SELE Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Subcommittee on Electoral Boundaries Readjustment of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Monday, October 6, 2003

¼

1805

The Chair (Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.))

Mr. Ted White (North Vancouver, Canadian Alliance)

¼

1810

The Chair

Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance)

¼

1815

The Chair

Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP)

¼

1820

The Chair

Mr. Dick Proctor

The Chair

Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Claude Duplain

The Chair

Mr. Claude Duplain

¼

1825

The Chair

Mr. Gilbert Barrette (Témiscamingue, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.)

¼

1830

The Chair

Mr. Peter Adams

¼

1835

The Chair

Hon. Maria Minna (Beaches—East York, Lib.)

¼

1840

The Chair

Hon. Maria Minna

The Chair

Hon. Maria Minna

The Chair

Mr. Andrew Sancton (former member of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for Ontario, As Individual)

The Chair

Mr. Andrew Sancton

¼

1845

The Chair

Mr. Andrew Sancton

The Chair

Mr. James Bickerton (former member of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for Nova Scotia, As Individual)

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond (Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île-d'Orléans, BQ)

¼

1850

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond

¼

1855

½

1900

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP)

½

1905

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Godin

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Godin

The Chair

Mr. Marcel Proulx (Hull—Aylmer, Lib.)

½

1910

The Chair

Mr. John Williams

The Chair

Mr. John Williams

½

1915

The Chair

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, Lib.)

The Chair

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

½

1920

The Chair

Mr. Andrew Sancton

The Chair

Hon. Maria Minna

½

1925

Hon. Maria Minna

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

½

1930

½

1935

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond

½

1940

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

½

1945

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond

The Chair

Mr. Michel Guimond

The Chair

Mr. Claude Duplain

½

1950

M. Claude Duplain

The Chair

Mr. Dick Proctor

The Chair

Mr. Dick Proctor

The Chair

Hon. Maria Minna

½

1955

The Chair

Hon. Maria Minna

The Chair

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

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CANADA

Subcommittee on Electoral Boundaries Readjustment of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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NUMBER 026

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Monday, October 6, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¼  (1805)  

[English]

    The Chair (Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.)): We're the subcommittee on electoral readjustment, as the Chief Electoral Officer reminded me. It's not called the redistribution act, it's the readjustment act.

    Having gone through the process of listening to various colleagues who liked or, more to the point, didn't like the redistribution process, the committee members felt it was important to make recommendations for changes to the legislation. In order to develop that report, whether on legislation or procedures, we heard from Jean-Pierre Kingsley and three of the commissioners this afternoon, one each from Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario. The purpose of this evening's meeting is to give members of Parliament the opportunity to speak about how they would like the process changed, and we have about an hour and three-quarters to discuss that, maximum.

    The people with the plastic cards are your colleagues who are on the subcommittee. My goal is to have a bit of a discussion, but to lead off we have some people who are visiting here specifically to tell us their ideas. I have Ted White, John Williams, Dick Proctor, Claude Duplain, Gilbert Barrette, and Réal Ménard,

[Translation]

who might want to make a speech. No? All right.

[English]

    Can we start with a goal of five minutes chacun?

    I'll start with you, Mr. White.

    Mr. Ted White (North Vancouver, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Paddy.

    Actually, I scribbled down some notes on the flight over here under the assumption that the whole basis for carrying out this readjustment is to ensure there's fair representation across the country and that it's as close as possible to rep by pop.

    The one piece of input I'd like to give is about not so much the actual process but the starting point. It seems to me that with the way we use the census right now, it's already well out of date before we eventually get around to the readjustment process. The result is that based on its population right now, for example, B.C. probably deserves an additional two seats right away, but we won't even know that or be able to do that for another five or six years or maybe a decade. I'm sure Ontario is much in the same position. The whole system is running so far behind that it truly isn't achieving what it's supposed to achieve.

    Part of the reason for that, I'm sure, goes back to the days when this readjustment act was established and we didn't have any idea of the exact number of voters in a riding until we did the enumeration just before an election. It strikes me that today, in these days of databases and much easier tracking of the population, maybe we should have a different starting point, and then we could do the distribution or readjustment more frequently or at least with data that is more up to date.

    For example, just for fun, let's say we took the electronic voters list. I don't know whether that would be suitable or not, but why do we have to use the entire population as the basis? Why not just use the voters list as the basis for the starting point? After all, the whole process is fairly arbitrary anyway, because the redistribution commissions have great latitude in the way they approach things and the way they move borders around, and there's a fair amount of latitude in terms of population up or down from the ideal point. It seems to me that maybe if we were to use something like the electronic voters list and do it more often, we would have a more accurate representation across the country than we do now. It would be an advantage in terms of ensuring fairness in regions where there's increasing population, such as the west and the Toronto region, where we know right now we're under-represented.

    So that's it. That's my single suggestion. It took less than five minutes, and I think if somebody will consider some other starting point for this whole exercise, perhaps it will be a more satisfactory result for everyone.

¼  (1810)  

    The Chair: Excellent. Thank you very much, Mr. White; extra points for being brief.

    Perhaps, depending on how this goes in terms of how long members of Parliament take, we may actually ask our professors to comment on the ideas as well and get a really stimulating discussion.

    Mr. Williams.

    Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I might need all my five minutes.

    Basically, I'm coming at the process from the perspective that I didn't like it because it didn't work well. The process in natural justice and in a democracy is that every decision by a tribunal, commission, or board should be appealable to someone else. That does not exist in this case; you can only appeal back to the commission itself. If they decide to ignore you, then you have no recourse, and that is what I found quite objectionable in this particular case.

    Let me first of all read some things out of their report. I'm reading from the report of January 15:

The Commission recognizes the expertise that elected representatives bring to this process and appreciates the effort taken in this regard. However, we are an independent Commission and are not bound by the views of elected representatives.

This basically means, go away and jump in the lake because we don't care. I took great exception to that.

    As they currently stand, the criteria for the commission to take into consideration are basically three things: the community of interest, the community of identity, and the historical pattern of an electoral district in the province. These are the three criteria by which they make their determinations.

    Let me give you my example. In my case I have a community of interest, which is the francophone community that's represented in the city of St. Albert, the town of Morinville, and the town of Legal. I have a community of identity, being the city of St. Albert and a number of smaller communities in my constituency, including two counties. Basically there are about five: the city of St. Albert, the town of Morinville, the town of Legal, the town of Spruce Grove, the town of Stony Plain, and two counties, Parkland and Sturgeon. That is my constituency. Those are the historical boundaries; that has been the boundary for 10 years.

