Mr. Speaker, the member did not answer my question. He simply restated what he said before about the history and the present formula which I already know. What I want to know is how he defends the premise that the number of members of Parliament from the province of Quebec and only from the province of Quebec should not be related to the population.
In the past it has been a fixed number of 75. We know that relative to the rest of Canada, Quebec's population has gone down. The mathematical fact stands. If it were not for that we would not be asking for more members in the House. That results when either the population of Quebec goes down or the population of the rest of the country goes up. That necessitates more members in this House by the present formula.
How is it that the Quebec members believe that they and they alone do not have to submit to the same rules of representation by population that the rest of Canada does? How does he justify that?