Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to this bill, as all my colleagues have been as well. As the last one to speak, I think it has all been said. All I need do is emphasize the importance this bill holds in the eyes of the Bloc Quebecois, the people of Quebec and the population of Canada as well, we hope.
To explain the context a bit, even in my own riding the people are wondering why the changes to boundaries. Often ridings include municipalities that are a sort of buffer zone. Each time there is a revision of the electoral map, people find themselves bounced from one riding to another, from one region to another.
This is likely one of the reasons for public disaffection and poor voter turnout. Looking for example at the regions where ridings are slated to disappear, Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, for instance, the people have been told that their three ridings will be changed to two. More or less the same thing is happening in Côte-Nord. The community of interests is gone. People are integrated within an new reality with which they really cannot identify. Perhaps—maybe I should say probably—people feel more and more distant from their elected representatives. They wonder why they should even bother to go out and vote in the next election, since they will be in a different riding next time anyway. So there is a poorer turnout.
Why are these changes being made? It must be acknowledged that it is not because the party in power woke up one morning and decided that this or that riding would be eliminated. That is not how it works. I will give a quick explanation, for the benefit of our constituents.
Representation in this House is readjusted after each dcennial census done by Statistics Canada, to account for any population changes and movements in Canada and Quebec. This process is governed by the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act.
I am in a good position to discuss this subject and I will take this opportunity to thank the people I had the privilege to work with during my first term in 1993. I used to represent the riding of Terrebonne, which is now Repentigny. This shows how ridings can change. Changes not only affect borders, but also names and representation. During the second election campaign, in 1997, I lost the municipalities of Terrebonne and Bois-des-Filion. I had developed affinities with some of the people living in these communities. I enjoyed working with these people and the mayors of Terrebonne and Bois-des-Filion.
There were 50,000 people living in Terrebonne at the time. I was told, after the decennial census, these two major municipalities would be taken away from my riding, leaving me with the five municipalities included in the present riding of Repentigny, which I still enjoy working for. Now I have learned that my riding will be cut up once again for the next election. Three more municipalities, Lachenaie, Mascouche and La Plaine, will be taken away.
After 10 years, we have even more things in common and more pleasure working with the elected officials as well as with the representatives of the business world and community groups. More than half of my riding is being changed. Luckily, there is an RCM in this riding. In Quebec, RCMs are homogeneous regions sharing communities of interest and history. For once, as far as the boundaries of the riding are concerned, the right decision was made. However, at what price and how? It came about after we asked the RCM and the Chamber of Commerce to file briefs, and asked various stakeholders, such as the school boards, business people and myself, to intervene to have these boundaries changed.
I think that the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act does not give enough opportunity for elected officials to say how the community of interests is reflected in the new electoral district.
The committee that hears complaints about the Electoral Boundaries Commission as a last resort, gets involved too late in the process. It is rushed through the process and accepts the decisions made by three of the commission's representatives. One person represents Quebec; there is a representative for each province and each territory of Canada.
What bothers the Bloc Quebecois is the idea of moving up the implementation date for this act, which has been around since 1867. New provisions always come into effect one year after the reports are tabled. Why throw a monkey wrench into the works? My colleague from Québec said earlier that they are trying to pull a fast one. We are being told that the new electoral map will come into effect five months sooner, in April. Why? For one simple reason: to give the future prime minister enough leeway to call an election.
When we are told about the democratic imbalance in the House of Commons and are asked to have a partisan vote on fundamentally non-partisan legislation, this begs the question as to why the one who wants to address the democratic deficit in the House of Commons says one thing and does another.
Mr. Speaker, you will recall the red book of 1993, since you were elected in 1993. The red book said there would be an independent ethics counsellor to resolve the problem of ethics and of the perception of the House of Commons.
What have they done since 1993? It is true that the Liberals put it in writing first, but it is also true that the Liberals were the first to do just the opposite. Is that because the ethics counsellor is a friend of the Prime Minister? The ethics guidelines that were followed later—the government House leader will certainly agree with me—were in total contrast to the 1993 red book. I see the House leader nodding, but he does not dare do so during oral question period.
What I was saying is that this bill, which attempts to move up the date on which the electoral redistribution comes into effect by five months, and the partisan aspect of the electoral process is not acceptable to us. If they had wanted to change parts of the Elections Act, they could have responded positively to a request from the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Kingsley, when he asked that the returning officers in each riding be appointed—