    The commission decided in their own wisdom that they would create eight ridings in Edmonton because Calgary has eight. Let me quote from the first report they produced:

The City of Calgary has grown rapidly within its municipal boundaries and the Commission recommended that one of the new seats in Alberta will go to Calgary, which will bring its total to eight. The City of Edmonton’s population has also grown, but the surrounding urban population has increased more rapidly. The Commission proposes that this region be reconfigured to accommodate the other new Alberta seat, with a total, also, of eight electoral districts.

    This meant, scrap this notion that they have to take historical boundaries into consideration. That is irrelevant. In our case they've decided they're going to start again. I don't actually have the quote from the final report, where they do actually say that as far as Edmonton is concerned, they are prepared to start again. They're not allowed to do that, Madam Chair, because the act does not give them that latitude. It says historical boundaries must be taken into consideration.

    Now, the City of Edmonton objected to what I call the hub and spoke concept. Right now we have in Edmonton six members of Parliament representing the city of Edmonton. The population in the census was 665,000, and there was an average of 110,000 for exactly six members of Parliament. Right now there's me on the west side representing St. Albert and there's Ken Epp in Elk Island representing the east side. So currently we have what I call the doughnut: six for Edmonton and two surrounding the city.

    We're now going to go to the hub and spoke, where we now have a pizza kind of division, where it's Edmonton--St. Albert, Edmonton--Spruce Grove, and Edmonton--Beaumont, so all but two in the city of Edmonton are going to get a slice of the suburbs as well.

    That makes all kinds of problems for the members of Parliament. The City of Edmonton said, we do not like this. The City of St. Albert said, we don't like this. The Town of Stony Plain said, we don't like this. Parkland said no, Sturgeon said no, Morinville said no, and Legal said no. On top of that, the official languages committee of the House of Commons said, we don't like this because it breaks up the community of interest. You yourselves, the subcommittee of the procedure and House affairs committee, said you didn't like this. The official languages commissioner said, I don't like this. And the commission said they don't care.

¼  (1815)  

    Somebody has to care, Madam Chair, and I think it's time we send a clear signal to these commissions.

    I therefore propose there be an appeal commission set up, with one representative nominated by each political party for the whole country. If a member of Parliament, or anybody else, for that matter, believes the commission is not listening to their concerns, they have a right of appeal to a higher level, and that, I think, is absolutely necessary to send a clear signal to the commission that they are not the only word and last word. It meets the natural justice that every decision by a board and tribunal is appealable to a higher level.

    In my case, Madam Chair, because only the City of Spruce Grove suggested that they could live with the proposal.... Every other municipality affected said, no way. The commission absolutely and completely not only ignored that, but said “We will not listen to you,” and that cannot be allowed.

    So my proposal is for one member put forward by each political party to hear all appeals across the country--because there shouldn't be that many, hopefully--to give some due process.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Williams.

    Mr. Proctor.

    Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    I just have one issue I want to bring before this group this evening, and that is in regard to the people who are selected to serve on the boundaries commission.

    As you know, one person is selected by the chief justice in a province, and the other two people are selected by the Speaker of the House of Commons--all well and good. I have no problem with that. But I think what has happened--or what certainly happened in this last redistribution, and I think it has probably happened for a good number of years but didn't come to light heretofore--is that in effect, the Speaker goes to the political minister in each province and says, “I need two names to serve on the boundaries commission. Please provide them.” This is wrong. It can't be the prerogative of a political minister to say I'm appointing these two people to the boundaries commission. It flies in the face.

    I think parliamentarians have a lot of trust in the Speaker, and I have no quarrel with the Speaker's having the ability to appoint two people. But for the office of the Speaker to in turn...and I don't know how it happens, but for the Speaker to then say to Ralph Goodale in Saskatchewan, Ann McLellan in Alberta, or Claudette Bradshaw in New Brunswick, “Would you give us the names of two eminent political scientists in your province who would serve on this commission”.... That can't fly. That can't work. And when it does, people like me and others are going to say, whether it was politically tainted or not, that it was politically tainted.

¼  (1820)  

    The Chair: What's the solution to the problem?

    Mr. Dick Proctor: The solution would be along the lines perhaps that John Williams is suggesting for the other problem. There should be an agreement amongst the political parties or amongst the parties in the province that are represented in order to come up with two names.

    I didn't particularly have a problem with the two political scientists who were appointed or the two other people who were “appointed by the Speaker” but were really appointed by Mr. Goodale in Saskatchewan, but I certainly have a problem with the way it was done. I think it can't just be up to the governing party to say these two people are on an “independent” boundaries commission. There has to be a better way to do it.

[Translation]

    The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr. Duplain.

    Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.): Is it already my turn?

    The Chair: Yes, already. You have to wake up.

    Mr. Claude Duplain: I do not wish to make any suggestions about what the commission should do or about the way its members should be appointed. On the other hand, I would like to speak about the main features of the process. In my opinion, this is what the people around this table, as well as those who receive the suggestions that will be made, will be able to do. First of all, there is the issue of the commission's independence and all of that.

    Then, it must be said—and this is an opinion held by many members—that the first electoral map had not been adequately thought out. There was such an obvious need for changes that the map was entirely redrawn. Now I am talking about Quebec, because this is the area that I know best. Once again, work was done based on hypotheses, without any recourse to the suggestions, knowledge or thoughts of people who have been working in the field for many years.

    In my opinion, these people could be asked to make suggestions. Some have said that the commission should remain independent so that the members do not do whatever they want with their ridings, which, in fact, do not belong to them but rather to the population. Besides, many members might not want to start this work over again.

    I agree with that, but the fact remains that the aberrations we experienced were as serious as the ones we would have witnessed if the members had set their riding boundaries themselves. The proof is that most members now accept what has been done. However, people in the field are protesting the illogical nature of some decisions. If you ask them, you can see right away that they are not happy at all with what is going on.

    With regard to the Quebec region, a brief was submitted according to which, in the northern region of Quebec between Manicouagan and Champlain, many people had been shunted around and many more would be shunted around for no reason at all. For instance, in my own riding, there was a population of 91,000, and I was told that there were not enough people. Now, I have ended up with a riding with a current population of 87,000 people, which is obviously worse than before. I do not know if this will be a frequent occurrence, but in my opinion, I might be one of the only members in this country who has to travel by road through three ridings to get around my own riding. Of course, this is a personal thing; this is my riding. But where is the logic in all this? Today, I accept this situation and I will adapt to it. Of course, the situation is better than it was with the first map.

