Debates of Feb. 9th, 1995

Committees Of The House

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Maheu)]

I am sorry to interrupt. Your questions and comments should be directed to the previous speaker from Mississauga West.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member for Mississauga West also defends this bill. One of the criteria that I cannot understand as a member of the committee she defends is the size of the House of Commons growing to 301 members.

The greatest classical liberal of all, Thomas Jefferson, said that government governs best that governs least. That principle has been lost.

Let us compare the state of California to Canada. The population in California is 29 million. It has 52 congressmen and two senators. It has one president and a governor. Fifty-six people run 29 million people.

Canada has 27 million people. With the Senate and the House of Commons, we have 399 people. Perhaps the member could address this. We are worried here about representing 30,000 people or 85,000 people when in the States, one congressman represent s 571,000 people. Perhaps a few more staff to help with the immigration and unemployment problems would be the solution and not to increase the size of this House.

This House should be reduced to 265 members at a max. The city of Calgary does not need six or seven MPs in the next federal election. It needs only four. More members should think like that in order to represent the city.

[An hon. member]

They might need eight Liberals but only four Reformers.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Yes, four Reformers could do the job of seven Liberals, that is right.

If we use the same proportion of representation in the United States of 85,000 to 90,000 on average, it would have 2,900 congressmen. That is how disproportionate we are. We are 10 times worse off than that country because we will not stick to the principle that a government governs best that governs least.

The Liberal Party pretends to be fiscally conscious but the very first opportunity it has-the very first bill that came up was this electoral boundaries item-to show leadership, an opportunity to lower the overhead and the cost of running government and running the country, it chooses to increase government and to cop out on constitutional reform.

I would like to know if the member could address why she favours increasing the size of the House of Commons when I know from a personal point of view, working with her on other committees, that she believes in fiscal restraint?

[Carolyn Parrish, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the compliment. He noted that I was the only Liberal he ever met who has tried to save money. Of course that is not true but it shows he has a certain bias and that is why he likes to get into exchanges with me on subjects like this one.

In the United States there is quite a difference in concentration of population. If we look at the numbers in the United States and the way its population is concentrated, its congressmen tend to be able to serve people in a more compact area. Canada, by nature, is very spread out and very diverse except for areas like Mississauga West. Generally it becomes a logistical problem.

The other thing, in my opinion, that happens in the United States is that it requires millions of dollars to get elected so only the wealthy run. Therefore, I do not know if the member would be here but I for sure would not. To suggest that many people require a prolonged campaign and require enormous election expenses ensures that only the very wealthy become elected to its representative houses.

Obviously I would like to see a cap at some point on this House. The member and I have both agree on this. However, in the democratic process that went on in the committee we talked about it, looked at it and decided it required much more study than we were able to give it at this time. I hope I have sufficiently answered the member's question.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the hon. member's speech. I know she was fairly instrumental in one clause being included in the act and that was clause 19(2)(b)(iii). I think the member knows which one it is. It reads:

-the probability that there will be a substantial increase in the population of an electoral district in the province in the next five years.

It is the anticipation clause which describes fast growth in a particular constituency, shrinking the boundaries around that riding to allow for growth so that we do not get these inequities in the population between ridings. It is probably a fairly good principle but it is in conflict with the principle of a number of the rural MPs who want to see their ridings remain smaller and who argue against that principle.

I wonder which principle the hon. member thinks should have precedence. Should it be the principle that we shrink the urban ridings so that there is room for growth, or should it be the principle of the urban members who would like to see the population kept closer to a variant or perhaps even see a smaller population in a rural riding so that they do not become so large geographically? These principles are in direct conflict with one

another. One or the other has to have precedence. Which one does the hon. member think should have precedence?

[Carolyn Parrish, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I must thank the member for pointing out something I had hoped would sneak by the rural members. He knows I was hoping it would sneak by.

I have to represent the area I live in. I also believe in representation by population wherever possible. I would be absolutely adamant in hoping, as is the Liberal way, we will come up with some sort of amicable solution wherever those boundaries touch each other. My first principle has always been representation by population, wherever it is possible. I will be defending my little clause in the bill to the death.

[Stephen Harper, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise today also to discuss the motion of the government concerning electoral redistribution and to oppose that motion. In so doing I would like to make some complimentary comments with respect to what has transpired.

First of all, as was mentioned earlier, we had excellent support in committee and out in the field from Elections Canada. Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Girard and Mr. Lesage were very helpful to the committee. It is also necessary to mention that the electoral redistribution commissions have transacted their work quite faithfully under quite difficult circumstances during all of this and should be complimented.

I would also like to compliment the work of the chairman of the procedure and House affairs committee. This is the first time that a committee has successfully drafted a bill that we anticipate will be tabled. In spite of the fact that there were significant differences on major issues of principle, we nevertheless were able to work fairly and efficiently in the drafting of a bill and in resolution of those issues on which we were able to reach consensus.

We do not support this motion by the Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a new electoral redistribution system, and I would like to explain why. There are several improvements in the committee's report, but there are also two major problems. First of all, the five million dollars it will cost to redo the electoral redistribution process for this census, the 1991 census, and second, the fact that the government, supported by the BQ, failed to reduce the number of members and thus the cost of maintaining the current number of seats in the House.

The principal reason for my opposition to this report is its failure to address correctly the issue of reducing or capping the number of seats in the House of Commons. All attempts by the Reform Party to make this an issue and to effect some change now, rather than some mythical change that supposedly will be made some time in the next century were turned down by the committee.

In addressing the question of the capping or reduction of the seats of the House of Commons, let me spend a bit of time outlining exactly what the history has been of this issue. We are all told that the House of Commons has grown from the time of Confederation. Let me review how that has occurred, the reasons for it and why it has become somewhat of a critical issue.

In 1867 there were 181 members of Parliament. Even from the beginning there were elements which encouraged growth and protected smaller provinces, either in the number of seats they had or in cases where they would lose those seats. The original formula that was in the Constitution for distribution of seats in the House of Commons was based on Quebec having a number fixed at 65 and other provinces going up or down, depending on their relationship to that number.

In addition there were changes made to that formula in 1915 to protect the seats of the very small provinces, which is senatorial clause 51(a) that we have heard some mention of earlier today.

Later on the formula was shifted. Quebec no longer was fixed at 65 and instead there were a fixed number of seats in the Chamber and the numbers would fluctuate depending on the relationship to the total number, although once again there were protections against loss of seats. Those amending formulae were introduced in 1943 and 1952.

All through that period, from 1867 through the various changes in 1915, 1943 and 1952 there was really only marginal growth in the House of Commons. It was a 30 per cent growth in total over that period. The primary reason for that growth was the addition of new provinces and the populating of western Canada.

Beyond that the growth of the House of Commons was actually quite marginal. Finally in 1949 there was the addition of Newfoundland.

It was really only with the formulae that came in under the Trudeau government that we began to have excessive growth in the number of seats in the House of Commons. In 1974 the Trudeau government enacted a formula which was unprecedented and which would have gone back to making Quebec a base for fixing the number of seats in the House of Commons. Instead at this time of fixing a number of seats for Quebec, Quebec was fixed at an ever increasing rate around which everything else would grow. Quebec is a province that has tended to have a stable or even a somewhat falling share of the seats. Thisled very quickly to a situation in which the House of Commons

would have expanded by hundreds of members within a period of only a few decades.

We grew from 264 seats in 1979 to the 295 we have today. There were additional amendments brought in, in 1985, to control this situation. Once again they still contain substantial growth elements. In particular no province is now allowed to fall below the number of seats it had in the 1970s. The only way to preserve the principle of representation by population is for the representation of large provinces to continually grow.

To review what I have said, if we look at the history we had both here and in the Senate of the growth of the number of seats over the first almost 100 years of Confederation, about 30 per cent were determined almost entirely by the growth of the country. After that period the Senate has ceased to grow and the House of Commons has expanded by 30 or 40 seats. It will expand by six in this redistribution and it will expand at that rate into the future.

