Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to receive that question as I lived through the last seat redistribution in 2004.
My hon. Liberal colleague talked about people being angry about what happened to their seats. He should come up to northern Ontario. The riding of Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing was written by people who, obviously, had never been to northern Ontario. They did not understand the region. That riding is simply impossible to service.
I challenge any suburban member to go to the riding of Algoma--Manitoulin--Kapuskasing and try to cover it off. It is immense and spread out with no commonalities. The top part of her riding is 90% francophone and yet it is not connected in any way to the southern part of her riding, which is almost entirely anglophone. She must travel through two or three different ridings to get to the other part of her riding.
In my riding of Timmins--James Bay, Timiskaming was cut in half. Timiskaming was one region for over 100 years but someone decided that part of Timiskaming would go to North Bay and another part would go to Timmins. That line divided our francophone community and our agricultural community. It was done in a ham-fisted way. I heard this had to do with representation by population because some people down in Vaughan perhaps felt that they did not have enough seats.
What we are saying about balance is that we need to recognize the continuity of cultural and rural realities if seats are going to be redistributed so it is fair and so people have adequate representation. That did not happen in the last round and I would be surprised, given the government's attitude, that it would happen in this round.