    In my opinion, the worst part of this is the fact that we came here, to this committee, and that you spent hours and entire evenings listening to our second brief, and then, afterwards, such a very small number of recommendations were heeded. In my opinion, Madam Chair, the people sitting on this committee were responsible and competent. But how many of the changes you recommended were really taken into consideration?

    You were receptive to plain common sense and, consequently, you changed a few things. Could you tell me, Madam Chair, what percentage of your suggestions were taken into consideration? Five per cent, ten per cent?

    The Chair: That depends on what province we are talking about. In Alberta, none of our recommendations were accepted.

    Mr. Claude Duplain: I am talking about Quebec.

    In my opinion, this process may have been meant to protect the population from some decisions that the MPs might make; it is not up to the MPs to make these decisions. On the other hand, I think that the House of Commons as a whole has highly competent resources which would allow us to make valid recommendations that should be heeded. In my opinion, the recommendations that you made were not sufficiently taken into account. We must ask whether we should begin the process earlier. Do we have to wait for 10 years before making any changes? Perhaps not. I do not know, but I believe that the House should really take a look at all these issues.

¼  (1825)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Welcome, Mr. Barrette.

    Mr. Gilbert Barrette (Témiscamingue, Lib.): Good evening.

    As you know, I am relatively new to politics; I may have a lot of experience in other fields, but not in politics. This is one of the first gifts I received upon my arrival. The world is full of all kinds of gifts, isn't it? I am talking about a gift because 25,000 people were added to my riding, and 8,000 km² were added to the 40,000 that I already had in my riding.

    If you say that I am talking about my area, you are right. This area now includes the territory of four RCMs. For once, the entire population of the region unanimously accepted the process. If you know Abitibi and Témiscamingue, you know that they have specific features, like every other part of the country has. On this rare occasion, there was unanimous agreement with regard to maintaining the status quo of the electoral boundaries.

    The parliamentary committee had, as a matter of fact, recommended a name, but the commission preferred not to listen. It did not listen to any committee recommendations, nor to any resolutions adopted in the region. I say on behalf of the region that the process did not respect our suggestions. Now that the report has been tabled, we can no longer discuss it; we must implement it. For us, this is a strange way of doing things.

    This was the message that I wanted to convey to you this evening. I suppose that we are here to discuss the future and not to change what already exists. As I understand it, we must apply it without discussing it. As Mr. Duplain mentioned earlier, with all the intelligent staff and intelligent MPs in this House, we could certainly find a more respectful way of doing things, one which would be more attentive to comments and concerns in the field. Some people feel that these are like newcomers who have no knowledge of the territory and of the specific environment.

    Decisions were made and they will not be changed next year, or even in four years. We may suppose—and this is just a hypothesis—that it might take about 10 years. This is frustrating, but we have to implement this. Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Barrette.

[English]

    Mr. Adams.

    Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    First of all, as chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I want to thank you and the subcommittee. This is very difficult, very frustrating work, and the main committee really appreciates what you've done.

    Like Claude Duplain, I'd like to talk about two things. One of them is the general process.

    From sitting in on the subcommittee meetings and from what members have said to me as chair of the main committee, I have a great concern about the second iteration of the process. What happened--and I assume it happened in each jurisdiction in Ontario--was that the commission was established, and it published preliminary maps of the way it saw things changing. Not only were those maps widely distributed to members of Parliament, but representatives of the local political associations, mayors, and councils of municipalities got to see those maps, and they were able to go to regional meetings and dispute them publicly. I went to a very effective regional meeting where I thought the commission listened very well to people.

    When the commission had finished its tour of Ontario, it went back and published the second set of maps. That was the set of maps that your committee was faced with, because at that point there was no public appeal. The only appeal that existed--and it a very minor one--was the appeal to our subcommittee so that members of Parliament, on behalf of others, could make representations. So, in fact, there was no real appeal following the development of the second set of maps.

    I understand that in the process there has to be a cut-off at some point. You can't just keep appealing it. But as I said, there were changes to my riding proposed in the first set of maps, so I went to the regional meeting. But many members told me that because there were no changes in their ridings the first time, they did not go to those meetings. They were then faced with an unappealable situation that was a dramatically changed riding, and there was nothing they could do about it.

    I've tried to think what to do about that--courts of higher appeal, and I'm sure God is very interested if we go up high enough to appeal these things. I'm not sure if that's the way to go.

    But my suggestion would be, to whoever thinks about these things, that in doing this the next time, when the first set of maps is produced and the first set of public meetings announced, it is made very clear then and there, not just to members of Parliament but to the entire public, that there will be changes the next time, not only to ridings that have been changed but there may well be to ridings that have not been changed. The first announcement should somehow explain that and say, look, even if your riding has not been changed, you might be very interested in this, because it could be changed the next time, and that might be too late, so you might want to come or send in a letter saying that you want your riding changed or you want it to stay the way it is.

    I don't know if your subcommittee thought about this, whether there is any way of doing it other than that, really warning the political parties, the members of Parliament, and the public that the next time is the last time and that changes may occur to areas that have not been changed.

    I hope that's sort of intelligible, because I can't think of any other way of warning people.

¼  (1830)  

    The Chair: Would it be like one of those cigarette advisories, that this could be dangerous to your political health?

    Mr. Peter Adams: That's right. This process is harmful to your health.

    My other is an equally vague and general point--and by the way, I do believe my last point is a very important one. There's a flaw in the process there for people whose ridings are not changed the first time.

    The other one has to do with the way I imagine the commissions work and its impact on rural areas. This is only the way I imagine they work, but I think there's a lot of truth to it.

    I think the drive is increase in population; it's not decrease in population. So what happens is that in certain parts of the country--for example, in the case of Ontario, in Toronto or the Ottawa area--the population increases substantially between censuses. The commissions look at that and say, how are we going to cope within the act with this increase in population, because there has to be representation by population? So they put their minds to the Greater Toronto Area and to the Ottawa area, and they start adjusting the ridings. Then, when they've made those adjustments, the effects of it ripple out into the rural area. In some of those rural areas, population has actually been lost; in others, it has not changed. But of course, even if it's not changed, it's still less relative to the urban area.

    I can give you an example. My riding is between Toronto and Ottawa, and literally those effects rippled out, and the township on one end of my riding and the township on the other end were taken out and tacked onto adjacent ridings.

    In northern Ontario, a riding disappeared. The population decreased, and they lost a whole riding. When the boundaries were being sorted out, this ripple effect was coming up into northern Ontario, and they chopped up northern Ontario like that just to fit in with the numbers.