What do we propose to do about this? Obviously we propose some kind of formula which would cap or reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons. The particular formula we introduced or we proposed as the Reform caucus was as follows. This was a proposal that had originally been made by the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster and was supported by the member for Calgary Centre and me.

We proposed that we establish a permanent number of seats in the House at 265. This was the number of seats that had been the case here for a long period of time, through most of the fifties, the sixties and the seventies. On top of that we proposed that there be some provision for small growth in representation.

The reason for that was very simple. The senatorial clause, section 51(a) of the Constitution, requires that no province can have fewer seats than its number of senators. That clause is distortive. It is distortive at any level of representation, whether small or large. Obviously at the number 265 it is not highly distortive and allowing for slight growth minimizes that distortion. I am talking about very slight growth.

We would have had a House under our formula of 273 seats for the next Parliament, growing at perhaps two or three seats every 10 years. We were talking about a very minimal objective.

This was opposed by the other parties for a number of reasons. I will quote a couple of them. One mentioned in the report is a reduction or freeze in the number of seats in the House of Commons would perpetuate and in some cases exacerbate inequities in representation between provinces and would further erode the principle of representation by population. Then it goes on to talk about the effect it would have on provinces losing seats.

Our formula would have caused virtually every province to lose seats, which was one of the reasons it was equitable. Also the statement as contained in the report is factually simply false. The formula we proposed that would give us 273 seats, a modest reduction of 10 per cent for the next Parliament, would have provided an approximation closer to representation by population than under the current formula. The reason is we removed the distortion of the grandfather clause which is far more distortive than the senatorial clause, which this House has imposed and which this House is in a position to remove.

The position that this would distort representation by population is not true. Our proposal would have improved the percentage share of seats that Ontario and British Columbia now have, the two provinces most unfairly affected by the current formula.

There were a number of other reasons given by government and Bloc members for opposing this particular formula but they were really of an entirely different nature. They were not really concerned about the mechanics of the formula or the growth of the House. They were the self-interest issues: "Canadians will miss me as their member of Parliament if I lose my seat"; these kinds of rationales.

Interestingly, very few of these rationales appeared when this motion was introduced. The principal reason we were told publicly by the government that we were suspending the commission and that we were undertaking this committee study was the concern of members of the House about the size of the House and the terrible cost that would entail.

I want to refresh the memory of the House. I could spend a good part of the time I have to refresh the memory of the House about some of the interventions that were made by various members in emphasizing that this report should cap or reduce the size of the House of Commons. I want to remind these members because we expect that when there is a vote they will have an opportunity to get up to oppose this particular motion and to stick to their principles.

The hon. member for Parry Sound-Muskoka had mentioned when we had the debate on Bill C-18 that it is not something he has heard from his constituents, that they want to expand government and have more government spending. I agree. That is why we must oppose this motion.

The hon. member for Halton-Peel said if one looks at Australia there are twice as many voters per member in that country. We are at the point where we have to make some changes. Either that or we are going to have to knock out one of

these walls. I agree. I would be interested to hear from the hon. member for Halton-Peel.

The hon. member for Nepean said: "They are talking about increasing by six the numbers of representation in the House of Commons. We know it costs at least a million dollars a year for every member of the House. I have great difficulty with how they rationalize that". I agree with that. This is once again why this report should not go through unless there are changes to cap or reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons, precisely so that we can keep those costs down.

All these problems about representation, as the hon. member for Nepean well understood, can be addressed through use of modern technology, through more efficient use of staff resources. It does not require a House of Commons that will grow to 350 seats over the next 20 or 30 years.

The hon. member for Ontario said: "Why do we need new seats? It seems that the addition of new seats flies in the face of the hard earned tax money that Canadians tell us is so hard to come by".

The Liberal member for Victoria-Haliburton proclaimed: "The cost of adding six members of Parliament is something I think the Reform Party and myself included should look very hard at. Why would we want to add that kind of money? Why would we even think in these tough economic times of adding millions of dollars to taxpayers' expenses?"

The Reform Party has looked at this issue, has proposed the alternative. We are looking forward to seeing what the hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton has done as he studied this issue.

The hon. member for La Prairie: "One principle is particularly important. We should not increase the number of electoral districts in Canada. Two hundred and ninety-five electoral districts for 27 million people is already too much". I agree.

The hon. member for St. Boniface, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of public works said: "Would this not be a wonderful opportunity to see whether we could do with one-quarter or perhaps one-third fewer MPs? I think Canadians would applaud such a move. It would mean significant savings". I agree with that also.

Our Reform proposal to reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons is comparatively modest. We are talking about a reduction of about 10 per cent. We could go further. If we go further there are some significant problems with the senatorial clause. It begins to become fairly distortive. That does not mean we should not do it. We should be looking at Senate reform. We should be reforming that institution. That would allow us to change the senatorial clause.

I understand the government is not prepared to do that and I understand why. It is very difficult to reduce to the kind of number the hon. member for St. Boniface proposed, but a reduction of 10 per cent is certainly achievable.

The Solicitor General said: "Since Confederation the number of seats in the House of Commons has increased steadily" as I mentioned, the number of members by now would have shot up already to more than some 340. That is something we should be considering.

The hon. member for Scarborough-Rouge River spoke quite eloquently in the committee when he said: "Three hundred and one members is not what Canadians want. They want a Parliament that works. They want to see it work with 295 members, not 301 or 310 or 320 as time goes on".

The hon. member for Waterloo said: "If we continue with the process in the longer term we are going to keep adding members to the House of Commons. Therefore time is of the essence. We have to deal with this issue very quickly. However, I will be fighting very strongly to maintain the number of members of Parliament at 295, not of course the 301 it is scheduled to go up to".

The parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship, the hon. Liberal member for Halifax said: "In these days when restraint is being urged on us by all fronts, should we really be considering increasing the number of members of Parliament?" I think the question indicates its own answer.

The hon. Liberal member for Hillsborough said: "All kinds of institutions are looking at holding the line, reducing numbers or not going ahead with other plans. I notice new electoral reform has just come forward in my own province. It is not the best time for us to go forward and increase seats in the House with the added costs".

The hon. Liberal member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo said: "If we approach the population of our neighbours to the south, we will need 3,000 seats in the House of Commons".

This is another reason, as the hon. member for Calgary Centre mentioned, that we should tackle this capping issue. We do not need those numbers. We do not need to have a number of politicians which by an exponential factor exceeds the number of politicians in a state like California.

The hon. member for Algoma said: "We cannot cap the number of seats here forever, but we want to consider how quickly the number of seats rises".

Even that suggestion was not solved by the committee. Even reducing the future growth was not solved by the committee's report. It said it is an issue that should be addressed and studied, that Parliament should be seized with the issue. That was the purpose of the committee and it failed to do that.

The hon. member for Bramalea-Gore-Malton said: "Perhaps this House would operate more efficiently and effectively if there were dramatically fewer members of Parliament than at present and there were a fixed number".

The hon. Liberal member, the secretary of state for parliamentary affairs, stated his own view: "Finally, based on the existing formula, the number of seats in the House of Commons will increase from 295 to 301 as a result of the 1991 census, and that concerns me in light of current fiscal restraints".

I have a couple more I could mention. The hon. member for Carleton-Gloucester, a Liberal member, said:

At this rate there will come a point in 2050 or 2090 where the Chamber will no longer be large enough to hold all the new members. It will have to be torn down and rebuilt further to make room for the extra seats that will have to be made. If you look south, they have only 100 senators for a total population of about 250 million people.

Literally dozens of Liberal members spoke in favour of what the Reform Party is proposing. We look forward to their support when the vote on this issue comes about.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member on his speech. I have never heard such a good speech from a Reform member in this Parliament. The principal reason was that he kept quoting Liberal members. If he keeps doing that, he will soon replace his leader who does not quote Liberal members often enough. If he did I am sure he would go up in the polls instead of down.

