Mr. Speaker, most Quebecers do not agree with the position of the last speaker and obviously do not want to leave Canada. This is why Quebec separatists have postponed the referendum.
I would also like to remind the Bloc member that Quebecers rejected the constitutional amendments that would have guaranteed them a percentage of the seats in the House of Commons.
Mr. Speaker, before I continue, I want to point out that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on this bill. It really is an extremely important bill, which deals with how we as Canadians determine how we will be represented in our House of Commons.
While I have had the privilege of being a member of the committee on procedure and House affairs, which dealt with this bill, I joined the committee only part-way through the process. I am aware that the members of that committee spent a great deal of time on it. It was an innovative process in that it was the first time a committee fulfilled a mandate that we as a government promised to give members of the House of Commons, as members of committee, to actually initiate legislation, to bring legislation forward to the House from the members of this House as opposed to from the government.
I want to compliment those members of the committee who have been on this project since the beginning for the excellent work they have done and the detailed consideration they have given to all aspects of this bill.
I said it was an important bill and it is. It deals with how we are represented democratically as Canadians. That is a very difficult issue in a country like ours, which is so disperse, so disparate, so diverse geographically and demographically.
We have huge concentrations of people in urban centres such as Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and yet we have huge and vast expanses of the country with very little population, with very little opportunity for people to have direct contact with their elected representatives.
One dilemma the committee faced was how to deal with equal representation by population for people in very concentrated areas and in very dispersed areas.
It is not an easy challenge. One has to recognize that representation by one's elected representative is more difficult when the member of Parliament has to travel perhaps thousands of miles even to see the parts of his or her constituency. One may have a very small population in a vast northern riding or in a riding such as Labrador and still have less contact with one's constituents than with a much larger population in an urban area that is much more compact.
The committee has proposed some innovative ways of ensuring when riding boundaries are decided upon. Of course they will not be decided by us but by independent commissions. However those factors will be taken into consideration. The very unique nature of this country will be taken into consideration. Ridings will be constructed so that people are equally well represented regardless of geography, dispersion of the population, sparsity of the population, or concentration of the population.
I did want to speak about the whole concept of community of interest. That very clearly is a factor many of us felt was not adequately respected in the previous report of the electoral boundaries commissions, a factor that I feel has been tremendously strengthened in the legislation now before the House.
One must not only look at numbers when deciding on ridings, how large they are and what their boundaries are. One must look at the commonality of interests in the people to be represented by the same member of Parliament. Do they identify themselves as a community? This is probably nowhere more important than in deciding what groups of people are going to be represented by
the same individual. Of course, there will always be diversity and differences within any community no matter the size.
It is extremely important that when members of Parliament walks into this Chamber to represent their constituents, they do so for a group of people who feel they have something in common. They identify themselves as a community historically or by virtue of common interests.
I also want to respond to some comments that have been made about the 25 per cent representation. Members from the Bloc know very well that what they have talked about this week cannot be achieved except by constitutional change. To pretend anything else is simply not being straightforward with people.
I do not think we could identify a handful of people in this country who want to go through the turmoil of talking about constitutional change again. There are so many bigger and much more important issues which touch the lives of people daily.
People have contacted me asking why we cannot have a much smaller House of Commons. That is certainly an option. Again, it would require a constitutional change because of minimum representation which is guaranteed to some of our smaller provinces.
I also tell people it is entirely possible to have a very much smaller House of Commons but we would lose something in doing that. Canadians would lose much closer and more personal contact with their members of Parliament.
The people I have talked to value the ability to be in personal contact and have a personal response from their members of Parliament, when they want to discuss an issue with them or have a problem resolved or have recommendations for government action. This is extremely important to Canadians. Coming back to the first point, it is extremely important given the diversity of this country. Therefore, people should be cautious when they suggest we have fewer elected representatives. They would also then have more remote representation.
Mr. Speaker, I only have a few seconds left. Therefore, I move pursuant to Standing Order 26:
That the House continue to sit beyond the ordinary hour of adjournment for the purpose of considering Bill C-69.