Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the National Assembly of Quebec passed a law to protect certain ridings in my region, the Gaspé Peninsula, as well as one in Montreal.
With every electoral redistribution exercise comes tension between, on the one hand, population growth and the need to ensure that each vote carries similar relative weight, and, on the other hand, the importance of ensuring that ridings do not become too large. The Quebec National Assembly chose to protect certain ridings.
Similar situations exist at the federal level. My riding, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, now covers 23,000 square kilometres. That is larger than the area of Djibouti. Several of my colleagues have even larger ridings.
What does my colleague think we can do to better balance these two requirements?