Mr. Speaker, as some of the other speakers have in this debate offered an invitation to you and indeed to the rest of the House to visit their ridings, I would also like to do that. I am certainly proud of my riding.
I would have to admit that I am just a little biased as far as that riding is concerned. I was born in that riding as was my father. His father was born pretty much in this area of the country and then emigrated to Alberta and homesteaded in this constituency. I am about the third generation Johnston in that area. I guess members can understand my affinity for it.
As far as redistribution is concerned, or representation by population, I guess it is always difficult to arrive exactly at representation by population when one considers what a huge country Canada is and that over the last many years the population has more or less gravitated from the countryside to the larger cities.
In my opinion to try and arrive at true representation by population would be extremely difficult if one does not take into consideration, as one would have to, some method of considering the size and vastness.
My riding has many small towns in it. The population continues to grow as opposed to some in rural Saskatchewan where the population shift is really dramatic from the country to the city.
It is interesting to note that the guidelines state that Alberta constituencies should not exceed a maximum population of 122,000 approximately or a minimum population of around 73,000. Certainly my riding does fit into those upper and lower limits.
I agree with my colleague who included an amendment to this bill that would limit the amount of seats in the House of Commons and put a cap on it at 295. I would feel quite comfortable supporting the bill in that form. Why the government chose not to put that in the bill is really a mystery to me. This could have been one time when we had unanimity in the House.
The west side of my constituency is quite sparsely populated. As we move into the cities, which are along the corridor of No. 2 highway, they are really the largest populated centres of our constituency. As we move to the eastern side of the constituency again we come into an area where the population dwindles off.
In one of the local papers recently faxed to me the editorial was that they have not seen much of their MP lately. That is a problem. The larger the constituency gets as far as area is concerned, the bigger problem that becomes. It becomes a physical impossibility to be seen the desired number of times in a given area of the constituency. It is something that we find in these large areas. If one tried to get anywhere near 100,000 people in southeastern Saskatchewan one would have to take in a very large area of that province. To a certain extent that holds true in the southern portions of Alberta as well.
My party suddenly needed a speaker.