    My suggestion is this. The attention of the commission has been drawn to the fact that we realize that increase in population is a very important drive, but I think they should also realize that as the population of the rural areas gets smaller, it is more and more important that their political representation, reduced though it may be in terms of members of Parliament, be more effective, and that their ridings not be artificial extras left over in the process that I've just described, but, as far as humanly possible, be viable districts to which people can relate--not half of this district and then half of that district, as has happened in two or three cases in northern Ontario this time, where you have people who don't normally associate with each other being forced into an artificial riding.

    I think one way to do that would be for the commission to be directed to look at the rural areas very early in its process and determine where there are already existing, viable political ridings, and have them as kinds of cornerstones in the same way as, in Ontario, the GTA and Ottawa, because of their increasing populations, are cornerstones in this process. So instead of just starting in the urban area and moving out, they start with the urban areas--yes, I understand that they have to do that--but they take what are viewed as viable, useful rural ridings and use those as well, and then do their sorting out of boundaries in between.

    The general point I'm making is that, because we do recognize that rural ridings are often smaller in terms of numbers than the urban ridings, where there is community of interest, historical association, or these other things that are mentioned in a secondary fashion in the legislation, they be given more account in the rural area than is the case in the urban area.

    So those are the two things I would mention.

¼  (1835)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    In terms of my list, I now have Maria Minna.

    John, you're more than welcome to have any input.

    I know Ken Epp is coming back, and Michel has already indicated that he wants to pose some questions. I would propose that after Maria, and if Ken is or isn't here, if two representative commissioners--who have no authority to speak on behalf of all the commissioners across the country--wish to comment, they're more than welcome to do so.

    For my colleagues, while these commissioners may not be the commissioners for your province, they can certainly help identify some of the thinking that commissioners used, and hopefully the comments will be specific to the process.

    It's up to you guys whether you want to participate. It wasn't planned, but you may have things you want to unload.

    I should introduce our two commissioners, since they did willingly sit at the table. James Bickerton is from Nova Scotia and is a professor at St. Francis Xavier University; and Andrew Sancton is from Ontario and is a professor at the University of Western Ontario.

    Maria.

    Hon. Maria Minna (Beaches—East York, Lib.): All right.

    From my perspective, what I wanted to say was that I understand it's not an easy job and it's complex because.... There is population, which is the drive, as I understand it, but then there are communities and other things that have to be taken into account. In our situation, I didn't feel that it warranted to switch, and I won't go into all the details.

    I was one of the ones who didn't appear, for two reasons. Initially I sent in a letter to say I was going to, but then there was a vote in the House on Kyoto that day, so I couldn't go. I had to call, because the vote was changed from the day before to the next day and I wasn't able to appear. But Dennis hadn't even sent in a letter. I don't think he meant to appear. Neither had the two provincial counterparts bothered either, not because they didn't care and thought it was not an important issue--as it became afterward, of course--but because the assumption was that since the riding boundaries were really not being changed substantively and that the original proposal was following a fairly sensible route,and the major parameters weren't being changed, there wasn't any need. The population shift wasn't big, and since we concurred with the commission's proposal, as Peter was saying earlier, many people didn't appear. I think there were a lot of other MPs around the province, certainly in the city, who did the same thing.

    The lesson is that you appear, but sometimes you can't always do that, especially in our case. I suppose sending a letter would have helped. It seems to me, though, that if during the process there are major changes from the original proposal....

    There are two types of proposals. There's the proposal that gets people's hackles up, and they want to appear because they're not happy with it and they're going to be there. Then there's the proposal that people are happy with, and they say it's not a big deal and they don't get excited. But I think if the second phase that comes out is drastically different from the original proposal and there's been very little representation in the interim, there ought to be, within the rules or within the process, a mechanism by which the commission can have an additional round of hearings to be able to actually consult the people who were never consulted on the changes that had come before them, because it's somewhat unfair.

    Since I had been out of the country and I hadn't seen the tabling--I wasn't here--when I hit my riding my mailbox was full of messages from angry residents who were demanding to know why they are losing the riding. The Beachers don't want to lose Beaches and the East Yorkers are angry at me about something else. So the whole process became very heated and very unpleasant.

    To prevent that, I think if there's over a certain percentage by which the riding is being changed from the original proposal, there ought to be a second round of hearings so the residents and the people who didn't have a chance to input have a chance to comment on the new suggestion. Otherwise, the original proposal we had...it was like a pair of glasses, but then you ended up with a pair of goggles and you were not too sure how you got there. The average citizen is trying to say, “Well, I didn't know that. I didn't complain because I thought it was okay.”

    I guess what I'm saying is that we need to somehow recommend that the system change to allow for more input from the public when there are major changes.

¼  (1840)  

    The Chair: To clarify, your percentage change, the suggested number, is it percentage of population or geography?

    Hon. Maria Minna: I think geography.

    The Chair: All right. And do you have an idea of what that percentage should be?

    Hon. Maria Minna: I was thinking if it was more than 10% to 15% from the preliminary proposals that are on the table. If you're shifting away from those and you haven't had much in the way of input other than from one or two people, the chances are that the bulk of the population.... In our case, it was two ridings that hadn't been consulted.

    The Chair: Or they were and they didn't take up the offer, whichever.

    I have Mr. McKay.

    Mr. Guimond, do you want to go before?

    Do you guys want to comment or...? It's your call.

    Mr. Andrew Sancton (former member of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for Ontario, As Individual): I'm quite happy to comment. I don't want to take much of your time.

    The Chair: I'll time you as well.

    You have five minutes.

    Mr. Andrew Sancton: I don't think I'll take five minutes.

    Both of the last two speakers--they both come from Ontario--addressed issues dealt with in the Ontario commission, but I think they are of general concern. I'll deal with Ms. Minna's first. She and I are very much on the same page on this. You'll see that my comments earlier this afternoon were very much in accord with hers.

    My only comment is that you people all go out on public hearings, and I consider that the public hearings are very important. If people make a serious proposal, it shouldn't be rejected simply on the grounds that a whole lot of people haven't made that proposal, especially when there is another chance for it to be changed back again, which, of course, is exactly what happened in Ms. Minna's case.

    There should be at least two chances on this. I think there is a better way of having two chances. That would be with two public hearings, and getting rid of the MPs objection stage.

    I'll leave it at that. That's basically what I said this afternoon.

    In the case of where a commission starts, everybody has to start somewhere. It's pretty much a matter of public record, from our report, that we started in northern Ontario--we made the big decisions in northern Ontario and then worked from there.

¼  (1845)  

    The Chair: I thought you started at Niagara Falls.

    Mr. Andrew Sancton: No, we started in northern Ontario. After we dealt with northern Ontario, we effectively started at Niagara Falls and Windsor and worked in.

