Mr. Speaker, in listening to the member for Kingston and the Islands respond to the hon. member for Bellechasse he was arguing for and against himself. He reiterated what I said in my speech.
He alluded a bit to some constitutional changes that would be necessary if we were to reduce the number of members in the House. We discussed this in committee. As the member for Calgary West very adequately explained to the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, any constitutional changes would be minimal and could be done within the confines of the House. They do not require the very complicated and difficult amending formula to authorize the changes. It would be necessary to deal with the grandfather clause which prohibits an equitable reduction in the size of the House.
The hon. member for Calgary Centre, who had some input at committee in the bill, used California as an example of a jurisdiction in the United States with a population equal to the population of our entire country which at the federal level only has, if I remember correctly, 56 federal members to represent nearly 30 million people.
His argument that we need 294 MPs at the federal level to adequately administer this country does not hold water. Both our system and our capabilities are equal or perhaps superior to those of the politicians in the state of California.
I have a concern the hon. member did not address and to which I would like him to respond. We have thrown away $5 million. We are going to draw new maps after the bill is passed. Given the population shift in the province of Ontario, I am quite sure that the results may be very similar to the results we saw when the maps came out in the former process. In those maps northern Ontario lost one seat. Perhaps now with the population changes it will lose two seats and the hon. member for Cochrane-Superior will have a larger riding and another member will not have a riding at all.
How is the hon. member's government going to respond when the maps come out again? The results could be even less favourable to his members than they were this past time. Will they again demand changes? Is the government going to again delay the process and bring in new legislation to try to get the maps drawn the way those members want them?