Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I found it very interesting. All the various parties contributed to it. I would like to take it though in a slightly different direction, in a media direction that reflects my background somewhat.
Let me first describe my riding very briefly. My riding is Hamilton-Wentworth. It is a large, rural, suburban and urban riding that surrounds Hamilton. It follows the old historic lines of Wentworth county. It has a basic shape, a community centre and a community of interest going back well over 100 years.
There is one corner of my riding, the far southeast corner, Binbrook. It is a village with some farms immediately around it. After the writ was dropped I did a door to door campaign in Binbrook, about five days into the election. I was surprised to discover as I went from door to door that many people did not know who the candidates were. They did not know my name. They did not know the name of the Reform Party candidate. They did not know the name of the Conservative candidate.
I was quite surprised by this. I reflected upon it and asked questions. I discovered that the problem in this one small corner of my riding was that they were not served by a weekly newspaper. They are on the far edge of the circulation of the major daily newspaper which is the Hamilton Spectator which is in the centre of downtown Hamilton.
Again they are on the fringe of radio coverage. Finally, their basic interest was directed not toward Hamilton but directed toward another community outside of my riding, Stoney Creek and down toward the peninsula.
I realized then how absolutely essential it is for a politician to have a media which serves him because no matter what we do in this House or what we do in our lives for that matter, we have to reach the public. The public has to know what we do, whether it is good or bad, and I certainly hope that if it is good it does know. So the media is very important.
The rest of my riding is very well served. There are three weekly newspapers in various blocks of the suburban and urban portion. Of course the majority of the riding receives the Hamilton Spectator and there are two AM radio stations and some FM stations as well. I am very well covered as far as the ability of the media to follow my actions.
This redistribution however changes this picture entirely and it is a great problem. What has happened to my riding under the new redistribution proposal has taken out the urban component. As my riding is presently constituted I have about 30,000 people in Hamilton Mountain. They are completely eliminated. Instead what I have are two new blocks added, one a rural block next to Cambridge and another block between Cambridge and Brantford. To be more precise the one block is near Guelph.
Let me just visualize it for you, Mr. Speaker. You have Hamilton, Guelph, Cambridge and Brantford and the new rural blocks are in between those two areas.
These new blocks would be a great problem for me if this redistribution were to go ahead because they do not receive the Hamilton Spectator , they do not have weekly newspapers that serve them in the same way as my immediate community newspapers and they are out of range of the television and radio stations that are based in Hamilton.
Instead they turn to other communities. Naturally being rural communities they look to their nearest urban centre. So the block called Puslinch looks to Guelph. The block called north Dumfries looks to Cambridge and the block I would call south Dumfries looks to Brantford.
I am sure that you can see, Mr. Speaker, the problem that is presented here. If I say something in this House that is of some importance my chances of getting reported not only in the community and daily newspapers centred on Hamilton, but also in the Cambridge Reporter , the Guelph Mercury and the Brantford Expositor are very difficult.
In fact, those three newspapers that serve the rural areas that we are talking about only form a very small portion of the circulation of those newspapers. There is a great difficulty for me to get any kind of message out into these rural areas by the news media.
It is the same with the radio stations. These three rural areas that I would get in redistribution do not pick up the radio stations centred on Hamilton which would have the greatest interest in what I do. They instead are served by radio stations in Brantford, Cambridge and in these other areas.
Again the difficulty and the reality of the media is if they are going to do a news story on someone and that someone is of importance to perhaps only 5 per cent of their listeners the chances of them actually doing a news story is very limited.
That is the dilemma. The chances of people hearing what I do in these two rural blocks is very, very limited.
There is another side to the coin which is equally difficult. I have a responsibility as an MP to serve the people in my riding, and I have to serve those people community by community. At present I can follow what happens in my community by again turning to the local media. I have three community newspapers, I have the major daily paper and I also have the television station and radio.
The difficulty is that I have to now follow three more communities through the media. That means I would have to pay attention to these three other newspapers, I would have to pay attention to the radio stations and I would have to follow the local governments in three additional cities and municipalities.
I just do not think it is possible for one MP to cover that large a territory successfully, to be up on the news and be up on what concerns people over that vast area. Consequently I find that the kind of redistribution I am looking at is very flawed.
It is a question in my mind of philosophy. The reason we have to bring in a bill like Bill C-18 is not to interfere with a body outside of government that has been appointed to do a particular task. Our job as legislators is to give them the philosophy to operate. We have to define for them when they make this redistribution what they are doing and why they are doing it. It would appear from what I see now that in the past they have looked at the numbers purely and they have not given due attention to the question of community of interest, how our information comes from the politician to the people and how the politician gets the information from the people.
I would strongly support the intent of this bill because I think we are in the business here in this 35th Parliament of looking at reform of institutions in the sense of how better we can serve the people of Canada and our constituents. I think if we re-examine the philosophy of redistribution we may indeed find that numbers are not the last word of this issue, that it is how best the MP can represent perhaps a geographic entity.
Some of my colleagues have mentioned that in northern Ontario, for example, the numbers are sparse but the community of interest is based on history and geography. If you do it straight by numbers of course you are going to skew our historic responsibility to the people of Canada whom we serve regionally.
In concluding, I think this is a very fine move by this government. I really do wish that the members of both parties, particularly the Reform Party, would reconsider because I think this is the kind of reform that all of us in this House wish to see.