Environment committee  Everybody is running around trying to do a lot of things. Wayne Stetski is standing in for Linda Duncan on this particular study. You've been with us the whole way through, so you are not really a stand-in, but we want to recognize that. Welcome to all. We have three witnesses with us today.

Electoral Reform committee  However, when so many thousands of Canadians lost their lives and we sent them off without a referendum, I think we have to think about that. The second thing I'd like to do is to comment on the Honourable John Duncan's point of view that we should have—I'm searching here for words. I'm sorry. We really need to have a situation where the member of Parliament is the one who is doing all of that work to represent their constituents.

Electoral Reform committee  You can't do proportionality without making rural ridings bigger.

Electoral Reform committee  You can't do two member ridings without making rural ridings bigger.

Electoral Reform committee  I'd like to talk about urbanization, and what that means to riding size in rural locations. We heard a little bit about this, and I'd like the Honourable John Duncan to tell us about this as a person who represented a large riding for so many years. The way the redistribution of seats typically works is that the relative size of a riding by population doesn't change over time.

Electoral Reform committee  I can talk about the example of the north island. The southern part of the north island riding is growing very quickly, and the rest is not. What was 90:10 will soon be 92:8 and 94:6 probably. We had an opportunity in this last redistribution in which British Columbia got six new ridings.

Electoral Reform committee  To me that seems that 15% is the only solution. Mr. Duncan, you talked about the challenges of large ridings. Do you think adding 15% to the area that you represented would be an unreasonable additional burden? Where is that line between what's workable and what's not?

Electoral Reform committee  It's not workable. There have been statements here today about how all of this can be handled because we have these electoral boundaries commissions that do such a great job. Well, we went from six ridings to seven on Vancouver Island. We have the population for seven. They made the northern riding more challenging in that redistribution than what it was before.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes and you have to imbue your staff with the same philosophy.

Electoral Reform committee  I do share that and to insist that there's no constitutional ramifications to doing this without the approval of the people is not correct. There would be ramifications from the provinces, from citizens groups, or from somewhere. I have no doubt this would be challenged.

Electoral Reform committee  There were some statements at the all-candidates meetings. It generated some interest, but I can tell you that in 19 years I never had somebody come to me and say, “I want a dual member district.” This is not in the conversation. In my opinion with the two referendums we had in British Columbia the people were so fed up with all of the wrangling and all of the discussion about changing the voting system that in the second referendum, they voted actually more strongly than in the first one not to proceed with it.

Electoral Reform committee  Well there are other options available to a government if they don't have representation in a region. They can put people in cabinet that are not members of Parliament but are acceptable within that region. There are mechanisms. I'm not arguing for the status quo, however. My point concerns the communities, not making proportional representation discriminatory to rural communities.

Electoral Reform committee  No, you're not going to get me to say that.

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you. I actually did a little research, I'm the second-longest serving member of Parliament from Vancouver Island in the history of Canada, and the first is from the same area. His name was Alan Webster Neill. He was a Progressive and an Independent, and the Liberals never ran anybody against him because he was so liberal.

Electoral Reform committee  It happened very rarely. I actually had people tell me they did vote for me more often than they said they didn't. Maybe I'm different from other people, but I enjoyed working on behalf of people who did not support me, just to prove to them how wrong they were. That, over time, actually paid significant dividends.