Mr. Speaker, Bill C-49 is a very short bill. Effectively it would change the boundaries as established by the Chief Electoral Officer through the process that is prescribed under legislation and will be effective on the first dissolution of Parliament that occurs on or after April 1, 2004.
Under the current legislation, the boundaries would ordinarily have been required to be exposed to the public for a full year, which means up until, I believe, August 24. This bill is compacting the exposure period of the new boundaries for a variety of reasons, depending on who is speaking.
I wanted to speak on this because a few points have been made by some speakers on which I would like to comment. I disagree with a couple of them and I want to point out why.
First, one Alliance member talked about a particular riding having some 120,000 people, whereas P.E.I. in its four ridings only had an average of 34,000 people. The Alliance member went on to say that was awful and that was why the process had to be fixed. It is not exactly a good comparison because the distribution of the ridings available in P.E.I. have been established by Constitution and it is entitled to have four seats regardless of the population.
I do not think the discrepancies are as bizarre as the member presented, but in history we have known in urban areas of high growth, particularly in Ontario, some ridings could have 100,000 people. I think one riding, York North, turned out to have population of 187,000. This means the volume of activity for a particular member of Parliament could be substantially different from someone else, depending on the riding.
The population does change. In urban areas it can change very dramatically when we consider the high density of population growth in certain major urban centres. Therefore there are some discrepancies.
However under the laws of Canada, a census is taken that provides the Chief Electoral Officer with the data necessary to reconfigure the boundaries, to take into account the authorization for new seats as well as to redistribute the boundaries to meet, as close as reasonably possible, a target population so there is general equivalency in terms of the size of ridings, with the exception such as P.E.I. that have special constitutional provisions.
Many of the members, including the member for Elk Island, talked about democracy and about the absence of democracy in this process and that notwithstanding members might agree among themselves that the boundaries should be this, that or the other and they are all rejected, that this is not a reflection of democracy. The fact is the process of reviewing and adjusting electoral boundaries is part of the laws of Canada. It is not there to be a democratic reflection of the will of the consensus of people in Canada as to what they would like to see for a riding. Imagine trying to find a consensus even in one's own community about where a boundary might be.
Members will know when their ridings are established, the returning officers of the ridings take the maps and carve them into polls so polling districts have voting stations associated with them. It has nothing to do with whether I am in poll one or two. It has to do with how can we efficiently run an election so people who report, directly or indirectly, to the Chief Electoral Officer can do their jobs efficiently.
Poll boundaries have absolutely nothing to do with democracy or whether it makes the job easier for candidates to run an election. Similarly, the boundaries of ridings again have nothing to do with partisan interests, notwithstanding that an after the fact analysis, maybe, by the Bloc Quebecois would show that in the area of Lac St. Jean for instance, instead of having four ridings as it does now, under the new distribution it would only have three and theoretically, based on current polls, it would lose one member of Parliament as a result of that redistribution.
I understand and I know members on all sides who have difficulties with this because it will impact their situation. It is not their preference, but their preference is based on a partisan, a political and to some extent a selfish requirement. It is not based on what makes it good for an efficient operation of an election and an equitable distribution of the population among all the members of Parliament of Canada.
Democracy is a fine thing, but we just cannot have democracy when the objectives of that democracy, as defined by certain members of Parliament, is to do it their way and that is democratic. Obviously, there will not be agreement.
Maybe some people who are watching should know that every 10 years, when the results of the census comes out, an analysis is done. There was an agreement based on the projections that seven seats would be added to the House of Commons for the next election. That includes two seats in B.C., two in Alberta and I believe three in Ontario.
Based on that and with the exception of constitutional overrides, ridings such as in Ontario will have an average population of about 116,000 people. This means the commission which was set up for that province had to come up with boundaries that were generally reflective and close enough to the target population of approximately 116,000. Each and every province did this. Every commission had to take into account how they could make the boundaries efficient in terms of meeting the objective of being able to run an efficient election. They also had to take into account communities of interest, such as cities and city boundaries, such as rivers and other natural barriers and historical relationships. They wanted to, wherever possible, keep those together.
That is an objective, but not an overriding objective because there are cases where we cannot possibly provide all the things that all the people want at all times. The commission's override is to get the boundaries into a situation that makes sense and also takes into account the fact that they should be roughly around the target population plus or minus a small factor of population. That is exactly what happened.
However, those boundaries were the first effort. The first draft of boundaries are actually made by the electoral commission. Those boundaries are then published and exposed to the public at large. The members know, because we went through this process, that there was an extensive consultation process with the public. There were public hearings at which members could themselves make representations. I certainly did because a new riding was to be added to the city of Mississauga, from where I come. It meant that it would affect all the ridings in Mississauga and that we would have some significant changes to the historic boundaries under which we had been operating since the last census in 1993, when many of the members here today were elected.
There was this extensive process. This is where the democratic element comes in. However there was no undertaking or no requirement of the provincial commissions to somehow survey or determine whether there was a consensus of the people in a particular area for a particular change. The idea was that they would take representations just in case something was missed.
From time to time there are some things missed and there are some pieces of information that the representatives of the Chief Electoral Officer do not have. For instance, in the city of Mississauga city councillors also spent a great deal of time analyzing the distribution of the population based on the national census and were redesigning their ward boundaries for their own municipal purposes. They had all the analysis and it was clearly shown in all the tables when the work was done so even a member of a provincial legislature or a member of the federal Parliament could see very clearly where the pockets of growth were and where the natural boundaries were. It made a great deal of sense. In some cases the commission was not aware and did not have access to that when it made its first draft. As a consequence, I believe some significant changes were made.