I want to ask the hon. member a serious question. He went on at some length in his speech about the benefits of a smaller House and suggested the figure of 265. He also suggested that the way we could get away with it was by getting rid of the grandfather clause that protects certain provinces.

I wonder if he and the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster, in the course of their considerations of this matter, consulted with the people of Saskatchewan. I wonder if they levelled with them and told them that if the grandfather clause were taken away that province would lose four seats and in the event of a redistribution based on population once it was done Saskatchewan would lose five seats.

Did he in his consideration of this matter advise the people of Saskatchewan through householders, other materials or public announcements that if the Reform policy were adopted that province would lose five seats? Did he advise the people of Manitoba how many seats they would lose? Did he advise the people of Newfoundland and of Nova Scotia how many seats they would lose? Did he review with members opposite in the Bloc and with other members how many seats in Quebec would be lost?

Those are the issues that have to be faced. If we are to cut the number of seats to 265, we have to face the fact that over half the provinces will lose representation in the House. Frankly I do not think the provinces are prepared to accept that, particularly the province of Saskatchewan whose numbers would be decimated in this place.

I know the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster wishes he could answer, but the hon. member for Calgary West says that Calgary does not need more MPs. I agree it does not need any more Reform MPs; it has more than enough. However Calgarians would be well served if it got some Liberal representation. Getting extra seats increases the possibility of that and he knows it.

Alberta is not getting extra seats, but I remember the outcry from British Columbia when there was talk of delaying the work of redistribution commissions. The Minister of National Revenue is from that province. There was a strong outcry against not getting the two additional seats to which it was entitled under the current arrangement to go to 301 seats.

There was an outcry from the minister. The hon. member knows that. There was an outcry from the population. There were editorials. There were telephone call-ins. There was a huge hue and cry at the thought of losing two seats.

If that is the case in British Columbia, how is it possible that the citizens of Saskatchewan would clamour for a reduction in their representation in the House by five seats? That is what members of the Reform Party are proposing in the House. If that happened and there were an election called on the basis of that kind of redistribution, I submit every Reform member in Saskatchewan would be out the window, including the very capable member for Kindersley-Lloydminster.

Can the member comment on that?

[Stephen Harper, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Madam Speaker, the whole purpose of my speech was to illustrate what citizens across the country are saying about representation in Parliament. They do not need more MPs. They do not need, in particular, as we will probably see in the bill, more MPs who say one thing when it does not matter and vote another way when the party tells them to do so.

Whether there are 14 seats in Saskatchewan or 20 or 28 is not going to make any difference if they do not represent their constituents in the House of Commons when it matters at voting time.

The other point is that they play little word games. People are not as stupid as some of these comments imply. People understand that under our Constitution-and some people have diffi-

culty with this-we have representation by population in the House of Commons and that the voice of Saskatchewan, whether it has 14 seats out of 301 or 12 seats out of 280 or 10 seats out of 250, is in fact the same voice. The only issue is whether it is going to cost more or cost less to have exactly the same voice.

The fact of the matter is that people realize that if no province can ever lose seats and we have rep by pop, the only way to sustain rep by pop is with a House of Commons that will expand forever. The people understand that. I do not think the histrionics in this debate will change people's understanding of that. It is unfortunate we have not tackled that issue.

If the Liberal government adopted our suggestion it would get considerable credit from the electorate in making this kind of move. We hear that from Saskatchewan, I am assured by the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster, as we hear it in Alberta and as we read it in the mail we receive from across the country.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the issue of redistribution and specifically the motion that was tabled today.

I would like to begin by congratulating the procedures and House affairs committee for the work it has done. It has done an excellent job. I am also very pleased to see the first use of a new procedure where the committee is coming forth and recommending the bill. It is a good system. It worked well in this particular case. We should see more of it in the future.

I am rising today because the issue of redistribution has a very important impact on my riding. It has a very important impact on all of northern Ontario and a very important impact on all of rural Canada. Rural Canada has challenges in terms of representation and distribution that are not necessarily faced in the same way as they are in urban Canada.

We face the issue of declining populations. We have the difficulty of large geographic areas we have to try to represent. We have the issue of how we communicate with our constituents. If we are in very small urban areas it is not difficult, but if it takes four or five hours to travel from one part of a riding to another part of a riding the issue of communication becomes very important.

We have the issue of diversity within our large northern ridings. We have the diversity of the people who live there, the diversity of the industries that exist there and the diversity of the geography, as I have mentioned. These are special challenges that people in rural Canada, people in northern Ontario, people in my riding have to face on the issue of redistribution.

There are three specific areas I would like to address. The first is the issue of capping the number of members in the House of Commons and the 25 per cent variance rule. The second is the whole idea of the public consultation process that is being introduced with this proposal. The final and very important area is the issue regarding the definition of community of interest. That is a very important concept about which I would like to talk very briefly.

On the idea of capping and the variance of 25 per cent, I believe the committee's report offers a good balance between what essentially used to exist, which was unrestricted growth of the number of seats here, and a plan that is going to allow for moderate growth.

I have been encouraged by the committee report because we have avoided a whole constitutional wrangle that could occur if we proceeded with recommendations such as those presented by the party opposite. It is not a time to be arguing about constitutional niceties; it is a time to be dealing with our economic problems. I am glad the committee has seen fit to ensure we do not have to go down that road.

When we study the ideas in this plan we should remember it is important for individual MPs to able to provide effective representation to their constituents. All of us in the House work very closely with a large number of constituents. In my case we receive around 900 phone calls a month. We get almost 100 letters a day. We have a large number of town hall meetings and have to travel over large areas.

All members of the House face the challenges of representing large numbers of people. An important part of what we do is to listen to our constituents, to hear their points of view and to bring them forward to the House. If we go down a road where few of us are representing an ever increasing population the basis of being able to represent constituents will be placed in jeopardy.

I am glad the report has found the balance between keeping the numbers down, which we have to do in terms of economics, and ensuring there are sufficient members to provide proper representation to individual constituents. I believe this proposal will do that.

I was also pleased to see the 25 per cent rule maintained. That is absolutely necessary for a number of reasons, the first one being geographic. There must be a geographic limit to how large a riding can get. If as members we have to travel six, eight or ten hours to go from one end of our ridings to another-and there are some ridings like that in the north-it becomes very difficult to provide proper representation. The maintenance of the 25 per cent rule will give the flexibility to take that particular issue into account.

I also believe there is an issue of needing to provide representation a bit differently in rural Canada than it is provided in urban Canada. Those challenges I pointed out previously that exist in rural Canada need to be addressed. I believe the flexibility the 25 per cent rule provides will allow that to happen.

Most important, at least as far as I am concerned, is that the 25 per cent rule and the flexibility it will allow will give us the opportunity to adhere to the community of interest guidelines in the legislation. I will talk about them in a couple of minutes.

I want to congratulate very heartily the committee on the public consultation process it has recommended in the proposed legislation. When it is implemented we will find that we have a far more effective public consultation process, certainly a far more transparent process and a more efficient process. I will touch on those three points just briefly.

First I will deal with the effective aspect. The idea that we are to have the ability to go into individual ridings or individual provinces and adjust ridings where they have gone beyond the 25 per cent rule at five-year intervals will mean we can be much more effective and much more efficient in ensuring that we have proportional representation.

It is also important the committee suggested that when the commissions go out to consult with Canadians and come back with a recommendation they are not just going to come back with an all or leave it plan. They will come forward with three specific options. The individuals who are to examine them and provide input will have a number of options before them and some basis upon which to provide their input, to have discussion and to have debate about what would be the best route to go. They are certainly recommending a transparent process.

Under this plan the positions of the two members of the commission appointed by the Speaker will have to be advertised. The Speaker will go about obtaining staff for these commissions in a very public process. Additionally Parliament will have the opportunity to examine who is chosen for those commissions and if seen fit a motion can be brought before the House to reject those individuals. We see a very transparent process being put in place.

