Mr. Speaker, I am always amazed when members stand up in the House of Commons and think they truly believe what they are saying but they need to read the entire speech.
I want to offer a couple of analogies for the member. He talks about representation by population. The United States has over 300 million people and I think it is represented by about 660 representatives in the Senate, the House of Representatives and their executive. If we go by its r theory, if we have 300 million people in Canada, is the member saying that we should have over 3,000 members of Parliament?
I would remind the hon. member, for whom I have great respect, that ever since the debate started I have not received one email, phone call, letter or fax, and have not been stopped once in the mall or at a store where people were saying “Please, Peter, please give us more members of Parliament. This is really what we want.”
However, I will not argue the point. The member says that some ridings are disjointed. There is no question about that. When a riding in Prince Edward Island has 39,000 people and another one has 170,000 people, that is incorrect and it needs to be fixed. The member is absolutely correct.
However, to really fix this problem there are two flies in your ointment of the argument that you are presenting. One, historically, when Canada came together, Quebec was assured a certain percentage of the seats in Canada. This bill would diminish Quebec's standing in Canada, as well as Atlantic Canada's standing. When we look at the percentages—