Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in this House to speak to Bill C-18, an Act to suspend the operation of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act.
As you know, Madam Speaker, my party does not wish to run in the next elections. We hope that, by then, Quebec will be independent. Nonetheless, the proposals made by the Electoral District Boundaries Commission upset several of my colleagues across Canada.
I am not the kind to shirk my responsibilities. When I saw that the commission had carved up my riding of Lotbinière, I did not have any other choice but to react strongly.
In no time, it created an uproar in my constituency. Following the announcement of the proposed reform, around 20 articles, editorials and letters to the editor appeared in local newspapers. It is hardly surprising since the Bois-Francs area was split into three different ridings. The commission wanted to combine regional county municipalities into federal ridings, ignoring certain historical, economical, social and cultural factors.
To combine RCMs into ridings is reasonable to a point but not if the cities themselves see no benefit in it. For instance, by being shifted from Richelieu to Lotbinière, Bécancour was being moved into the same riding as the other municipality in the Bécancour RCM but was being separated from Nicolet.
In an article published on Thursday, February 24, 1994, in Le Nouvelliste , Mr. Jean-Guy Dubois, Mayor of Bécancour, said, and I quote: ``It is quite obvious that this exercise by the commission members was essentially a demographic one, and that they did not take into account the sense of belonging in these communities''.
And Mayor Dubois added that the Bécancour-Nicolet area cannot be divided. And what about the city of Victoriaville-Arthabaska, the heart of the Bois-Francs area, which was being separated from several area municipalities such as Princeville with which it had real and tangible links.
I can only congratulate the government on its decision to impose a two-year moratorium on this electoral boundaries readjustment process. We are talking about an $8 million exercise. Eight million dollars to move little lines around on the electoral map, displeasing the majority of national, provincial and municipal authorities in the process, all the while trying to preserve electoral quotas and in fact spending public funds needlessly.
Of course a revision of the electoral boundaries is necessary when certain elements of the Elections Act are not adhered to.
Factors to be taken into account, besides electoral quota, are described clearly in section 15 of the Act: community of interests of the inhabitants of a given electoral district in the province or its historical development. Also, care must be taken to ensure districts are not too large in sparsely populated, rural or northern regions of the province.
Recent revisions have shown that more often than not, commissions had used purely mathematical rules to readjust electoral boundaries.
The intent, in this bill, to preserve the integrity of RCMs within districts is commendable but hardly immutable. As we have seen, in certain cases, others factors must be taken into account.
In a commentary published on Tuesday February 22, 1994, in L'Union , the chairman of the CNTU Bois-Francs, Mr. Denis Champagne, gave a general idea of what people think: For an electoral map to be good, it must reflect the various communities and identify the connections between these well enough. Finally, the administrative structure has to adhere to it. Right now, we are in an undescribable administrative muddle''. And he adds:Boundaries now divide RCMs; they overlap different administrative areas. . . In a word, I cannot see the current revision meeting our needs in that respect''.
That is what commissions must look at. It stands to reason that we should review the legislation governing this process. A parliamentary committee should oversee the review of the Act and electoral boundaries should be readjusted. It really needs to be done. It has not been done in 30 years.
Sir John A. Macdonald himself recognized that electoral power parity was essential, while not being the only factor to be taken into account to ensure effective representation. He introduced the Representation Act, 1872, in recognition of this basic truth: "Although the rule concerning the population of each district has been widely obeyed, other factors have been considered relevant to ensure a variety of interests, classes and communities can be represented and the rule of numbers is not the only one used".
This quote was used as part of a ruling made by the Supreme Court of Canada on June 6, 1991, in the case of the Attorney General of Saskatchewan against Roger Carter et al.
It would therefore be worthwhile to review the Act to make sure that electoral boundaries commissions take all these factors into consideration rather than set arbitrary boundaries.