Also in terms of transparency, under the legislation the commissions will have to tell Canadians up front the exact parameters they are to use in examining redistribution. One difficulty we found with the previous process was that the only time individual constituents became involved was after the work had all been done and it was plopped on the table.

The fact that the guidelines will be set out before the procedure is important. It will allow Canadians to have the necessary input. It is very important that the process for MPs to examine the legislation will be the same as that for the general public.

When there are public consultation meetings individual members of Parliament who feel a need to give representation will do so as part of the public process, not as some separate process that takes place only in this House. I am happy to see that the MPs will be participating in the same way that all other constituents will be.

I believe we are going to see some efficiencies put in place with this process. One of the most important is the fact that it says if the parameters have not been breached, if there has not been sufficient changes in population, if the variance has not gone beyond the 25 per cent rule, a commission will not be struck nor will it have to examine it.

That is a major and significant change from the way it is done right now where it is necessary to review it even if a change has not occurred. This is going to save substantial dollars for the federal government and it is going to save substantial dollars for the Canadian taxpayer. I very much support that.

I believe as well that Canadians will be very pleased with the fact that government in this instance is going to stop doing something it does not need to do. I very much support that.

The third area has to do with the issue of community interest and the fact that it is being defined very clearly in the legislation. It is absolutely critical that it be done. In Ontario, the area I am familiar with and in particular in my riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka, the lack of attention to community interest concept created a lot of difficulties with the recommendations that had been brought forward.

I would like to cite a couple of examples of how that has happened, using my own riding as a basis. One stipulation on community of interest is the local economy. My particular riding is made up of the Parry Sound district and the Muskoka district. They share in common the industry of tourism with a common market. Under the proposal that was originally tabled those two areas were going to be completely divided and the fact that they had a common industry, a common tourism market, was going to be totally ignored.

Also in terms of tradition, under community of interest it is defined that we must take into account traditional representation. In the case of my riding at the time of the next election it will have existed for half a century. That was totally disregarded in the process when the maps were struck the first time and the riding was going to be totally ripped apart and divided into three different parts. It was not in keeping with the traditions. This bill states very clearly under the community of interest clause that tradition is an important ingredient.

It also talks about the need to delineate between rural and urban Canada. In my riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka they were going to take an essentially rural area and add into it about

20,000 individuals from a metropolitan centre. We would have a riding that was no longer uniquely rural and would no longer be uniquely urban, but would be a mismatch of the two and would make things very difficult in terms of representation.

As well under community of interest they talk about natural boundaries. That is important. In northern Ontario we have many natural boundaries that need to be adhered to when we are trying to draw up a reasonable constituency, a reasonable riding.

Again in the case of Parry Sound-Muskoka it is bounded by a river on the south, a river on the north, Georgian Bay on the west and Algonquin Park on the east. Those were natural boundaries that established my riding. They did the redistribution and did not pay attention to the issue of community of interest and it was all put asunder.

I am very encouraged about the fact that we do have a very much strengthened community of interest clause in this legislation and I support that.

In conclusion, I do support this legislation because I think it finds the correct balance between trying to keep the numbers in this House down, but ensuring that there are sufficient members to provide effective representation. I support it because it provides a better public consultation process that is going to allow Canadians to have a meaningful input into the process.

Finally, I support this because the community of interest clause has been strengthened and will lead to the creation of better ridings.

[Daphne Jennings, Reform, Mission—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, in listening to the member from Parry Sound, I am sure he spoke with great sincerity. He seems to be very sincere. However, I am concerned about perhaps tossing off Reform comments as constitutional niceties. He recognizes the economic need for the changes that are happening.

I am concerned that he does not appear to be recognizing the financial needs. Our country is in the worst situation it has been in ever and we have to recognize that this is one way, as Reform suggests, to reduce the number of members in this House.

We all know it costs approximately $1 million per member. I have just returned from Washington. I have met with American parliamentarians in the last week and constituents. We did speak about this. They feel that they are very adequately represented. As members know, they have over 400 representatives and 270 million people. We are looking at 10 per cent that we have.

Maybe the hon. member can perhaps explain why we would not be very concerned about the financial counterpart of this problem.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for her comments. The economic concerns that the country faces are ones that we have to consider when we are taking a look at this package.

I believe that the package does that for a number of reasons. First of all, the process that it has developed is going to be a far more efficient process. It is going to save money. By simply saying that if a change has not occurred in a province, if the population has not changed or there are not the variances that are occurring in individual ridings, we will not go through the process.

That is going to save substantial dollars. That recommendation is in this bill and that is one of the reasons I support it. Second, I support it because I would be very concerned. One of the suggestions in 265. Why not go to 220? Why not go to 210? Why not go to 150?

There is an important concept here. As parliamentarians one of our roles is to represent our constituencies. If we lessen the number of members in this House to a point at which we are not able to do that, this government will become captured by the bureaucracy.

We need government controlled from this House, not from all the office buildings that surround this city. In order for this House to control this government, to control the process of government, we need sufficient members in here to be able to do that.

That is why the balance struck with this bill between keeping very minimal growth but ensuring that there are enough representatives to control government is important and in the long run will save some dollars.

Finally, if we entertain a proposal that is going to require constitutional change, that is going to require unanimous approval from all 10 provinces, that is going to be a cost that we certainly do not want to have to incur.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's speech today. As usual he clearly and succinctly put forth excellent arguments in support of not only this legislation but of the needs of rural Canada, particularly rural northern Ontario.

I want to ask him to speak for a moment or two more about the 25 per cent variance rule. I believe he recognizes along with me that at the best of times it is difficult to balance the needs of rural and urban Canada. We see that debate raging on the issue of gun control, the balance between urban and rural Canada.

In a perfect world rural rural residents would not pay more for gasoline. In a perfect world rural residents would have equal access to our city neighbours to health care and so on.

To take a strict definition that all Canadians regardless of where they live have one vote and only one vote in relation to their member of Parliament does not make sense when one considers that we need to balance rural and urban Canada. It has

worked very well so far, even though there are some problems. I would ask my hon. colleague, in his support for northern Ontario and other parts of rural Canada, to speak a bit more to emphasize and clarify the importance of that variance rule.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Algoma for bringing up those particular points and to emphasize the 25 per cent rule.

Like I do, the hon. member represents a riding that is in northern Ontario. We share many of the concerns that come from representing a rural part of the country and that come from representing a large geographic area.

He is absolutely right. We need the flexibility of the 25 per cent rule. It is particularly important in rural Canada. We need the flexibility that it gives. We need it in terms of geography. There are suggestions in the proposal that came forward which would make his riding-and the hon. member can correct me if I am wrong-stretch from Hudson Bay to Lake Huron with a big strip right in between. We can all picture a map of Ontario and picture what that riding would be like.

That kind of thing cannot be allowed to happen. It becomes impossible to represent a riding that would have that kind of breadth of geography. If you know the terrain and if you know how far the communities are dispersed in that area, you can see the importance of that 25 per cent rule.

One of the things that this report has considered, which the hon. member alluded to, is the whole issue of balance. We have to balance the needs of rural and urban Canada. It is not an all or nothing situation in which we do it strictly by the book and strictly by numbers and we draw lines on the map. That is not the way to do it. We have to take into account some of the special challenges which we have in rural Canada. We have to take into account some of the special needs of geography, diversity of industry and many of those things I talked about.

The hon. member is quite right in pointing out the importance of that 25 per cent variance to those of us who represent northern Ontario and for those who represent all of rural Canada.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my rural colleague give his speech. I am also from a rural riding.

The motion that has been drafted by the procedures and House affairs committee in clause 19(2) says that the criteria for selecting boundaries should consider a manageable geographic size. That is what the hon. member has just argued. The very next clause talks of the probability that there will be substantial increase in the population of an electoral district in the province in the next five years. In other words, in the province of Ontario, I believe the hon. member would argue because of the size of his riding that his riding should be quite a bit less, maybe close to 25 per cent less. The problem is that his colleague from Mississauga will also suggest that her riding should be about 25 per cent less in population because she is going to experience strong growth.

