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.