    I would say for anybody dealing with Ontario, the first decision you have to make is what to do about northern Ontario, and that is the most difficult decision of all. Then there are issues about Toronto and Ottawa, which Mr. Adams referred to.

    In the case of Ottawa, it wasn't so much that it was an urban area, it was the fact that--as everybody here knows--there is an amalgamated city of Ottawa; there are no more townships and other cities within it. So we did take the boundaries of the new city of Ottawa seriously and worked out from there. In the end, we changed that as well.

    But we did not assign a particular number of electoral districts to the Greater Toronto Area. It was a question of working from the corners into the middle.

    I understand Mr. Adams' case about the existing ridings, and I think there's a lot to be said for that, starting with those ridings that appear to be natural ridings. That is basically what we did in western Ontario, where there was not a large number of changes. The problem with declaring a riding to be a natural riding is that it's very difficult to go back to that afterward if you feel you have to make changes in order to accommodate some other problem.

    Mr. Adams' point is probably that you should never change a riding that appears to be natural. The only problem is that one's view of how natural it is depends on the overall context in which you're operating. I think it could look natural at the beginning, but when you listen to what other people say about their ridings, their riding might turn out to look more natural than the one you first declared to be natural.

    I understand what he's saying, but I'm not sure it could be implemented in its entirety through the whole process.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Sancton.

    Mr. Bickerton.

    Mr. James Bickerton (former member of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for Nova Scotia, As Individual): I think in the Nova Scotia case we had it much easier than in Ontario. We had only 11 ridings, and the population is much more stable than that in Ontario, which has a lot of population change. But there is one major growth area in the province, and that is metro Halifax. The rest of the province can't go unaffected by that growth. Most of the ridings outside Halifax are big rural ridings. The MPs would prefer they not get any bigger and they argue they should be left alone.

    But you can't square that circle. If all of your growth is occurring in the urban centre, your redistricting, your boundary redrawing, has to take cognizance of that. The rest of the province can't go unaffected by it. You can't say, yes, if more and more people are living in the big urban centre, it has to get more representation to reflect that, and then say, but don't touch other ridings, don't make rural ridings bigger. Unless you give more seats for everybody and then say you're going to have a different quotient for rural areas and urban areas...and then you're going to run into big problems with charter challenges and everything else, I think.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Just to review,

[Translation]

The new list contains the following names: Michel Guimond, Yvon Godin, Marcel Proulx, John Williams, Rose-Marie Ur and Maria Minna. If anyone else wants their name on the list, or if anyone wants their name taken off the list, it can be done.

    Mr. Guimond, you have the floor.

[English]

Just give me the signal.

[Translation]

    Mr. Michel Guimond (Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île-d'Orléans, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I first want to say that I fully support the question about the appointment process for the other two members of the commission, the chair being appointed by the chief justice of the province in question. So I agree with the remarks made by my colleagues Dick Proctor and John Williams.

    A little earlier, Dick was talking about a process involving consultation with the parties. I do not know if that is a good idea. I would like to make a different suggestion. The people around this table may not all trust judges, even if those judges are former members of political parties. In Canada, judges are not elected as they are in the United States. They are appointed. In some cases, the person appointed to be a judge has served his political party well, but as a lawyer I have confidence in the neutrality of our judges. They do not have to be specialists in a particular area. They do not need, for example, a master's degree in political science. I trust judges. People know that Mr. Prémont, one of the commissioners in Quebec, was appointed because he is a strong supporter of the Liberal Party. People in Quebec City know that. He currently heads up the department of organizational information systems and he's the co-director of the Institut des affaires électroniques; his training is as a certified accountant. He was one of the commissioners for Quebec. If you heard how he answered my questions a little earlier, you would agree that it was not very edifying.

    I think that the three commission members should be judges, and that the chief justice of each province should appoint three judges. I have nothing against professors and academics. The best illustration of what I am proposing is that if someone goes to court over a leaky roof caused by a poor roofing job, the judge may not even be capable of hammering a nail. The lawyers have to convince the judge. In our case, there would be three judges. People would have to convince them of the merits or defects of the new map. So I would suggest that the three commission members be judges appointed by the chief justice of each province.

    I would like to make a second comment. I want to share my feelings with you, colleagues. I was a member of the Subcommittee on Electoral Boundaries Readjustment of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, along with my colleagues Marcel and Yvon. To answer Claude Duplain's comment, we held 24 meetings. There were 24 separate sittings of the committee, held both in the daytime and the evening. A lot of work got done, but I wonder whether it may have been pointless, even a sham. We had MPs appear as witnesses. They made requests which were approved by 10 of their colleagues from various parties and provinces. We were all convinced, as members of the committee, even though we came from different perspectives, regions and political parties. We tabled our report in good faith and in some cases, none of the recommendations were accepted.

    On that point, Madam Chair, even though you are not listening to me, I would like you to ask our researchers to provide us with the percentage of the subcommittee's recommendations that were accepted by the commissions. I would like that information to be made public.

¼  (1850)  

    The Chair: We have already looked into that a bit.

    Mr. Michel Guimond: We have?

    The Chair: No. We looked into it a little, except in Ontario and Quebec, but for the other provinces we have an analysis.

    Mr. Michel Guimond: That is right. It will enable us to know whether all the work we did was pointless.

    There is something else that concerns me. There are even commissions, including the one for Quebec, where the final report interpreted the fact that the local member of Parliament decided not to appear before the subcommittee as meaning that the MP agreed with the boundary changes. I am one of those cases. In the final report of the Quebec commission, it says that the member for Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île-d'Orléans decided not to appear before the committee. I do not have to justify my actions to the commission, but I was a member of the subcommittee and did not want to be in a conflict of interest. Since the subcommittee had been persuaded to support the status quo for the Manicouagan riding, with the ripple effects that had right up to the Champlain riding, I decided that I did not need to appear because my case was resolved automatically. But in their eyes, the fact that a member of Parliament did not make any comments meant that he agreed with the electoral boundary changes. That approach is completely dishonest, and I am putting it mildly. I can tell you that in Quebec, things were rammed through.

    I would like to make another comment, which Peter Adams brought up earlier. Perhaps we should look at having a different quotient for large ridings. As I said earlier before Mr. Kingsley and the three commissioners, as well as before the Quebec commissioner in Quebec, the mathematical formula being used looks like it was made up by a child in the 6^th grade. I could tell my young nephew who is in grade 6 that there are 7,293,000 people and that that number needs to be divided by 75, which is the number of ridings. And he could give me the answer. That is what we have done. We came up with the figure of 96,800 for Quebec and the boundaries have been drawn completely arbitrarily. As a result, Mr. Duplain has to cross three ridings to get to the eastern end of his own riding. The formula is totally unacceptable and that is why we should look at a different way of calculating the population size for geographically large ridings.