They cannot have it either way. One has to take precedence over the other. I would like to know whether the hon. member thinks geographic size is the important criterion and the rural riding should be kept smaller or whether he should bow to his urban colleagues who suggest that their ridings should be shrunk to allow for expanding growth and that they should be on the low side of the variable quotient.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would simply say that we in the Liberal Party balance our approach. It is not an either/or proposition. The urban member has a particular need and that will be taken into account. The rural member will have a particular need and that will be taken into account. Between those two needs we will find a balance. We will come to a solution that has components which help the one member from urban Canada and the one member from rural Canada. It is not an either/or situation.

One of the problems with members of the party opposite, and I will say this quite clearly, is they never realize that things are not black and white. There are greys out there. You can compromise. You can find a balance.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Madam Speaker, I hope I will not be ruled out of order if I begin my speech by discussing principles. We do not hear much about them in this place. Sometimes we seem to forget that they are important. They are a road map for us. As Yogi Berra once said, if you do not know where you are going, you may end up someplace else.

As the Auditor General recently said somewhat less famously but no less accurately, if you do not have a clear idea what a program, law or policy is for and a clear set of criteria for evaluating it, you will not know if it has worked. Of course the Auditor General had in mind primarily the bonfire of the taxpayers, known as the federal budget. I see no less reason to apply his thoughts to the subject before us, Bill C-18.

Electoral boundaries, boy, there is a riveting topic. Bill C-18, electoral boundary reform, clause 19(2)(b)(i), there is a topic to put the manufacturers of sleeping pills into a panic. It may also seem like a topic that leaves no room for principle. It may seem like a topic to be settled in a smokefree backroom.

I take Mr. Berra's observations very seriously. I think that someone who claims not to have a political philosophy to be a

pragmatist is either a socialist trying to cover his tracks or is simply unaware of the ideas that motivate him or her.

Let us consider if electoral boundaries and in particular the provision of this act which says that in drawing those boundaries the various electoral boundary commissions shall consider "a community of interest". That is clause 19(2)(b)(i) as noted above.

Why is it in here? It is in here because of the implicit or explicit assumptions of my colleagues on the opposite bench about government. It is in here because of their assumptions about democracy. It is in here because of their assumptions about politics. It all comes down to the idea that the purpose of electoral politics is precisely to hold H.L. Mencken's famous advance auction on stolen property.

The purpose of creating ridings with a community of interest is to put people together who would have a natural tendency to combine together, to take from their fellow citizens through the political process. It is to create so to speak a level playing field for political plunder.

While this bill was being prepared I know that the members on this side of the House fought hard to get the government to change its formal definition of a community of interest. If we look at clause 19(4), we will find that the enumerated list of the elements of a community of interest is reasonably harmless by contemporary standards. Gone are the references to race and ethnicity.

By the way I certainly hope that the idea of gender segregated Senate elections is dead and buried for all time. I am not as sure as I would like to be that these ideas are gone. They may have taken out the words about ethnically or racially segregated ridings without abandoning the idea. It certainly concerns me that what we find in clause 19(4) is not exhaustive list. The commissions will consider these but they may also consider others.

There is a real danger that commissions will in practice try to create districts that are for instance overwhelmingly Indo-Canadian or overwhelmingly Chinese Canadian or whatever. I really hope they will not. I am really horrified by the idea that people can only be represented by people who look like them. I hope that no one believes that any of my colleagues are either more or less suited to represent their constituents because of the ancestry either of the members or of the constituents.

The idea that Sikhs, Indians, Chinese or Anglo-Saxons should all be segregated into one riding so as better to seize property for Sikhs, Indians, Chinese or Anglo-Saxons perhaps by electing a Sikh, Indian, Chinese or Anglo-Saxon as a member of Parliament is the most offensive particular manifestation of the notion that parliamentary ridings in principle ought to be united by people with a common interest so that they can elect someone like themselves. This suggests that people should be united in groups with people like themselves so that they can act to elect someone like themselves and really dive into the pork barrel. That is not what I think democracy is all about. That is not what I think politics is all about. And it is not how I think electoral boundaries should be drawn.

In my view the purpose of government is to protect the lives, liberties and property of its citizens. If we do not have a government that can fend off Atilla, we have nothing. The problem is, any government strong enough to protect our life, liberty and property from others is also strong enough to threaten them itself. This is the paradox of government and it is the solution of that paradox that has preoccupied serious political philosophers throughout time.

One of the devices that has evolved in British practice and in the Anglo-American political philosophy is voting for public officers. This is the vital point. Voting is a device for preventing government from getting too big, not a way of legitimizing what it does. The reason this is its purpose is that all citizens have the same fundamental interest: a government that respects their rights.

Canadians do not, or at least they should not step into the ballot box to commit an act of larceny against their fellow citizens. They step into the ballot box to render judgment on how well the government has protected their rights.

Back in 1964 in an apparently quixotic campaign for the U.S. presidency, Senator Barry Goldwater spoke to this issue. He would not, he said, engage in the politics of plunder. "If I am attacked for neglecting the interests of my constituents" he said, "I will reply that I understood their interests to be liberty, and in that cause I am doing all that I can".

I regard the interest of my constituents, whoever they are, as being fundamentally the same as the interests of all Canadians: a government that protects them from force and fraud and otherwise leaves them free to conduct their business as they see fit. For that, we need not communities of interest but ridings that treat all citizens as equals. That is why on behalf of my constituents and liberty I will be voting against this bill.

[Ted McWhinney, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, in opening my own intervention I would like to record my own appreciation and those of my colleagues of the collegiality in the committee whose report is being studied here today. I value the exchange of views with the Bloc members and the Reform Party members in the committee. It was a good dialectical process and an excellent interchange of ideas. It is in that spirit that I now speak in the debate.

I was impressed by the comments by the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster and the member for Calgary West and their suggestions that the bill had failed to address what they considered the key problem, the size of the House. You will find many on this side of the House in agreement that this whole principle needs radical re-examination and change.

However we must consider the amount of constitutional amendment that may be necessary to restructure the size of the House to correspond to present sociological realities in Canada. When you consider the amount of effort involved in that and the fact that some years would be exhausted in the process, I would question whether it is right to consider this as an omnibus bill that must solve every problem of the contemporary legislature in one fell swoop. I view it rather as a single problem oriented bill addressed with a very specific purpose. In the light of present realities it has to go to another House for approval before it can be adopted.

I think it is in this sense correct to say that the matter of the size of the House is better left for another day and perhaps another committee. I see no reason why this could not be addressed within the lifetime of the present Parliament. But on this particular issue, it seems to me we have a full house of problems in terms of electoral representation.

I noticed in particular in the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster's address not merely reference to the size of the House but also to other principles, the issue of population variance between ridings and also what he referred to as the necessity for establishing priority of criteria in riding boundaries.

He used a term that I will return to a little later. He spoke of social engineering and this is an interesting concept. It is a Pandora's box of problems but I will return to it in a moment because it is the key of the present problem that many of us have had with the existing reports of the electoral boundaries commissions.

What troubled me when I read this latest series of 11 reports was a certain element of intellectual anarchy in those reports. There were in essence 11 different reports but there were no common criteria available.

In fact we discussed this matter with the chief electoral commissioner, an extraordinarily capable man who paid us the tribute of being very direct and forthright in his response to our questions. It was established that the commissions had not consulted with the chief electoral commissioner in terms of guidance as to past practice or as to criteria that should govern the exercise of the discretionary role conferred upon them by the existing law.

This is, in a certain sense, rather strange. It illustrates the wide variance, if not dissidence, in what we might call the operational philosophy governing the members of these individual commissions. When I look at the commissions I see a certain limited functional efficacy in the members of the commissions in terms of their training.

