Mr. Speaker, so far I agree with the position of the hon. member for Bellechasse concerning the amendments put forth by the hon. member for Kinderley-Lloydminster. I am pleased to speak after him in this debate because he has set out so clearly the major aspects of this issue.
I also want to make my own point to the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster. I know he has had lots of practice in making that speech.
We considered this question in committee in the days of when we were deciding what to do. The House had a debate on this issue in referring the matter to the committee. The issue was first raised then. We studied it in committee and made a report to the House. We had a motion for concurrence at which time this was one of the hotly debated issues and we heard the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster then.
We had a bill for second reading which was passed without debate, but then in committee we went back into this issue as we studied this clause in the bill. We made some changes that the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster did not like. I see that one of his amendments is to delete those good changes.
Then we come back to the House and here we have it again. I will lay dollars to doughnuts that we are going to hear the same debate from the hon. member on third reading. He is persistent, I grant him that and he has had lots of practice giving his speech.
I enjoyed his remarks this afternoon. I know he had hoped he had convinced me that we should agree to some changes in this part of the bill and accept his amendments. I do not agree with the amendments he has put forward and I want to give him, the
House and Canadians the reason the government is not agreeing with these amendments.
I listened to the evidence. After hearing all the evidence, I came to my conclusion. It is a good conclusion and I invite the hon. member to support it.
What he said was that as a result of the changes in this bill voter equity was almost meaningless. I have to disagree with that. The essential principle dealing with redistribution in Canada is set out in clause 19(1) of this bill. If he goes back to that basic principle, I think he will agree with me that what we did was right. It says:
The principle that shall guide each commission in preparing a report is that effective representation be the paramount consideration in determining reasonable electoral district boundaries in the province for which the commission is established.
As a person who represents a mixed rural and urban riding, but almost all urban, I would have expected that equality would require every riding in Canada to be the same size in terms of the number of electors.