    For your information, I can tell you that the Manicouagan riding extends for 1,200 kilometres along the coast, from the Bersimis River on the Upper North Shore to the Labrador border, at Lourdes-de Blanc-Sablon. Then there is the Quebec half of the peninsula shared with Labrador up to Ungava Bay and Saint-Julien and the western half of Quebec over to Hudson's Bay. That is an area of 268,000 square kilometres! Prince Edward Island could fit 58 times into the riding of Manicouagan. How is it possible to think that an MP who wants to be present in the riding and listen to voters' needs and concerns will be able to do his or her work effectively? I asked the Quebec commissioner that question. I asked him whether he had taken into account the extraordinary conditions clause in ridings such as Manicouagan, Baie-James—Nunavik and perhaps even Témiscamingue. In Ontario that seems to have been taken into account. It is not just population that needs to be taken into account when boundaries are drawn up. At the other end of the scale, Gilles Duceppe, my leader, represents the smallest riding in Canada; its area is just 9 square kilometres. Although there are large ridings in Toronto, Gilles Duceppe's riding is only 9 square kilometres. In one morning, he could walk around his whole riding. People laugh, but that does not mean it is funny. We need to take this into account.

    I will wrap up, Madam Chair. We need to think of some kind of an appeal procedure. I do not know whether we should give that power to members of Parliament, but there should be an appeal process that people can turn to if a commission has made an obvious mistake. When a commission makes a decision that is as stupid as the one made in Quebec, there should be some recourse.

¼  (1855)  

    I am a little bit less angry now because I am with my colleagues, but I was angry earlier because I was starting to receive telephone calls in my riding office. Maria Minna has received e-mails. Some people think that I bear some responsibility for this. They say that I am responsible for a decision that I feel is stupid. That is not the case! I am not going to roll over and play dead. Thank you.

½  (1900)  

[English]

    The Chair: Just before I turn to Mr. Godin, I guess part of the issue you're raising, because it did come up specifically in Quebec, is this. Where there were suggestions for changes--for instance, Rose-Marie hasn't had a chance to speak yet--we did some soft sounding within our caucuses to see if there was support and where things were or weren't agreed to by the next door neighbour. Somehow the commission didn't appreciate that in Quebec. Maybe there needs to be a process of signing off. I'd agree that's more important than in the beginning, because in the beginning, look, everybody signed for the 10 members, so you want the person to have a chance to hear. So perhaps we could think about that.

    Secondly, in terms of doing the analysis, Mr. Guimond, in some cases we didn't agree with the member. I don't know how you want them to record that—when they supported what we said, which was to leave it where it was. Think about that, in terms of their doing the analysis, because you'll recall that Odina, who wasn't very happy with us, made certain recommendations, and we didn't agree.

[Translation]

    Mr. Michel Guimond: Let us be clear about this. Our committee produced a report. Whether Mr. Desrochers agreed with our report has nothing to do with it. As a committee, we did a report on each province. I want to know what percentage of our recommendations were accepted by the commissions for each province.

    Let us forget Mr. Desrochers's statistic. He does not agree with our report. He is wrong to disagree, but—

    The Chair: Yes, we said that.

[English]

    Okay, so if they agreed with us, that doesn't get counted, but where we asked for a change.... Okay, pas de problème.

    Monsieur Godin; Monsieur Proulx, s'il veut; Mr. Williams; Rose-Marie; and Maria Minna.

[Translation]

    Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    I am sure that the subcommittee has already heard the comments that I am going to make. But everything that has happened prompts me to say that I do not completely agree with Mr. Guimond, who said that he would like those doing the work to be judges. Becoming a judge does not automatically make someone perfect. I think that we need a variety of people so that the public interests are understood. We also need people who come from various regions of the province in order to be able to assess the changes that are suggested and determine how they will affect the province. In New Brunswick's case, three people from the southern part of the province were appointed, a judge and two lawyers, which did not necessarily make for a better commission.

    Mr. Kingsley's report states, and I have already read this excerpt:

In short, we are not talking about a process that is uniform across the country, necessarily. Like the diversity that is so much a part of Canada, geographic, historical, linguistic, social and cultural characteristics will have to play a central role in our thinking when the time comes to define the community of interest that justifies electoral boundaries.

    In New Brunswick, for example, the two lawyers that were appointed to sit on the commission were recommended by the minister responsible, Ms. Bradshaw. The commissioners were said to have close liberal ties and admitted that they had been involved in election campaigns for the Liberals. Everything was open, everyone was aware of this. Of course, it made headlines in the newspapers and there was quite an outcry in New Brunswick.

    With respect to the linguistic, social and cultural aspects, the most disappointing thing was that three people from the southern part of the province came to the northern part to hear a number of submissions—no one can say that people did not participate, since 14 briefs were presented in my riding—which the commission ended up totally ignoring.

    Among those who made submissions were the Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick, the Société nationale de l'Acadie, the Association francophone des municipalités du Nouveau-Brunswick and the mayor of the English area, that is, the City of Bathurst. All these submissions were ignored by the commission. One evening around 6 o'clock—and this is recorded in the commission's proceedings—a university professor stated that, in his opinion, the best briefs received were those from Miramichi and from Mr. Claude Boucher. Mr. Boucher, who did not hide the fact that he was the former Liberal president in Bathurst, indicated that the riding boundary did not go far enough and that it should include Robertville by going along Highway 11. The professor said that that was the best submission and he was speaking in front of all those people who had come to express their views on behalf of the public.

    This was reported to the Official Languages Commissioner who prepared a report and said that the commission had not complied with the Official Languages Act. The commission then stated that the Official Languages Commissioner had no say in the matter and that only the commission could decide. The Official Languages Commissioner responded with a final report stating that she did have a say and that she was empowered to make recommendations.

    The Official Languages Committee of the House of Commons recommended that the proposal of the Official Languages Commissioner be implemented.

½  (1905)  

    The Chair: Mr. Godin, I have already heard this speech several times. Do you have a proposal to improve the situation in this riding and the process?

    Mr. Yvon Godin: Madam Chair, I do not understand you. Mr. Guimond just said the same kind of thing and you listened to him. I will come to my conclusion.

[English]

    The Chair: He made specific recommendations as well. I just want to know if you're going to make recommendations.

[Translation]

    Mr. Yvon Godin: Yes.

