I would like to point out to the hon. member that although I agree with his contention that we ought not to increase the numbers in this Chamber, and as he rightly points out there are even physical limitations on that today, this bill makes absolutely no commitment to do that. There is nothing in this bill that says we are going to turn this back to committee with a view to ensuring that the number of members in this Chamber does not increase.
That is a real concern. I would say to the hon. member that for that reason I would urge him to support the amendment we have made to give a period of time so that those very specific directions can be built into the bill and then the bill can be brought back. We know where we are going and we know what we want to achieve. It is clearly stated and we can go forward on a much more solid basis that is open to evaluation and debate rather than just throwing the thing wide open again.