Mr. Speaker, I am totally in agreement. The member's figures are in fact quite right. We do have this urbanization of Canada, which means that the rural issues and the representation of the rural community of Canada are being eroded. This is probably not helpful to Canada in terms of balancing the interests.
The House might be interested to know that today we have less farms than we have ever had in our history, but we produce far more food than ever before because the technological advances have been enormous. That community of interest has grown in importance relative to Canada's needs when in fact the population has declined. So how do we protect the importance of that identity, that uniqueness it brings?
I would agree and would certainly look for an opportunity to make representation for consideration of amendments to the Canada Elections Act that would deal with both issues, one being geography beyond a threshold which is extreme. There comes a point when a member just cannot possibly effectively represent a geographic expanse that takes a half an hour to fly across.
The other part, though, is to take special recognition of the fact that as we move forward and this urbanization of Canada continues and the population of the rural side perhaps shrinks, the rural side must not be penalized for the shrinkage of population. Because its importance of issues actually has grown relative to national interest. Maybe we need to have a proviso that, notwithstanding the target population, if it qualifies in terms of that community of interest, particularly rural Canada, as an example, there would be adjustments made so that communities of interest could continue to have effective representation for the important contribution they make.