    The Standing Committee on Official Languages, the Subcommittee on Procedure and House Affairs, everyone, in fact, has said that the New Brunswick Commission was wrong. The problem is that there is no way to appeal its decisions. We cannot go to court. Steps have already been taken in New Brunswick to request a judicial review, but Bill C-49 would reduce the 12-month period that was available after the commission's final report was submitted. The 12-month period would normally end on August 25, 2004, but that deadline would change to sometime in April, under the new legislation.

    I recommend that an appeal process be set up, one that does not involve those who made the decision. It is as if you went to court and appeared before a judge and did not agree with his decision. If you appeal the decision, you will be dealing with different people. I gave the example of what happened in our area. It was terrible and did not make sense. The general public is against the commission's decision, but the commission will not reconsider.

    So that is one thing. There is also the issue of how commission members are appointed. These people have to be accountable for their decisions. It is not true that there are no politics involved. On the contrary, it is extremely political. We need to find a way to ensure that we have our say, that the process is more democratic. People from our area in that riding are telling me that they will not be voting in the next election. Their riding has been taken away from them and so they will not vote. They will not go to vote in Miramichi. That is how people are reacting right now.

    That is what I wanted to say. It is important to have some sort of appeal process, otherwise we will be stuck with a bad decision and have to live with it. Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Godin.

    Mr. Proulx, do you have any questions to ask?

    Mr. Marcel Proulx (Hull—Aylmer, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not have any questions, but a few comments to make on how the process could be changed.

    Some of our colleagues around the table were not present this afternoon when we met with the Chief Electoral Officer. We were surprised by how he answered one of the questions we asked him. We asked him what was the most important aspect of the process: the numbers, the community of interest or identity or geography. He answered that he had nothing to do with it and that he had given no instructions to the various commissions. I spoke to him of uniformity from one commission to another, and he answered that he did not have any instructions to give the commissions. I would therefore recommend that the act be tightened to ensure that priorities are identified and to give less flexibility to the commissions in interpreting what they feel is most important. We need to ensure greater uniformity.

    Madam Chair, you pointed out yourself that in the reports studied by the subcommittee from the various commissions, there was no uniformity even in how the reports were laid out. It is up to us to make recommendations, perhaps to the Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, in order to better define the commissions' flexibility. We should also comment on communications, in order to make the system much more simple and less bureaucratic, but let us begin with recommendations to reduce the flexibility that commissions have.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

½  (1910)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Proulx.

[English]

    I have John Williams, Rose-Marie Ur, Maria Minna, and Ken Epp.

    Mr. John Williams: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    First, I just want to say that I don't agree with Mr. White, the first speaker, when he was talking about the voters list. This is not a business we're running; this is government. We have to be specific. We have to be categorical. Therefore, the census as the determination of the numbers is the only way to go.

    Staying on the negative note, I also disagree with Monsieur Guimond and the fact that it should be a panel of judges. The courts are perceived to be far too involved in the political process of this country already, and if these electoral boundary commissions were to be run by judges, they would be perceived to be courts. That's the last thing we would want to have in this country. So I disagree with him.

    I do agree with Mr. Adams when he talks about the second round. There should be another public hearing. If you're going to have publication of the maps, followed by a public hearing, followed by a revision of the maps, there should be also a second public hearing. Hopefully, by that time, the commissioners have heard the wishes of society and are getting fairly close to where they should be, assuming of course they listen, which is not the case in Alberta, because they categorically rejected every argument. I can't speak strongly enough against the total arrogance of the electoral boundaries commission in Alberta.

    The Chair: Especially toward this committee.

    Mr. John Williams: Especially toward two committees of this House, Madam Chair, and the official languages commissioner and all the elected municipalities and so on.

    I would also make this recommendation, Madam Chair. Looking at the act, it says—this is a directive—“The commission shall consider the following in determining reasonable electoral district boundaries”. It also says—I'll just quote and then I'll give you the minor change—“the community of interest or community of identity in or the historical pattern of an electoral district in the province.” I would suggest that we remove these or's and make it the “community of interest and the community of identity in and the historical pattern of electoral districts”, so that is a specific directive to the commission as to what their orders are. They should not be allowed to stray from that clear directive.

    I mentioned in my first intervention an appeal process, which I thought was sound. I think most people are talking about an appeal process. For those who have joined since I first talked, I'm proposing an appeal commission—one member supplied by each political party for the whole country—so that if a provincial commission does not listen or ignores or rejects what is perceived to be a valid intervention, there is a higher appeal.

    I've talked about the public hearings, the appeal, the legislation, judges. As one final point, Madam Chair—I would ask that you make it as a recommendation, as I know you have no power to commit—we've talked here about representation by population and ensuring that the constituencies are reasonably equal, but we've only talked about that within provinces. You look at the inequality and inequities province to province, especially in the west, where in Alberta the average is 110,000 people per province and the further east you go, the smaller they get. Therefore, I would ask this subcommittee, up to the main committee, and on to the House, that this inequity be addressed at the earliest opportunity.

    Thank you.

½  (1915)  

    The Chair: Madame Ur.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, Lib.): Thank you, Ms. Torsney. I'm certainly pleased that we have this opportunity this evening to have this discussion.

    The Chair: Joe, do you want me to put you back for the next round? I'll put you down.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: Okay. I will continue, and they can have their chat.

    I certainly want to continue on the same vein regarding the commissioners in Ontario. They certainly did not have the best interests of the members of Parliament at heart; I can say that. They were very arrogant. They had a very heavy hand. And people can twinkle their eyes here and whatever else; I'm calling a spade a spade. We had both levels of government there, as well as the county. None of us had collaborated on each other's presentations, and basically we all said the same thing. It was quite unique.

    At the end of the day, one of the statements made was the name change from my riding of Lambton--Kent--Middlesex. With redistribution, they wanted to have it Middlesex--Kent--Lambton, I believe, or Lambton--Kent, and I know, because the numbers changed. But everyone in the presentation said just leave it the way it is; why not wait until it comes to a new member of Parliament, because of the cost factor to change over, whether it be for signs or whatever else. And they said money was not an issue. They really didn't care about money.

    Well, I can tell you the people sitting in the audience were quite disturbed by this, because they said it certainly should be about money.

    I understand there are larger ridings out west, in northern Ontario, but in southwestern Ontario it's quite populated with small towns and villages, the average town with sometimes 10,000 to 12,000 people. They aren't trees, they aren't water; they're people. They vote. At present, I go from 4,700 square kilometres to 6,200 square kilometres. That doesn't seem like a lot for the Bob Naults of the world and those people up in northern Ontario, but they're small communities and they expect to see you in every one of those communities. It's really hard, because there aren't any communities of interest.