I would hate to say this in terms of a profession that I have also shared in, but there are too many people from one profession. There are far too many professors. It may be argued that the professors already have an honourable role in our society. They are the source of the ideas, but should they be making the choices? Would it not have been better to have had the professors retained as advisors on technical points but the actual decision making role conferred on commissions representing a broader spectrum of society?

This is one of the issues discussed in the present bill reported by the committee. The present bill attempts to address this problem by establishing a new process of appointment that should ensure wider representation of the larger community, a wider spread if you wish of experience among them.

The second thing that troubled me when I looked at these 11 reports was the lack of reasons. Here we have officials not elected in any way, non-elected officials appointed by prerogative power but exercising enormous discretionary powers.

That, as very well known to students of administrative law, is the real problem in modern government. It is the use or abuse of discretionary power by non-elected officials. There are ways of tethering discretion and making it operationally useful.

One of these is to require bodies when they exercise a power to spell out the reasons for doing it. When I look at these reports I find absence of reasons. Why did they do this? Why did they do that? One has to guess and that is where one comes back to the point that the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster made, social engineering.

It is very easy to go on an ego trip of one's own in exercising discretionary power of this sort. It is also very easy for the wrong reasons to attribute illicit motives and to say that is a politically colourable choice that has been made.

The correction of this is to state the reasons. The extra advantage in that is where the criteria are spelled out in the individual reports. They are then subject very easily to judicial review and judicial correction.

One of the problems in Canada is that we do not entrust to our Constitution the spelling out of the basic principles of what is constituent power. Constituent power is prior to constitutional power. It is the fundamental starting point of a democratic society; constituent power, how the government is created, how its members are elected.

Modern constitutions, ours is a 19th century constitution, write these elements directly into the constitutional charter. More than that, they spell out the principles and more than that they have actively functioning courts, constitutional courts of a specialized nature or general supreme courts with a massive jurisprudence in which these principles are ensured not only in their respect in the letter but also in their creative adaptation to problems of modern society.

The transformation of the United States from a privileged society in which the franchise was severely restricted, not simply on racial grounds but on social grounds, has been massively assisted by the role of the United States Supreme Court and judicial interpretation. This is something basically absent in Canadian society. It is something that we must have established in the future.

Therefore, I think it is a legitimate objection. One of the things that concerned me most in reading these reports was that there were discretionary powers but no clear criteria spelled out as to how the discretion was exercised. There was obviously an enormous variation when one studied the empirical material from one provincial commission to another. It recalls what was said of Lord Chancellor Eldon in another context, that equity, which he was charged with administering, was as long as the chancellor's foot. It is this element that the present bill, as reported by the committee to the House, aims to correct.

I could be more specific in terms of referring particularly to the report of the commission as it affects my home province of British Columbia. It troubles me, with the obvious population increases in the Fraser River Valley, that there is no extra seat there. It is obtained by rearranging crowded inner city boundaries where there is very little population change. They are simply accumulating them and producing an extra seat. What is the reason for this?

This is what leads to interesting speculation. I think the answer is that it is probably somebody's particular concept of social engineering which they have not spelled out, which I could guess at, but which I think properly in the constitutional processes courts should be able to examine and to correct.

I come back to some of these issues because the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster very correctly in his address to the House this morning spoke of the need to establish priority of criteria. We would have to say that the criteria themselves have to be spelled out. It is difficult to establish them in any hierarchical order. Most countries with statutes or constitutional principles touching this area recognize that there is a certain element of antinomy or contradiction between some of the principles. There is a creative choice that commissioners or a judge exercising judicial review must make. The key element we demand of the person exercising the discretion is to say which criteria they prefer to others and why that criteria. Is it a rational choice or is it something, as I have said, as long as the chancellor's foot?

We have not gone as far as the United States Supreme Court. One would wonder if we have reached the stage where Mr. Justice Brennan referred with approval to a concept of benign discrimination when asked if the notion of benign discrimination permissible because it is cast in a remedial context with respect to a disadvantaged class rather than in a setting that aims to demean or insult any racial group.

It is an interesting concept. It is certainly part of American social history and in the context of the United States Supreme Court no doubt a justifiable decision.

In terms of what we are doing one of the things we would have to stress in a country that stresses the parliamentary system as distinct from the American congressional system and the division of powers is the special relationship of a member of Parliament to his or her constituents.

There is a relationship of confidence that is built up in going door to door in an election campaign, a very moving experience, but a relationship of continuing trust in handling the problems of constituents as they arise over a period of time. What struck me again in the reports of these commissions was a certain cavalier disregard for the principle of continuity of representation. It is a constitutional value. It is closest of all to that philosopher whom the opposition parties are fond of quoting, Edmund Burke. I do not want to go into Edmund Burke's special features but at least the notion of the closeness, the responsibility of a member to the electorate.

The starting point of any electoral commission in Canada under the parliamentary system must be respect for the principle of continuity. Where we displace that it must be for reasons that we are prepared to spell out, population shifts to be sure. The criteria that the committee has offered in its report give us guidelines that were not there before in any adequate measure. I would have wished them to go further and I will note simply that I have made suggestions in the committee for further tightening up this area, rendering the criteria more precise.

I was supported I believe by the Reform Party and the Bloc but I was not able to persuade a majority. I go along happily with a majority decision. In this area the criteria must be spelled out.

One of the things we have tried to do is recognize this concept of community of interest. Canada is the society of the 21st century, as somebody said quite recently. I think it is true. We have established a special notion of Canadian culture, a community of communities in a phrase which a former Prime Minister of another political party used without citing its original source. This happens quite a good deal. The phrase was used by Martin Buber, an Austro-Hungarian by birth but who became a philosopher in the new state of Israel and developed the theory to explain and put forward a special relationship between the

Jewish majority and Arab citizens, the concept of the community of communities.

What strikes me in the urban seats in this country when I look at them across the electoral map is that we have historically come to it perhaps by accident in many cases, but the history is there. We have recognized this notion of community of communities. I embrace with pleasure the fact that my own constituency has 22 different communities within it and that to win a nomination and to win a majority in an election one must put together a platform, an approach consistent with one's party position that can build a consensus that extends to all groups or a sufficiency of groups.

One of the things that troubles me in the reports of the 11 boundary commissions I am referring to is that they again in a somewhat cavalier position have tended to put this aside. They seem to be looking back more to a 19th century concept of constituencies based on single communities.

I think this is interesting but it is back to the future and not a good way. I cite this simply to say that we were dealing with as a committee highly contentious and arguable reports made by boundary commissions. To give the ladies and gentlemen on these commissions full credit and honour they were the victims of the laws that did not adequately spell out what they should do.

The chief electoral commissioner correctly, because he is a man of high intelligence and high integrity and respect for the constitutional proprieties, concluded that it was not his function to spell out criteria that Parliament had not spelled out.

This is the reason we have attempted in a comprehensive law limited to this one problem getting the electoral boundaries issue dealt with adequately and to concentrate on that problem.

I would have liked to address also the issue of capping the size of the House. It seems to me that is for another statute. I would simply add as a member from British Columbia that the bill guarantees a point very dear to my province, our constitutional right to two extra seats in the House of Commons with the next federal election. There is an iron clad guarantee there.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member for Vancouver-Quadra who not only served on the committee of procedure and House affairs but was very active in the discussion relating to the whole process we are currently discussing and have spent some time on.

Being an academic who has been involved in looking at this process historically and currently he speaks with some authority I am going to ask him to take off his academic hat because I also know he has practical experience, having served on a commission. He also knows very well the contents of the motion that has been presented by the procedure and House affairs committee for the consideration of the House.

He served on a commission in British Columbia in the past and who knows, he may in the future if he continues to follow various careers. There was a strong feeling in the interior and northern part of British Columbia that the ridings should be at the low end of the variable quotient, say minus 20 rather than zero. That was a strong representation both from members and from the population. In the lower mainland he heard the opposite hue and cry. The population is growing very quickly, as the member would agree. They asked to have their growth taken into consideration and put them down around 20 per cent on the negative side of the variable quotient.

