Madam Speaker, the member for Carleton-Charlotte makes a very good point. It was raised by many MPs who appeared before the committee. If any readjustment is required in a province it creates a domino effect.
Certainly my province of Saskatchewan is very similar to New Brunswick. Many constituencies have not seen significant population change. However the fact that one or two areas have seen population change-and it is usually an urban area that grows-it means the boundaries somewhere in that province have to be redrawn. As soon as boundaries are redrawn they affect neighbouring constituencies that would have less people as a result of boundaries around the city being tightened. It affects the next one and the next one.
Once we pass our accepted variance limits and begin to draw the first boundary, in most instances the boundaries within the entire province are redrawn. It is an unavoidable problem even though maybe three-quarters of the land mass is not significantly affected by the population change. The new process will not significantly change that.
In response to the member from Etobicoke, another improvement is that readjustment will take place every five years, which may mean that changes will be a little smaller; they will not be as massive as they were in the past.
As soon as we begin to draw a boundary, for example if we draw a boundary around Carleton-Charlotte, it will affect neighbouring ridings and there is no avoiding that. No matter if it is every five years or every ten years we have to redraw all the boundaries in the entire province. The key then is to make those boundaries in the best possible places. That is the job of the commissioners with public input which they had in the previous legislation and which they will have in this legislation.
Again, there are some minor improvements in this legislation which allows for a little more public input and some alternatives.