Madam Speaker, the member raised a number of interesting points. I would like at least to make a comment about an impression that I received from his speech, and to quote him “the boundaries that we are creating here”.
The House of Commons, the members of Parliament, do not create the boundaries. The member knows there is a process which is established under existing law. It is the Chief Electoral Officer and the commissions that have been established who, based on the census information, provide a distribution of ridings across the country. They will adjust them to take into account the growth in the average population per riding. They also take into account that pursuant to our Constitution, a province like P.E.I. regardless of its population is guaranteed to have four seats. There are some exceptions, and I am not sure if the number is the same in these provinces, but by and large in Ontario the average population would be something like 116,000.
The census was completed some time ago. The commissions initially came forward with proposed boundaries based on the assessment of the population distribution of the census. That process then went through very extensive public consultations. The member and the public at large had an opportunity to appear before the tribunal to make representations to ensure that communities of like-minded interests were not divided, et cetera.
I understand that many members will have a situation where even though Quebec's population may have increased, the population of a member's riding may not have increased to the same extent. Therefore that member will find that his riding now has been attached to another riding which has not grown to the same extent.
The point is that although we had an opportunity through this legislation and we had an opportunity through our own committee to make final representations, those representations were not binding on the commission. The commission could consider them but this place had no say in the final boundaries. We had an opportunity to make suggestions either at hearings or through our committee.
Having said that, does the member feel that he needs the year to find a new riding? Maybe he could explain to the House when he found out that his riding did not have a sufficient population and that it would have to have a significant change to its boundaries. I suspect the answer is that it was at least two years ago and therefore, his argument about needing a full year to figure out what he might do about it simply is not a valid argument.