In the first draft my own riding in was to be cut in half and both halves were to be joined with other pieces of the city. As it ultimately turned out, my riding now is the same riding I have had for almost 10 years, but I will also be adding on a significant portion of another member's riding, which has experienced growth and which will physically become smaller but will have a population within the target range.
It would be nice to say I want my riding to be exactly the way it is and I really do not care that I only have 100,000 when I should have 116,000 and that I will let somebody else take care of it. It is even worse than that. The commission cannot take into account known areas of significant growth since the last census. We know the areas of significant growth. We have seen them develop.
Urban centres are working on the whole question of urban sprawl and are trying to increase the densities. The whole urban planning concept is having a significant impact on the density of populations in urban centres. As the population of Canada grows, the ability of the rural and remote areas becomes less and less significant in terms of the population base as a per cent of the overall population. We are becoming urbanized. That means that some of the rural ridings and some remote ridings have become so small in population that they now have to take up expansive territories of space just to get their numbers up to some reasonable level relative to the target.
The member for Elk Island made an interesting observation about ridings where members may have to hop on an airplane and fly for half an hour to get from one end of the riding to the other. In my riding I can hop in my car and go from one end to the other in 15 minutes. It is different. I know a member of Parliament whose riding I think is eight square blocks. The density is very high because it is mostly apartment buildings and there is no travel involved. I suspect there are probably no parking spaces either.
It shows that we have a tremendous diversity. As we have this debate, and members have gone through this process, we have to try to look for ways that we can make suggestions on how this process can be refined further as time goes on.
Seven new members will be in this place after the next election. However I think it is fairly clear that this place is not going to continue to grow in terms of members of Parliament every time the population of Canada increases by 120,000 people. We just cannot have it. There will have to be a shift in the way in which members of Parliament service their constituents.
We may not be able to give that same direct level of service to each and every one of our constituents as needed. All of a sudden we will have to rely on other modes of communication and service because the geography for many will be so expansive that it will not be practical to have that direct contact as often as one would want.
In other areas there are just so many people that members of Parliament can not possibly service them on the same level of service as we provide today. If there are 20% or 30% more constituents to service, there is not 20% to 30% more time to do it. I think all members would agree that it is very difficult now to deal directly with all the concerns of our constituents. It is an evolutionary process and we have to make these recommendations.
I would suggest that we take into account the geographic expanse in determining the budgets that a member of Parliament would have to service that riding, but I am wondering whether or not there should be an amendment to the Canada Elections Act which in fact would take into account some sort of a discount in population requirement relative to the expanse of the geography that a riding covers.
Ultimately, that part of the Canada Elections Act has been established to run an efficient and effective election campaign. As we keep moving down this road, we will have some ridings that are going to be so geographically expansive that we will have to look to other techniques even in voting, such as mobile ballot boxes and maybe even balloting by Internet. I am not sure, but maybe we have to start looking at the reality of this country, that is, we are a very attractive country in the world and our economic growth has brought about a significant improvement in the quality of life of Canadians. I suspect that is going to continue, but we also have to continue to provide levels of service which are appropriate for our constituents and we have to educate them about other ways in which they can get the help they need.
Some members like to treat their offices like social service agencies and receive everybody for every problem regardless of the jurisdiction. I suppose that is a very noble thing to do, but when there are others who have jobs and are supposed to provide those services, I think we have to make sure that our constituents are getting services from the areas that are geared up to do the work properly.
As for members of Parliament as a whole, when we consider the difference between Canada and the U.S. and the average number of electors or size of population that a congressman represents, for instance, we see that it is significantly higher than what we have in Canada. We are moving in that direction. Now is a good time for members to make some of those recommendations as to how we see it down the road. We are not going to have 400 members of Parliament in this place; it is not going to happen. We will have 308, I believe. That is the number we will have and we are going to have to change how we do our work with that change in our population.
Members have raised another issue. After the initial phase was completed by the provincial commissions and they reported on their next to final draft of the boundaries, Parliament then had its own committee to deal with a final opportunity for members of Parliament to assess where the boundaries are now and to make recommendations. The important thing, though, is that notwithstanding this special committee to which we could go to make these suggestions, the electoral commission and the provincial commissions were not or are not bound under law to accept those recommendations. We can submit them. In fact, in many cases, as the member for Elk Island said, none of them were accepted even though the members in his area all agreed.
The point of my intervention is that this is not totally a matter of whether we have a democratic process. Democracy, in the context in which it has been talked about here, really has to do with partisanship. It has to do with politics. It has do with individual members getting the support or consensus of people to do things. That is not the intent of the Chief Electoral Officer's mandate or of the Canada Elections Act; it is how we design a system that takes into account the geography and population realities of Canada so that we can run efficient, effective general elections as we elect members of Parliament. That is the difference.
I would suggest to members that the process is still a valid process, but I would think that if members of Parliament can come up with a better way, now is the time to make recommendations on how to amend the Canada Elections Act. Maybe now is not the time to move in other directions or off the topic. I think this is an important opportunity. We are bringing to a close a very important process, which in fact is an integral part of the democratic form of representation that we have in Canada.