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.