Mr. Speaker, the minister in his opening remarks on this bill mentioned that the next election should be held under an environment of the most accurate information available to provide representation by population. He also mentioned that we were presently working with information that was more than 12 years old.
Although it is difficult to criticize this bill because it does speed up the process of redistribution as it is now constituted, there really is a problem when we recognize that this 12 year old information means, in effect, that although British Columbia would get two new seats and Alberta would get two new seats, we really are still way behind in terms of accurate representation by population. If we were to use the actual populations today, we should have two more seats in British Columbia right now. It should be four that we are voting for, not two.
While it is difficult to criticize a bill which provides additional representation for western Canada in this place, the one criticism would be that it is 12 years out of date. I will take the minister up on his challenge to provide some suggestions of ways that we could modernize this redistribution act. I will get to that in just a few minutes.
What I would like to mention upfront though is another thing that was just touched on by the minister. There has been widespread dissatisfaction among members about the actual redistribution process and the way that the various commissions handled the process in each province. As critic for that area for my party, I watched the procedure right at the beginning. It was clear that each commission took its own independent way of doing things, so there was dissatisfaction in every province.
For example, in Ontario there were Liberals MPs who lost their ridings completely and I know out west there were Canadian Alliance MPs who lost their ridings because of the redistribution. Out west they assumed it was because there was political interference in the process. I personally do not think there was, although we always have those suspicions, because in Liberal country in Ontario the same sorts of things were happening.
The commissions also were approaching the job in a different way. In the Edmonton area, for example, they tried to change the formula for whether the riding should be arranged in a concentric order or in the spoke system. There was a lot of debate about that sort of thing. In British Columbia there was a lot of argument about whether a riding in the central part of B.C. should be eliminated altogether.
The bill really does not deal with that dissatisfaction, but I think if we were to modernize the entire redistribution act, we could really improve the situation in a very effective way. If the government were serious about trying to address the under-representation in western Canada, it would find a way of speeding up the redistribution process.
For example, thanks to those modern databases which the minister alluded to at Elections Canada, it really is not necessary to have a delay of several years between the time that we take a census and fully implement the redistribution process. It is not really even necessary to use a census. If we really think about it, why do we have to use the census as a starting point for redistribution. The whole process is rather arbitrary after all. Even though we start with the census, we already see that the redistribution commissions can pick and choose where boundaries go. They make massive variations to those boundaries.
For example, in my own riding the first strike was to split North Vancouver into two pieces, because the riding is way too big in terms of the quotient for population. The riding was split and a portion of it was joined on to north Burnaby. I did not object to that because I felt we needed an additional riding in the area, because of the number of people who live in north Vancouver. Eventually after several re-works, I ended up back with the same riding boundaries with which I started.
Here I am back again with exactly the same riding boundaries that will continue on now for at least another five, or seven or ten years before we get a redistribution. Yet the population in the riding is running 17% to 18% above the maximum that is prescribed in the redistribution act. There is something wrong with a process like that. It is arbitrary and it is not tried critically to the census.
Elections Canada already maintains an electronic database of voters and it maintains that database by postal code. Anyone can go to the Elections Canada website and key in a postal code and find out who the MP is for that area.
There really is no reason why we cannot start with something like the voter database from Elections Canada and make these redistributions on a more frequent basis. If the commissions are rather arbitrary anyway, we do not need that degree of accuracy. It probably would end up being more accurate if it was being done on the basis of the voters list. We could do this redistributions more often and we truly could have real representation by population.
Rumour has it that the Bloc Quebecois wants to hold up this legislation. We in the official opposition will be interested to hear why because frankly the message out west in terms of holding up this legislation is not a good one. I can already hear people out west saying that if the Bloc is going to try to hold this up, here is another case of the Quebec tail trying to wag the federal dog.
Maybe the Bloc members do not care about the relationships with the west but they need to think very carefully about their position in terms of this legislation and the additional representation the west will get into this House once the bill is passed.
We want to see this legislation passed so we can begin the very complicated process of nominations and redistribution of the assets of electoral district associations. Then all this will be coupled with the new political finance bill which in itself is complicated and begins on January 1, wherein electoral district associations have to become registered with Elections Canada.
Here we have this very complex, bureaucratic process of registering electoral district associations in January under the present boundaries and then on April 1 we are going to completely turn everything topsy-turvy, establish new boundaries and all those electoral district associations will have to be re-registered, all the assets accounted for and Elections Canada at the same time will be preparing for the likelihood of an election, perhaps within one month of that occurring.
This is a very complex process. I agree with the minister and so does the official opposition that we need certainty in this. We need this legislation passed quickly so we can begin the planning process and the consultations with Elections Canada to ensure that all the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted so that hopefully there will not be any problems. It is difficult to imagine that there will not be any problems when dealing with two pieces of legislation at the same time and it is a very new process for riding associations and for candidates.
We hope that Elections Canada is preparing well and that it can cope with unexpected consequences, and there will be unexpected consequences of the boundary changes occurring in consequence with this political financing act.
That having been said, we will not hold this bill up. I think we have a few speakers from the official opposition who will be expressing support for the concept of improved representation by population, probably introducing a few complaints about the redistribution process itself and perhaps providing some other suggesting for the minister on ways in which we could modernize this whole procedure.
I urge other members of the House to support this legislation and the Bloc perhaps to think carefully about its strategy. Let us see this bill go through quickly so that we have certainty for the next election.