Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the bill before the House gives me an opportunity to introduce my constituency to the House at last.
Most people know where my constituency, that is Blainville-Deux-Montagnes, is located. It extends from the Mille-Îles River, in the south, up to but excluding Mirabel, in the north, and many of us have gone through it to reach Mirabel Airport or to spend a relaxing weekend in the Laurentians.
People who travel through the riding would be well advised to stop once in a while to enjoy its special attractions.
As for electoral redistribution, the problem in my constituency does not come from big distances as it does in the constituency of my colleague who spoke before me and who told us about its huge territory. On the contrary, mine is mainly a very densely populated urban constituency, and I can easily get around the riding by bike, as I often do. Small distances have their advantages.
Our problem does not stem from big distances but from the rapid population increase, so much so that an electoral redistribution based on the current population would probably be outdated at the time of the next election.
This rapid population growth in my constituency is due to several factors which I will now enumerate.
First of all, there is residential development which is growing extremely fast. Many people from Montreal and Laval choose to come and live with us because of the advantages of this semi-rural and urban riding, where we are both close to leisure activities and occupations in Montreal and leisure activities in the Laurentians. Because of these advantages, the population is growing very rapidly. Cities such as Lorraine and Rosemère have mostly very high-standard houses. Other cities in the riding have a wide variety of dwellings that attract people. Thus, a city such as the one that I know best since I was its mayor for a long period of time needs a new primary school every year to deal with this population growth. So, we do not know what the distribution figures for the new population will be in three or four years. The fact is that a division that would be decided today would be outdated by that time.
Apart from that very rapid residential development advantage, there is also the fact that our riding is the location of several industries, from a giant company such as GM, in Boisbriand, to many small and medium-sized businesses created by the strong dynamism of the people, and medium-sized industries such as Stablex, Novabus or Hyprescon.
Nevertheless, we must not forget that part of the riding is covered by provincial Bill 90 which protects agricultural land and that agriculture in the riding is on a very high level, especially market gardening, since we are close to Montreal, which means that the riding's economy is expanding despite the recession and will continue to expand, which in turn makes it attractive to investors.
In the riding, we have autoroute 13 and autoroute 15 running north-south and autoroute 640 running east-west. The riding is very conveniently located in terms of its distance from Dorval Airport and Mirabel Airport. It is also 20 kilometres from the Port of Montreal, which means it has an ideal infrastructure. It has a number of very modern, well-situated industrial parks set up very recently, especially Boisbriand and Blainville which are along one of the major highways, and we are very proud of our labour force whose skills are very attractive to investors.
We have a number of educational institutions of very high calibre, including the Institut d'ordinique which is well-positioned to help develop high-tech industries, and also Lionel Groulx CEGEP and other institutions, so that we are able to provide a quality labour force.
Another aspect which may be interesting for people who go to the Laurentians for recreational purposes is that we have a number of recreational resources but are much closer to Montreal. Of course, we still have a lot of green space. There is still a lot of countryside in the riding. For instance, we have the "Domaine vert", a protected area where no construction is
allowed, a huge expanse that has equestrian trails, bicycle paths, hiking trails, and so forth.
We also have a large number of golf courses. Then, there is the Blainville Equestrian Park where every year two international events are held, as well as a very impressive fireworks display.
We also have an historic event which has become a tourist attraction. There is a church in Saint-Eustache that still bears the marks of shots fired at Quebec's patriots by the British. Fortunately, those shots hit the stones of the church and we have carefully preserved those stones to remember this extremely important event.
This being said, I will now conclude by saying that, since our riding offers some advantages that stimulate its demographic growth and since the makeup of its population changes constantly, any decision made today regarding the distribution of electoral districts would likely become obsolete tomorrow. In a nutshell, this distribution would divide our riding into two ridings that would include three cities that are not part of the existing riding. On one side, we would have Sainte-Thérèse, Boisbriand, Saint-Eustache, Deux-Montagnes and Sainte-Marthe, for a total of 130,000 people, and on the other side we would have Blainville, Rosemère and Lorraine, which already belong to our riding, plus Bois-des-Filion, Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines and Terrebonne, which would be added to our riding to the detriment of neighbouring ridings.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I support this bill to postpone the decision regarding the distribution of electoral districts.