I know the hon. member is not biased; he is a very fair minded man. However, if he and his fellow commissioners were biased and perhaps all lived in the lower mainland and wanted to represent the concerns of the lower mainland ahead of the concerns of the interior and northern British Columbia, would this legislation prevent him from carrying out that bias?

[Ted McWhinney, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for a very thoughtful question. I have never accepted the concept that equality requires an absolute equality of rule application under all circumstances. As the United Supreme Court and Justice Douglas have said, you treat equal things equally but there is an element of discretion.

I recognize as part of the principle of equality of representation that we are entitled to and in all decency must make variations that take into account extreme geographic conditions such as we find in the north and the interior of British Columbia.

In exercising discretion as an electoral boundary commissioner in the past in British Columbia we did take that into account and gave it weight against the clamant demands in the city for mathematical equality of representation of all constituencies. I would think a commissioner, within the parameters established by the act, would properly exercise similar discretion.

I wonder, and I believe this is the private view of the hon. member opposite, whether the 25 per cent offset is not too high and whether 15 per cent might not be more realistic under present conditions.

[John Duncan, Reform, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on Bill C-18. Eleven months ago I rose to participate in the debate on this bill suspending the

operations of the Electoral Boundaries Commission. At that time I questioned the political interference, the waste of millions of dollars and the fact that as politicians we were involved in that messy process at all.

I consider this whole thing to be unfair to the public. We are wasting taxpayers' dollars again, in the order of $5 million, and once again we will be soliciting their input. I have had discussions with many members of the public and they have lost the thread on this whole redistribution exercise, as have I from time to time. It is beginning to read like a bad novel.

Some of the debate that has gone on today reminds me very strongly of why politicians should not be involved in drawing lines on a map. Some of the objections are tantamount to that.

Eleven months ago I also expressed regret and concern for overturning a process which had been in effect every decade since 1867. I could not determine precedent for this action and nothing has changed my mind in the intervening time.

It remains a shame why we have gone through this process at all, and having gone through it, we have achieved so little. What we have before us today, in my view, confirms that fact. This is an exercise which retroactively thwarts a longstanding, non-partisan method of redistribution.

The Constitution sets out the formula for representative government based on the concept of equality of voting power, that all Canadians should have an equal voice in governing themselves. This concept has been modified over time to ensure equality and continuity. Today's report does very little, in my view, to solidify this notion. We had hopes for a workable report. This attempt does not meet our standards and that is why we submitted a minority report.

First, the total number of seats in the House is not reduced. They have increased from 295 to 301, which was the original situation with the Electoral Boundaries Commission reports that were previously made. We have gone through this whole exercise and we are right back at the same place we started.

We argue that it is time to reduce the cost of the precincts and reducing the number of seats is an important first step. There seems to be a notion that the more members of Parliament we have the more will be accomplished. We should not confuse more and motion with real progress.

The hon. member for Calgary West described the capping of the number of seats very well so I will not pursue that in my speech today. However, we have had a consistent message throughout this piece. I am a member of Parliament from British Columbia where we have the somewhat unique situation of getting additional seats. We receive two of the six additional seats in this proposal. Our message has been consistent. It is consistent whether we reduce the number of seats to 265 or whether the number goes to 301. The message is that B.C. should get its fair share, as should the other provinces and territories. We started this exercise on the basis that the Liberal government wanted to freeze the number of seats at the 1993 levels. That is not where we are now.

The recommendations on the quotient factor contained in the report do not deal effectively with the 25 per cent quotient factor or the what is called the population variance factor by some.

The Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act specifies that a commission is to draw constituency boundaries in such a way that the population of each constituency is as close as possible to the quotient obtained by dividing the provincial population of eligible voters by the number of seats in each province. No constituency is permitted to have a population smaller than 75 per cent of this figure or greater than 125 per cent under this proposal.

Elections Canada reports that 51 of the 295 existing ridings exceed the current permissible population variances. By suspending the operation of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act we have perpetuated present inequities. What we are being offered today as a consequence of Bill C-18 and suspending the work of the commission, is 25 per cent. Surely we should expect an improved situation as a consequence of this delay and study. That is not the case. In fact, the recommendation is worse and ultimately the situation will be too.

We are very concerned that the commission will continue to be allowed to draw maps that from the very outset vary up to 25 per cent from the electoral quotient. This will compound the quotient factor in light of population shifts between redistributions.

The Reform minority report advocates an allowable maximum variance of 15 per cent to ensure the primacy of equality of voting power over sociological considerations.

The report states that there may be some ridings that should be more or less than 25 per cent of the provincial quotient and that these ridings should be set out in a schedule to the act. What a contradiction. We are allowing a plus or minus variance from the 25 per cent. With a variance of 25 per cent there should be no exceptions, no need for a schedule, I might add a schedule without guidelines.

Can we really say there has been any substantive changes to the bill? When one considers the lack of reduction in the size of the House of Commons, one has to consider the conviction and the motives of the legislation. It is very difficult to justify discarding the work at great public expense of the existing Electoral Boundaries Commissions for these so-called changes.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, from my point of view today is a very important day for Parliament. We are here to recognize for the first time a new way of doing business in Parliament. We are today debating-I hope the House will adopt it-the motion whereby the government will introduce into the House legislation that was drafted, not by the Department of Justice, not by some unknown bureaucrat for whom I have the greatest of respect most of the time, but by parliamentarians at committee.

This has occurred using the new rules of procedure that were introduced into Parliament by the government very early in its mandate. It is a very refreshing step to take. For the first time Canadians will have before them legislation that their MPs drafted.

I am not saying that this is how all the laws should be drafted all the time. This time we are showing Canadians that the system will work, that their Parliament will work and that we can do a job that is terribly fundamental in the way we are perceived by the rest of Canadians.

We are debating a motion for concurrence in the work that a number of MPs in all parties participated in and worked on quite hard at committee. I was there. I was one of the many. We look forward to it being adopted at concurrence and then becoming a bill.

I hope we will have a chance to do this in Parliament many more times. I hope that the bureaucracy, the public service, the executive branch of government, all the lawyers whose job it is to draft legislation, will begin to understand and support the growing role of parliamentarians in actually putting the words and concepts to paper.

Aside from the importance of the steps we have taken and the way we produced this legislation, the legislation itself is actually kind of good. We have done the best we can within the political context that exists at this time to reform and draft a bill that provides a better electoral boundary redistribution process. We are just dealing with the process. No one should think that the legislation we are working on now actually permits MPs to redraw the riding boundaries. That is not what it is.

We have reformed the process whereby electoral boundary commissions redraw those boundaries. We have done a number of things that have reformed and improved the process.

One of the issues that was submitted to the committee for consideration and which really does not end up being reflected in the draft legislation is the issue of capping the size of the House of Commons. The committee was asked to consider that issue in dealing with this statute although the statute itself does not designate the number of MPs in the House. The redistribution of boundaries legislation does not itself set out a formula as to how many MPs should sit in the House of Commons.

Those formulae are actually contained in the Constitution. What the committee was asked to do was to reflect on the constitutional provisions that dictated how many MPs should sit in the House of Commons. More than one section deals with those formulae. They prescribe that based on the current population of Canada the House of Commons for the next general election some time in 1997 or 1998 would have 301 ridings. At the current time there are 295. That would mean a growth of six.

It is not a big number but for many of us on the committee there was a principle. I was one of those who felt that there was a principle that maybe the House of Commons did not have to grow forever and ever into the future, that maybe it could be capped. Maybe we could say 295 was really enough to represent all the various parts of the country. We did not need 350, 400 or 500 as time went on.

That is how I felt. I still feel that way, that we have an open-ended formula. As the population of the country grows the number of MPs will grow. That is going to be slow and marginal over time. It is not something I have to lie awake at night to worry about now. The number is going to go up by six. The House can physically accommodate six more bodies but it is getting a little tight in here.

