I want the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster to hear this because he said this is bad.
It stated:
(a) special geographic considerations, including in particular the sparsity or density of the population of various regions of the province, the accessibility of those regions or the size or shape thereof, appear to the commission to render such a departure necessary or desirable, or
(b) any special community or diversity of interests of the inhabitants of various regions of the province appears to the commission to render such a departure necessary or desirable,
In other words, those were the tests that the commissions appointed in 1993, and that rendered their reports late last year, had as their guideline.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to compare those words with the words in clause 19(3), which the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster says will render voter equity almost meaningless. In 19(3) it states:
A commission may depart from the application of the rule set out in paragraph 2(a) in circumstances that are viewed by the commission as being extraordinary because a part of a province, the population of which is less than 75 per cent of the electoral quota for the province calculated in the manner described in subparagraph 2(a)(i) or (ii), is geographically isolated from the rest of the province or is not readily accessible from the rest of the province.
In other words, the test is narrowed. It is not widened, it is narrowed. It is harder to get a special riding under the new rules. It must meet one of two tests. The old rule allowed the shape, the density or sparsity of population and all kinds of different things to enter into it. That is no longer a consideration. Accessibility is now the test. There are two tests: geographically isolated from the rest of the province or not readily accessible from the rest of the province.
We have narrowed the test. The hon. member is still complaining that voter equity is rendered almost meaningless by this test. I suggest to him that he should re-read the old act, read the new bill, and he would conclude, as I do, that his amendment is not well-founded. He should leave those words in the new bill and support this change. It is a good change and one that will result in the basic principle for which we are all striving, that is, effective representation.