Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill because the issue of boundaries has had a profound impact on the region of northern Ontario.
My own riding was taken out in the last redistribution. Arbitrary lines were drawn on the map which divided up rural regions that had long been a homogenous whole and a patchwork of ridings were created instead. This was done with no input from the people in the north. I am very aware of the sense of disenfranchisement that exists among people in the north.
What disturbs me when we discuss this issue is to hear members of other parties stand up and say all votes should be equal and everything should be fair. The reality is that all votes are not equal and have never been equal. In ridings in northern Ontario the average population is about 85,000 to 90,000 people. The average population of a riding in Saskatchewan is 69,000 people. We need to apply the same standard to northern Ontario as that applied to Saskatchewan. Let us apply that to Yukon where there are 35,000 people per seat. Why is it that Prince Edward Island has four seats? Is that 25,000 people per seat? These were guaranteed seats and I do not object to that. My colleague from the Bloc is of course opposing this bill as I expected she would. I am surprised in some ways because Quebec has also been guaranteed a certain number of seats.
The problem in Ontario is the major dislocation between the needs of the rural north and the needs of the urban north. One of the fundamental principles of democracy is the availability of a member of Parliament to his or her constituents. I lived in Toronto for awhile. I could walk 15 minutes one way to an MP's office and 15 minutes the other way to another MP's office. The riding of Timmins--James Bay is larger than the United Kingdom. I have gone into parts of my riding that no other member of Parliament has gone into before.
Talking about disenfranchisement, we just need to look at the James Bay coast where upward of 30% of the population does not have birth certificates. They do not have SIN numbers. They are not even on the map. They live in terrible conditions. I am talking about places like Kashechewan, Attawapiskat and Fort Albany. Health Canada has never provided proper health services to these communities. It just has a MASH unit available.
If a child gets sick and has to be flown out and that child does not have a birth certificate, the cost is charged to the regional health authority. The regional health authority in James Bay is swimming in debt because the federal government will not accept the fact that so many people who live on that land even exist. A major deficit has occurred in terms of health and education dollars.
Some may ask why these people do not have birth certificates and other documentation. The federal and provincial governments have written these people off. Their officials never go there. Our office is there all the time. We are the ones filling out the birth certificates and the other forms. A member said we should get a little more organized and do what is done in southern Ontario. We run five offices out of our region and our staff are on the road all the time.
This is not just about constituency service. This is about political service as well. I sit in the House and listen to members talking about how unfair it is that Saskatchewan does not get to keep 100% of its non-renewable resources. I hear about the need for Newfoundland to maintain rights to its non-renewable resources. Northern Ontario is entirely dependent on non-renewable resources and none of that money has ever gone back to the region.
Kirkland Lake is a struggling gold mine community. In the 1930s right up until the 1960s, Kirkland Lake was keeping the economy of Ontario alive. None of that money went back to the community. Across the border in Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d'Or there are communities that created one-quarter of the wealth that northern Ontario created and they have proper cities with proper infrastructure.
There have been years of neglect in the resource-based communities of northern Ontario. We need to ensure that a fair system is in place similar to southern Ontario. We need to ensure that when these other communities expand and prosper that their prosperity is not at the expense of communities in northern Ontario that are stretched out over a vast area. These communities face major infrastructure problems, major economic problems, and have massive youth out-migration.
We need to maintain a strong political voice for those people. It is only fair. That is what we have in other parts of Canada. We are not asking to go down to 68,000 or 69,000 population size type seats that we see in Nova Scotia. No, we will live with our 85,000 plus that we have in northern Ontario.
The city of Sudbury, which has a bigger population base than Prince Edward Island, has the same amount of political representation as P.E.I. We recognize that we will do without, but I find it absolutely astounding that members from southern Ontario stand in the House and say that by allowing the people of northern Ontario to have the same fair voice as rural regions and the rest of the country, it is somehow disenfranchising 905 and is somehow ripping off people in Markham by preventing them from having their elected representative in the House. It just does not make sense.
It does not make sense when there is a need to have voices articulating the issues of rural based people, people living in forest and mining economies who understand the issues of northern Ontario. We have a right to be heard in the House the same way that people in Yukon, Prince Edward Island and Quebec have a right to representation, and the same way the rural regions and the rest of the country are given that clear exemption.
We are not asking to go down to their levels of 69,000, 35,000 or 25,000 persons per constituency. We are willing to accept what we have, but we are saying if southern Ontario continues to grow at an unchecked rate, it should not be coming on the backs of communities like Red Rock, Iroquois Falls, Sudbury and Timmins.