The real issue is whether we want to end the continuing growth. I am one of those who would like to do it in some way that would, as my hon. friend from North Island-Powell River stated, be fair to all provinces. Therein is the problem. How do we be fair to all provinces?

We have two constitutional provisions now that define the growth. One of them is called the senatorial floor, which means that no province will have a number of MPs less than the number of senators which it currently has in the Senate. The other formula is in section 51 of the Constitution Act. It says that provinces with declining populations will not be prejudiced by the decline in their population. In other words, the province will not lose MPs as its population declines, even relative to the population of the rest of the country.

Those are constitutional provisions and I think everyone knows in this Parliament that this is not the time to be tinkering with the Constitution. While I want Parliament to deal with the issue of how much it will grow in the future, this is not the time to start dealing with any particular provision in our Constitution. Canadians are suffering from overload in dealing with constitutional reform.

It simply was not going to be within our ability as a committee to deal with this particular issue effectively. I have accepted that a future committee, maybe even the same committee, or maybe

another committee in the same or the next Parliament should be dealing with this issue of capping.

What have we done in the current bill to remodel the way we set the electoral boundaries? This is aside from the number of MPs and the number of ridings. We have accepted that there can be a population deviation in any one riding above or below the average population in a riding, plus or minus 25 per cent. This is the one that has been used for a while.

There are some deviations out there. The last hon. member who spoke indicated that there are 50 out of the 295. They are there for a reason. The electoral boundaries commissions accepted that there were reasons for the deviations. I accept that there simply are reasons for which deviations should or could continue to exist over time.

I think of the example in my province of Ontario where there is a stable or decreasing population in the north with a quickly growing population in the south. If we did not allow some deviation, we would end up redrawing boundaries in northern Ontario which would radically diminish the current representation of those people in northern Ontario in this House of Commons.

I was not prepared to say to all of those people: "We are going to pull one or two MPs. I am sorry, but the mathematics say you have to go with fewer MPs". Those ridings are huge and the federal issues that those MPs deal with are no less important than the issues urban MPs deal with. I did not want to be the one to say that they had to give up their representation in this House. Relatively speaking we have the status quo in terms of the deviation.

One thing we did recommend which is included in this bill is we took away the ability of the electoral boundary commissions to go beyond the 25 per cent deviation. That is no longer there. At the present time I think there are only one, two or maybe three ridings that go beyond the 25 per cent deviation. That should be seen as being distinct from the current circumstance because certainly there are ridings now that go beyond the 25 per cent simply because since the last redistribution populations have grown.

Going back to the last time a decision was made about boundary sizes, there are only one or two ridings that went beyond the 25 per cent. We are of the view, and I hope the House agrees, that the boundary commissions themselves should no longer have the discretion to permit a deviation beyond the 25 per cent.

We have made other changes which we believe are helpful, cost effective and useful in the current process of redesigning riding boundaries. We adopted the mechanism of a five-year redistribution, a quinquennial redistribution. Rather than going into the mathematics of it, it simply means that where there is a rapidly growing riding in terms of population we get a chance to adjust it in relation to other surrounding ridings at a five-year period rather than at a ten year period. Therefore we will not have people underrepresented or overrepresented and we will not have these huge populace ridings as have developed in this Parliament.

It is somewhat unfair to the population of those huge ridings with a quarter of a million people. There are one or two out there. My riding has 150,000 people. The average in Ontario is about 100,000. It means that servicing these ridings is a bit more difficult. Therefore, if we have a five-year redistribution for some targeted ridings that have grown quickly we put the problem to bed earlier and we do not have these huge, huge ridings developing over a ten year period.

We have put in place a more transparent method of appointing the commissioners of the electoral boundaries commissions. We think the process is better. We think we are more in control. The quality of those appointments will be improved. We have involved the Speaker of the House of Commons more directly. We have linked that to the floor of the House of Commons at the very beginning so that we will be more certain-one cannot ever be 100 per cent certain-that we will have quality and non-partisan representation on the boundary commissions.

I would point out that the chief of each of the commissions has been and will continue to be a judge of the Supreme Court of each of the provinces, or a judge designated by the chief justice there. That has always been helpful in providing non-partisanship in the drawing of the boundaries.

The new process will provide an initial notice that has more detail in it. It is not just going to read: Be aware that we are going to redistribute ridings and we are going to redraw the boundaries, so get ready. It is going to have more information.

In addition, the boundary commissions are going to have to publish more than just their map of proposals. They are going to have to provide two alternatives so that average Canadians who want to be involved in the process are going to see some of the trade-offs, some of the different ways of looking at boundary redistribution.

Canadians will come to the realization early that when we change the boundary of riding a we are also therefore by definition changing the boundary of riding b next door and riding c and on down the road in a domino effect which occurs in many cases. The additional maps will be very helpful not to the members of Parliament but to the average Canadians who want to be involved and understand the process.

We are also, as I have said, changing the way the appointments to commissions occur. We have reduced the time that will elapse between the triggering of it and the presentation of the final decision. Time saved is money saved in my view. I am sure Canadians want to save some money. We have found some ways

to save money in the process in the way the maps are printed and distributed.

Last but not least, under the current legislation there is a way that MPs at the end of the day could deal with the redistribution on the floor of the House of Commons after the boundary commissions had reported. That sometimes happened as I understand it. Keep in mind this only happened once very 10, 11 or 12 years. However, there was a potential for what some people would call gerrymandering. At the end of the process in the old days after the boundary commissions had done their work, the matter could come to the floor of the House of Commons.

That is not going to happen any more. Parliament will simply accept that the commissions will make their decisions and they will be accepted by the House as being the best decisions.

I would like to close by commending members from all sides of the House who have participated in the process of redesigning the bill. The new bill was not accepted 100 per cent by every member. There certainly were some trade-offs and compromise. There may still be bells and whistles some members would like to see in the draft bill which are not there now. However I think we have designed and produced a bill that meets the needs of the 1990s and will serve members and their constituents well for many years to come.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member's praise of this proposed legislation.

As my colleague the member for Calgary West mentioned in his speech earlier when he quoted the hon. member, he very clearly indicated he was opposed to an increase in the number of members in this House. When serving with him on the procedure and House affairs committee I distinctly remember him saying that even an increase to the number of 301 was totally unacceptable. I think he used such illustrative language as we may have to knock out walls and destroy the beauty of this House of Commons if we do not come to grips with the rapidly expanding House of Commons.

We have a growth of population coming both from outside our borders and from within our borders. This legislation is set up in a way that the number of seats are determined by population. People are coming into Canada, about 200,000 or more a year, so that represents two seats per year. Then there is the growth within the country. I am not sure of the latest figures but it may be a similar amount. Even if it were half that much that would be three seats per year. Therefore by the year 2001 the increase of six seats from 295 to 301 may seem small by comparison.

This legislation does absolutely nothing to counteract that problem. In fact it just says that we cannot do anything about the problem. We will leave that for some future body, some future commission, some future committee of members to deal with.

How could the member change his position on this matter?

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not think the hon. member is correct in saying that I have changed my position. I have already articulated my position that I would not want to see an increase in the number of members of the House of Commons. That was in my remarks when I began.

The hon. member obviously has never had the responsibility of piloting a constitutional amendment through this House. Neither have I. He probably never will have. If the member thinks that we can simply pass a statute in this House that says that the House of Commons is capped at 295 seats, he is mistaken. It is much more than that.

First, even if we were to say that we want it to be 295, we have to find a new formula to address the needs of all provinces, just as this member prefaced his remarks by saying that we have to be fair to his province of B.C. We have to be fair to all the provinces including those with declining populations that are going to say: "We want a floor; you can add more seats somewhere else but you are not going to take any more away from us".

The government has to find a new formula. It has to pass a constitutional amendment and get it approved by all provinces or by two-thirds in a process that will take a number of years. While I am willing to embark on the process, it certainly is not going to happen this month, this year, in this Parliament.

I support the principle and the objective.