Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand and answer the question posed by my hon. colleague.
The first thing I should point out is that in contrast to what the hon. member said, the Liberals clearly do not believe in representation by population. If they truly did, I am sure that sometime in the 13 years they were in government they would have attempted to bring in some form of legislation to address that growing issue, yet, of course, we saw nothing. As we see in most cases when the Liberals complain about something in opposition today, we point out that they did nothing to address those concerns while they were actually in government.
I would also point out that true representation by population is clearly something that the member opposite does not believe in, because if there were true representation by population, some of the smaller growing provinces would actually be adversely affected. In other words, our Constitution preserves an intractable right from some of our smaller provinces that they cannot have less members than they have now. Under a true representation by population formula, in fact they would lose seats. We do not believe in that. We believe that the fairness aspect must be addressed to all provinces in Confederation.
The member spoke of the premier of Ontario thinking that the bill we are bringing forward, Bill C-22, is somehow inherently unfair. I argue just the opposite. Under the current formula, if we did nothing, as the Liberals did for 13 years, to change the existing formula, the next time there would be an increase of seats for the province of Ontario, it would only increase by four seats. We are increasing it by ten seats, yet we hear nothing but complaints from the premier of Ontario suggesting that somehow this is unfair. I cannot for the life of me understand why, if Ontario is getting ten more seats as opposed to four more seats, the premier thinks that is unfair.
I would point out that the premier of Ontario himself has addressed the issue of representation by population, but has done so in such a way he gerrymandered certain seats in Ontario that actually disenfranchised certain voters. Bill 214 introduced last year by the premier, whom the member says is so hard done by, actually caused 13 MPPs to end up representing constituents ranging in population from 130,000 per riding to 170,000 per riding, yet in northern British Columbia the MPPs in that region only represent 76,000 constituents. This was a clear attempt to gerrymander and it is not even close to representation by population. That is the track record of the premier of Ontario.
I would suggest that the member opposite should not use him as a shining example of a determinant of what is right and what is wrong. Clearly what the premier of Ontario has done in his own province is gerrymandered to his own political purposes and he has absolutely no intention of enacting something that is fair in principle. That is something we believe in, something clearly the Liberals opposite do not.