Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and question for the minister. This is a bit of déjà vu. When looking at the history books a very similar incident happened in 1974, 20 years back in Canadian history. At that time a number of MPs, the majority being Liberal MPs on the government side, were not happy with redistribution.
I have not had time to read all the Hansards from back then to find out what all the reasons were, but the bottom line was that members were not happy with redistribution and so they interfered with the process. As a result 18 new seats were created in Canada.
We have no indication from this government that by suspending the current process and the commissions in place there is goodwill from that side. The purpose of the suspension is to cap the number of seats in the House of Commons.
I do not think the government has even considered all the ramifications of capping seats in the House of Commons. Perhaps that is a subject that really needs to be debated at greater length in the House.
Bill C-18 calls for the commissions currently in place to cease to exist upon the passing of Bill C-18. Once the suspension is completed, some 24 months later, 60 days later new commissions are to be appointed. Certainly the government is opening itself up to allegations of patronage. We hope that would not be its purpose in suspending this and causing these commissions to cease to exist. However, the allegations could come.
Therefore, if the government wanted to suspend the work of these commissions would it reinstate those commissions and have them resume their work at the point they were at when the suspension took place, thus saving the $5 million?