Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak at third reading of this very important bill which has been introduced in the House and which has received considerable support on all sides.
I recognize there is some opposition in the Reform Party to this bill but I suggest it is misplaced opposition and that in the end the Reform Party will really appreciate the fact that this bill has been introduced and dealt with in the House because it will be so pleased with the final result of the thing when redistribution has finally been accomplished.
The member for Kindersley-Lloydminster shakes his head and looks dubious but that has been his problem all along. He has been a doubting Thomas in respect of this bill and I think when he sees the outstanding work that the committee of which he is a member will do in coming up with a new law he will be gratified with the results and say he cannot understand why he did not agree with this bill in the very first place.
The hon. member knows, and all members know, that in dealing with a subject of such importance as redistribution, of great importance to the members of this place, a government is always loathe to act unilaterally and in a way that is unfair, or perceived as unfair, to the other players in the political process.
In this case I suggest that what the government has done is move in a very fair and reasonable way. What has happened as a result of this bill? The purpose of the bill is to shelve the current redistribution process for a period of 24 months. If at the end of that time there is no new mechanism put in place by legislation, the redistribution commissions will restart their work, presumably using much of the material they now have and come up with a new set of maps.
There will be public hearings that follow as there are under the current regime, and everything falls back in place again. This is simply a delay of 24 months. Let us look at the history of this. Why is the government operating in this way? Why would we argue for a 24-month suspension at this point?
Redistribution should have been effected following the 1991 census at an earlier date than this because the very first figures released in 1992 on that census were the ones for redistribution of seats in the House of Commons. However, the previous government, the Mulroney government, introduced a bill in this House to delay the process for 12 months because there was a committee doing a study of the report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing which had been presented to the country by the royal commission in early 1992. Maybe it was late 1992, I cannot remember the date, I must admit.
That report was referred to a special committee of the House of Commons. It was to study the report and come up with recommendations. It seemed pointless at the time. There were one or two in the NDP who disagreed but almost all members agreed that the proper course was to defer consideration of redistribution until there had been a study of the royal commission's report because the royal commission recommended changes to the redistribution law of Canada. The aim was to have that study by the committee done so that legislation could be introduced in Parliament to make changes.
The committee ended up with a short timeframe for such an extensive study of the act because the referendum intervened in the process and disrupted the entire committee work. It took so much time to do the referendum bill and then Parliament did not sit for months and months because of the referendum.
Nothing was done in respect of the redistribution recommendations contained in the royal commission report and nothing was done to change the redistribution law. The law was left in place and began its operations during the summer of 1993, just when Parliament had been adjourned for the summer, and at the subsequent election because Parliament did not sit again until well after the election was called.
There we were in a situation in which these commissions were beavering away across the country preparing draft maps that were subsequently made public and members suddenly discovered that redistribution was back on the table, here were the maps and the public hearings started in another month. These maps were unacceptable to the vast majority of members in this House.
We heard yesterday at length from members of the Bloc Quebecois.
They made several speeches. It was unbelievable to hear so many speeches on that issue yesterday, but each of these hon. members had problems with the boundaries in his or her constituency.
We responded to this. That is partly why the government acted with alacrity to bring in this bill and suspend the process. We spoke in advance with members of the other parties to ensure that there was some agreement on this. We suggested a motion to refer various matters to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in order to allow that committee to do a detailed study.
We invited comments from the opposition and we got some very constructive comments from both parties in opposition. We included in the motion various items at their specific request to make the committee process more palatable to them, to make sure we covered the points that were of concern to the opposition. I think we have covered them all.
The difficulty was that some hon. members on the other side have made speeches in the House decrying this. They wanted us to write in what the committee was to do; that is, if the committee was to bring in a report saying this. We as a government said we will let the committee make its own decision on how it will report to the House. It will consider all these matters but the report is the committee's decision. We would not prejudge it. We would not instruct the committee to do certain things such as limit the number of members of the House of Commons to 295 or reduce the number of members of the House of Commons or increase it no more than by x number. We said the committee would have to look at all the options and come up with a report. That turned some members of the opposition in the Reform Party in particular into nervous Nellies. They became quite upset at the thought that the committee might-