Mr. Speaker, I want to very briefly run over the very positive aspects of the bill before the House today. I am afraid the opposition members, as is their wont, have dwelt on the negative aspects.
We have heard the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster complain about two aspects he feels were not there. We have to deal with what is there. We have a good bill here and the hon. member should have acknowledged that and indicated supported for it in his speech.
The hon. member for Bellechasse had several complaints about things that were not in the bill, but what is in the bill is clearly quite acceptable to everyone, and he should support the bill for that reason.
The bill provides a new, and I suggest better, appointment process for commissions and for the commissioners. It puts a limit on the need to appoint commissions in provinces where there have not been significant population shifts. That is a major change. It will save money. We have another major money saving device in this bill. Redistributions will cost less as a result of this bill.
We have established quinquennial review, that is quinquennial redistributions in provinces where there have been significant population shifts within the province. Therefore we will avoid massive changes every 10 years.
We put a new clause with new directions to commissions instructing them on how to do the redistribution within the boundaries they decide on. We have suggested new ways of doing it that in my view are more restrictive than the rules that were there before. We directed them more pointedly to deal with items such as community municipal boundaries and boundaries of existing electoral districts. I think it is a significant improvement. All the members of the committee agreed it was an improvement when we made those changes.
There are limits which I suggest are much tighter on the right of commissions to deviate beyond the 25 per cent limit on the provincial quotients. Now they cannot create a riding that is bigger than the limits, which they could do before. Those are prohibited. They can only create one that is smaller than the 25 per cent deviation. That is circumscribed very tightly because it must be geographically isolated from the province or very remote. Without quoting the exact words, it is significantly different from what it was before. Again, the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster who harps on this point has fewer grounds to complain than he had in the previous bill. He should be supporting this bill.
The publication of plans is different. There will be three of them. There will be an opportunity to comment before the maps are published for the first time. The member for Kindersley-Lloydminster says that the maps presently drawn by the boundaries commissions are thrown out the window. That is not true. They could be used as one of the three maps by the new commissions. There is no reason in the world why those could not be used as one of the three options put forward by the commissions when they publish maps.
Members will have an opportunity to comment with members of the public in advance of publication, after publication and after significant changes in the maps.
This is an improved process. It is more open. We have rid ourselves of the parliamentary review. We have made the process more open, more accountable to public pressure, and more accessible to the general public in that sense.
We have abolished the very expensive publication process for the maps. We have made them available to people who want them, not to publish them in newspapers at great public expense. It is saving literally millions of dollars.
The commissions will give reasons for their decisions, which was not the case before. This will help explain to the public why the commissions have drawn boundaries in the locations they have. The period for implementation of redistribution has been shortened under the bill so that it will happen in a faster time frame than was the case before.
Those nine or ten very positive improvements to the legislation are encompassed in the bill. All I hear in lengthy speeches from the opposition are complaints. There has not been mention of any of the very positive aspects. I invite hon. members to look at the brighter side and not dwell on the things that are not there.
I should like to turn to a couple of things that are not in it and say something about them. I will deal first with the complaints of the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminister and then I will turn to the hon. member for Bellechasse.
The member complained repeatedly that members of the House were not free to express their views in the committee. We obviously had a very free expression of views. He has quoted extensively from speeches of members, particularly members on this side. I can understand why he would want to quote them. In his remarks he said how they shared a view one day and changed their minds another.
Part of the advantage of committee work is that we get to hear witnesses and study various options. The members of the committee looked at the things we could do. He may have forgotten that we spent three days in July last year, and he was there, hearing witnesses. We worked quite hard with long sessions lasting all day.
Having heard the evidence of witnesses we had discussions. They influenced us in various ways. Some of us were swayed by some witnesses and felt that maybe we should do this one day and then, having read other material and reflected on it, we changed our minds. That was true of many members of the committee.
Had I been expressing views in the committee as the chairman of the committee, I am sure he would have been quoting me as having said one thing one day and maybe something else the next. My views changed too as I read up on the subject and was persuaded by various witnesses, by discussions with my colleagues on the committee and by material I read on a subject such as the royal commission report on electoral reform and party financing.
Having seen all that material, having formed our views and having reflected on the matter, many members changed their minds. The hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster attributed all kinds of reasons to this that are not really accurate in every case at all and certainly not generally fair to hon. members who made up their minds. He should not indulge in such speculation on the reasons people make up their minds the way they do.
Naturally there are discussions in caucus. Naturally there is a consensus building on issues like this one. On the bill itself there was a significant change that he pressed for. That was the elimination of scheduled ridings and a change to put the power back in commissions to make the decisions that could have been made in the House because of various complaints from members. That was the response to complaints that he raised. The members on our side looked at it and decided there was a better way. I think the bill reflects that. I heard no criticism of that aspect of the bill from the hon. member in his speech.
The committee looked at the evidence, weighed the evidence and came to conclusions. We did not all come to the same conclusions. That is quite obvious from the speeches this afternoon. However, we came to conclusions on a bill that has very positive aspects that will have a significant impact on the way we do redistributions in the country and a very positive influence in that regard.
The redistribution done under the bill will be good. It will be better than what we had before, in part because the process is more open, in part because the commissioners will be more responsive to the wishes of the members of the House as they are chosen essentially by the members of the House, and because the opportunity for public input is very significantly enhanced under the bill.
In reflecting on whether or not to support the bill I invite members to consider those items, to look at the positive side and ignore the very negative side.
Another complaint the member made dealt with the size of the House. Frankly that is not a matter for a redistribution bill. It is a matter for changes in the Constitution of the country. The committee was very reluctant to get into constitutional change. The number of seats assigned to the provinces under the Constitution is set out in the Constitution Act. It is a matter of constitutional amendment to change it.
The hon. member wanted either to cap or decrease the size of the House. Most members on our side have considered the matter. There was some initial attractiveness to the idea. Last summer there was a lot of media attention focused on the size of the House and whether or not we really needed a House of this size. They reflected and decided that with 295 members for a country the geographic size of Canada we were not significantly over-represented in the House.
Our population is growing. Most of us in Ontario represent about 100,000 people. That is a significant number. We cannot get to meet them all in our term of office; it is virtually impossible to do so.
I am sure the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminister knows from his own experience, having been in the House now for a year and a half, how difficult it must be for him to meet his electors. Members of Parliament do not have all the time in the world to be out in their constituencies. When we go to our constituencies it is difficult to go door to door when we are trying to do our work as representatives, meet groups and people in our offices who ask to see us, not just to see the people who
perhaps would be interested to meet us but do not have the opportunity.