Mr. Speaker, I am glad to continue my speech on Bill C-49. As I was saying before question period, personally I would like the bill never to be enacted. I wish that there were no realignment of the boundaries because of the terrible, horrible job that has been done on it in the Edmonton area, including the annihilation of the Elk Island riding.
The commission totally missed the point on putting together in an equitable way people with community of interest. It totally missed it. Furthermore, the organization of ridings in Alberta now, the geography of the different ridings, is such that the work of members of Parliament will be made much more difficult due to its inefficiency.
The boundaries have been changed so that instead of having several members of Parliament with large ridings, it has pretty well been arranged so that every member of Parliament in Alberta will have a large riding. That is simply going to put us into vehicles. We will have to sit for hours in cars while we drive from the middle of the province to the boundary of the province. That is how long three of the ridings are. It is totally not needed.
The whole press to move this forward, to advance the date from the point of view of getting a better situation for the representation of our constituents in the House of Commons, and better work on behalf of the constituents by their members of Parliament in the riding, will be made much more difficult by these new ridings.
I am not going to complain. My riding disappears. I have already announced that I will be seeking re-election in a new riding for Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan and part of Edmonton. I will do my very level best to continue the tradition that we have in this party, and which I have personally, which is to represent the people of the riding to the best of my ability and show them here the capability of having a government which is honest, shows integrity and is fiscally responsible, accountable and transparent.
It is atrocious that the commission in Alberta rejected every representation that was made to it. I sat the whole day at the commission hearings in Edmonton. I sat and listened to every one of the presentations. Every presentation, with the exception of one, said that what was being done was not acceptable and that it was not the way to realign the boundaries.
Even the City of Edmonton itself said in its presentation that it would rather have six members of Parliament with undivided interests in representing its cause than eight with divided interests.
The commission said that it would not listen and it would do it anyway, and it did. It went ahead and totally messed up the organization of the ridings. It is now going to be mandatory for members of Parliament to serve these combination constituencies with the result that many more hours will be spent driving. There will be a huge increase in costs to the taxpayer to pay for the mileage for the trips of members of Parliament as they travel throughout their ridings.
It is a matter which deserves the attention of Parliament. I do not know how we could get together with the Liberals in a non-partisan way but we ought to do that with all of the parties in the House. We must look at how the process can be revised so that members of Parliament who actually do the work can somehow have a real and meaningful influence on the way the boundaries are created.
I will simply conclude by saying that I will be supporting Bill C-49 because I do want to have the next election under the new boundaries. I also want to have the certainty as we plan for the next election that we can plan for the new boundaries. It is better to have that than to have two simultaneous organizations going without knowing with certainty what is going to happen at the next election.
Although this should increase it, we know that in our archaic system in Canada the Prime Minister can still call an election whenever he wants. Presuming it is the member in waiting, who everybody recognizes, he could, anytime after he becomes the leader of the party, call an election and he may in fact still do that. Maybe the ridings will still remain the same. If that is the case, so be it, but the fact is that it is good to have the certainty of knowing what the riding boundaries will be at the next election.
I should also add that I am happy to be part of a party that has always had, since its beginning here, when I was first elected in 1993 as a member of the Reform Party and later on as the Canadian Alliance, the policy that we should have fixed dates for elections, fixed intervals so people can plan. There are many ramifications to that. Returning officers need to rent office space sometimes months before it is needed because they have to be ready even though they do not know when an election will be called. It is a weak part of our democracy to allow the sitting prime minister or the leader of the party that has the most seats in the House, for one individual, without being required to tell anybody else in advance, to call an election on the day it starts happening. That is very inadequate and I wish we would find that kind of parliamentary reform. If the new prime minister believes there is a democratic deficit in this country, that is one of the aspects of it.
Even though I will be voting for the bill, it increases the certainty that the next election will be held under the new boundaries. At least we will know what we are working under. There still is no 100% certainty because anything could happen. We have the Liberals opposite who have shown us on more than one occasion that they are ready to call an election way in advance of any technical necessity of doing so, just simply for the case of increasing the probability of them winning. I sometimes fear, out loud, that the new prime minister may call a quick election because he will think that our party is still not organized. I assure members that we are doing our very best to be ready for whenever that election is called.
I will be supporting the bill on that account only and not because I am eagerly looking forward to serving the constituents in my area under the new boundaries and under the new conditions which are being spelled out for us. However, we will do our very best.