Mr. Speaker, certainly I recognize there are differences from community to community. To the greatest degree possible boundaries should recognize this and try to embrace communities where there have been traditional boundaries.
However the first principle, the driving principle in my judgment, has to be representation by population. At the end of the 20th century we do not yet have a political system that either serves people on the basis of representation by population or contrarily has a counterpoise through a triple-E Senate. It is time that we started to move toward that.
In our amendments to Bill C-69, the one that called for a 15 per cent variance would have given us a closer system. That has to be the first principle that drives any changes to the boundaries. The second principle should respect trading areas and things like that. We agree with that absolutely. Let us not make that the first principle.
Canadians are democrats first and foremost. I think they would like to see a system that is based on a more democratic type of system.