Madam Speaker, I was in my office watching the TV and shouting at it and decided I might as well come over here and ask the members opposite the questions I was shouting at my television set.
I am rather amazed at their lack of knowledge of the bill, since they are here to save the country money and they are here to be representing the people and they are here to be efficient.
The old boundary system was cobbled together by a bunch of dinosaurs called Tories, who are now sitting in the Senate trying to block legislation. They have another set of dinosaurs who are helping them in the process.
There are three things in this bill that I would like the hon. member opposite to respond to on a very practical basis. When we have these public meetings to look at the electoral boundary drawings, people go to these meetings and they have absolutely no knowledge of what happens when they change part of the boundary in the current system.
I was on the committee that designed the new system. I come from a riding with 250,000 people and it has not been changed in 10 years. Ten years ago it had 88,000 people. When these people go in and they are supposed to give intelligent responses to the way the boundaries are drawn, they have no idea what happens to the population within those boundaries when they move them to take in a community of interest.
This bill gives three alternatives with the numbers of people in each of those three alternatives and it gives the rationale for picking the one the riding commission picked. This is representation in an intelligent way, rather than some sort of chaotic magical way.
The other thing it does is that it says it will be redistributed every five years instead of every ten. So you will not have a member standing here who yells at television sets because she is overworked with 250,000 people. And it will be 300,000 before the next election. How do the members opposite respond to that?
In this bill, it says there will be no redistribution in provinces that have not had a remarkable change in population. This is really a cost saver, because the old system had a commission appointed, it had all kinds of bureaucrats appointed, and they had all kinds of wheels turning when it was not necessary.
I would like the member opposite to specifically respond to those three questions and not give me great long speeches about the way we are running the government.