Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Papineau, with his magical solution that the Liberals have come up with of a smaller House that has no impact on representation.
I am a member who represents a riding that stretches from urban into rural areas. The obvious impact of keeping the House at 308 would be to not really recognize the geographic fact of this country, that we have some very large geography to cover, and it is not just cultural representation. Therefore, when the number of seats are reduced in provinces, like Manitoba or Saskatchewan, we will come up against some very large and difficult to represent rural ridings.
If the seats are redistributed in British Columbia without increasing the number, then we would also come up with the same kind of unrepresentable ridings in northern and interior British Columbia.
Has the member really considered the impact of keeping the numbers the same in the rural parts of the provinces?