Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to an issue that is very important and relevant to the people of northern Ontario. I thank the member for Sudbury for bringing it forward. She and other members of this place who represent northern Ontario understand the real challenges we face in that part of this wonderful country and the need for a strong voice, for good representation, for equal representation in this place if we are going to continue to take our place in this country's economy.
I speak this afternoon on behalf of my colleague from Timmins—James Bay who feels passionately about this issue as well. He would want me to say to the House that we are certainly going to be supporting this bill as it goes forward.
At the moment northern Ontario is experiencing a very high degree of alienation from the rest of Ontario and the country in general. We are facing some really difficult economic challenges. We do not seem to be able to get the attention of the governments of the day to actually fix those problems. The answers are relatively simple, if we look at what is happening in other jurisdictions across the country, but we do not seem to be able to get the ear of government in a way that responds and actually fixes those problems.
I suggest that there too many Liberals representing those ridings, at the federal level anyway, and not enough New Democrats. If there were more New Democrats, we might not be having this debate this afternoon, because northern Ontario would have many strong and effective voices championing the causes of the very important ridings of northern Ontario. Perhaps we would be getting more action.
Having said that, I want to present to the House an argument that I presented to the electoral boundaries readjustment committee when it came to Sault Ste. Marie a couple of years ago. We lost two ridings under the stewardship of the Liberal government of the day. The argument is that we have to go beyond simply representation by population.
We in this caucus have been asking for electoral reform for quite some time. Let us consider the results of elections, and this is just the way the deck is stacked at the moment. The NDP got some two and a half million votes in an election and 29 members in the House. The Bloc Québécois got about a million and a half votes and 50 members in the House. There is something wrong somewhere with this system. It feeds into the argument that needs to be made regarding the bill before us today.
We have to look at ways to get more effective representation in this place so that jurisdictions like northern Ontario feel confident that they have a voice, that they are being heard, that their issues will be addressed. When we do not address the issues of jurisdictions like northern Ontario, with its very exciting resource based economic sector, then the whole country suffers.
Over the last 10 or 15 years many things have had an impact on the economy of northern Ontario. The free trade agreements have had an impact, as has the refocusing of the economy and capital on the new economy. Some of the telecommunication centred companies began to be established around Ottawa, Oshawa and other places in Ontario and across the country. It affected very dramatically and radically the ability of northern Ontario to get the capital it needed to stay current in the global economy we have now entered into and the free trade agreements that we are now part of.
We have been hammered seriously by all of those economic forces. Because of that, we lost population. Because we lost population, we lost representation. It has a domino effect. If we lose the representation, we lose our ability to get in there and talk to government about the kinds of things that are needed. The economy does not return when good times are to be had; it is in a state of constant decline.
In governments in the past, such as in Ontario, there were five more seats than there are now. Ontario has had governments that understood the cyclical nature of the northern economy and the impact it had on the stability of communities in that part of the country. These governments put in place vehicles that we all use. Provincially there was the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, the Northern Ontario Development Corporation, the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission and ultimately, the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. These were all vehicles put in place by government in response to the strong voices in Parliament at that time.
There were people like Elie Martel, Bud Wildman, Bud Germa and Jack Stokes, all good, strong New Democrat members of provincial parliament. They asked the Conservative government of the day to work with them to make sure that we not only stabilized the northern economy, but that we gave it the potential to grow and survive and to actually thrive.
I believe the member for Sudbury is asking that we take into account the very fragile nature of the northern economy when we make decisions about how many members represent us in Parliament, both in the Ontario legislature, and particularly because we are here in Ottawa speaking to this, in the Parliament of Canada, in the federal government.
Northern Ontario still represents one of the most exciting and unique opportunities for this country to take advantage of a resource based economy to drive all the other sectors that that economy drives. We really need to give it special consideration. We need to look at it in the same way as we look at, say, P.E.I. with its population and the number of seats that it has, and New Brunswick.
Northern Ontario does not fit logically, economically and in other significant ways with southern Ontario because of the nature of that economy and the growing population in that area. Actually, if we look at common interests, northern Ontario would fit better with Manitoba, but that is not going to happen, although there is a move afoot by some folks in northern Ontario to separate and form our own province, but we do not want to go there.
In this place we have dealt with some of the alienation we have seen in Quebec by giving special consideration and looking at things we might do to make sure that people get what they need to live up to their potential. When we looked at Alberta and some of the western alienation that exists, we sat down and tried to find ways to work within the structure of the system. We made sure that they had enough voice in Ottawa. Even when representation by population did not quite work, we made special provisions to make sure that that voice was heard.
I am saying that this House must get serious about the challenges faced by our resource based economy and the wonderful communities that exist in northern Ontario. We must be willing to roll up our sleeves and do the work, as did members of Parliament from northern Ontario over the years, such as, John Rodriguez, Cyril Symes, Steve Butland, Ernie Epp and Iain Angus, and I have missed a few, but all of those people. Unless we get that kind of voice back here in larger numbers or protect the numbers that we have and all of us together fight for the interests of northern Ontario, northern Ontario will continue to struggle and diminish. As our population declines, northern Ontario will lose more seats and pretty soon there will be no voice at all.