    The two provincial members, who are from different parties and who presented as well, said the common flow--as Mr. Williams said--whether it's the culture or the communities of interest and all that, went more down Highway 40 for Sarnia--Lambton. It fell on deaf ears.

    I can say that when I presented before an all-party committee you listened carefully and you felt the presentation was very logical. But no one seems to want to listen. And I totally disagree with judges going on this committee. I think, if anything, there has to be some rural representation. Mr. Kingsley appeared before a rural caucus, and at that time, when we spoke to him several months ago, he thought perhaps there should be some recognition of that. It's easy to walk around your riding, but it's much different to drive three hours from one corner to the next. Some people can't even use the cell phone. And you can't use a cell phone to deliver messages anyway, because they're not secure.

    So there's a real disadvantage in rural parts of Canada. We're becoming the extinct society out there, and I think we certainly play a vital role in Canada. I don't think it's really understood by the present commissioners that we're there. They were looking at numbers, and where my riding is situated, it's like a big iceberg. This guy gets chopped off here, and that guy gets chopped off to satisfy the rest of southwestern Ontario, and whatever's left is your little kingdom to look after.

    It's really an unfair numbers act, and it should be more than just numbers they look at. We had a major spill in Sarnia; it went down the river. And that really showed the flow the riding boundary should have followed, rather than what they had indicated.

    I saw in the report when I went to your committee that the other member wasn't consulted. The other member said he didn't care what happened; it was of no interest to him. So to make that assumption.... And if I read the report correctly, with all the presentations that were made, I think there were two minor changes made after you sat there listening to all the colleagues. I really felt you spent a lot of time and effort, and so did government, and really we didn't get much consideration.

    So I thank you for your work, although not much happened. But I thank you for taking the time, and I thank everyone who sat at committee to do their job. But we need to do it differently.

½  (1920)  

    The Chair: Before you got here, some people proposed another public round, and before all of you got here, it was proposed to eliminate the MPs round and have a second round with the commissioners. I wonder if you could think about that and give us your advice.

    Are our commissioners leaving?

    Mr. Andrew Sancton: I'm leaving in just a minute, and Mr. Bickerton will be back very shortly.

    The Chair: We appreciate your listening, and if you have to leave and want to get back to us, that's fine. I appreciate it.

    Madame Minna.

    Hon. Maria Minna: You listened, and I thank you, because I was one of the fortunate ones. I think in Ontario mine was probably the only riding that had a major shift after the MP round.

    A voice: There were one or two others.

½  (1925)  

    Hon. Maria Minna: Yes, there were one or two others; that's right.

    What I wanted to say, just to go back to what Mr. Guimond was saying, is I don't like the idea of having all judges. I don't think the solution is judges. I think the solution is to get people who have a fairly varied background, who have a fair amount of understanding, whether rural or urban, of various communities of interest. It's not an easy job, I'm sure. To some degree, it's better them than us. But I don't believe making it all judges resolves the issue, necessarily.

    And I really don't agree with eliminating the MP round. Probably on the appeal.... There are the preliminary maps, and then there's the first round of hearings. There should be a second round of hearings, especially when there are drastic changes or if people didn't get anywhere near what they thought was fair.

    The final appeal could either be to the MPs, or.... I think there ought to be an MP round. That's a privilege only MPs have, as a final shot. When I heard my riding was gone completely, I was told not to worry because I could appeal to the standing committee of the House, which was helpful to know, but I'm not sure the report the committee makes should then go to the same commissioners, especially if we go to two consultations.

    Maybe we're looking at a different group of people who may be able to look at it with fresh eyes. By the time you're finished your second hearing, people's ideas are a bit ingrained, even on the commission. We all tend to want to own things—ownership is important, to some degree—and maybe the report of the standing committee at that point needs to go to a different body. I'm not sure yet what that body would be. This might make it a bit lengthy, but it's democracy, and democracy is not easy and it's not clean. And it happens every ten years, not every day.

    The other point I wanted to make is that it seems to me from all the information I read when I was putting together my brief for the standing committee that the initial trigger of redistribution is the population shift. If there's a major population shift, then there's a trigger. In our case, there was no population shift at all, so there wasn't a trigger. In most of the downtown ridings of the city of Toronto, especially the old city of Toronto, there was no shift.

    I would suggest, as Mr. Proulx was saying earlier, that we need to look at the amount of manoeuvrability the commissioners have. Maybe one way of doing it is to look at those ridings, especially in the older, established neighbourhoods. If there has been no population shift, and that's your first trigger, then there oughtn't to be any change. Then you move on to where there is population shift and see how you work it out. If it does have a ripple effect, then don't touch it.

    In our case and in a lot of ridings around me, there was no population shift. When you move things around for the sake of moving things around, what you're moving is services, people's established practices, and established infrastructures that have been established to some degree because of the riding boundaries. I'm talking about a particularly old part of Toronto, where there are at least 10 ridings where I don't think population ever changes that much, because the old city is not growing. The growth is outside, in the 905 area, and that's where the shift might take place.

    There's no point in redrawing every single map if it's not necessary. They could have left mine alone exactly and not taken a little piece, and it wouldn't have made any difference. All of the work and money and my time—three months—and legal fees to try to get it back to where it was after they had put it on its side made no sense whatever. There should be some limitation on what one can do, and if the population trigger is the first trigger, then one takes a look at that, and if there isn't a population trigger then there shouldn't be any need to move it around. Leave it alone would be my view.

    I think those are the three areas.

[Translation]

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

[English]

    Mr. Epp.

    Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): How long do I have?

    The Chair: You have five minutes. We'll revisit it if there's a problem.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Thank you. I'll undoubtedly repeat some of the things that have been said here. I was off at another committee and couldn't attend.

    You probably heard some of this from John Williams. Anyway, I am distressed about the process, and it's not just because, as the member from Elk Island, my riding disappears. That's not the only reason. Elk Island will be gone after this. The thing is that it's been totally arbitrary.

    I have a number of observations. First of all, I think if there's going to be a three-person committee in a province, that committee must be totally impartial and be seen to be non-partisan. One of the three members of our Alberta committee in fact worked on the campaign of one of the members of Parliament. I think I can be candid with you here without offending your sensibilities; it happened to be Anne McLellan's. I heard ordinary people say, “Well, that commission just carved it up so that Anne will have a seat for as long as she chooses to run.” I know she objected, and her objections were ignored. The thing is that it was already done, but this is the perception of people.

    When first they talked about redoing the boundaries, I assured the people in my riding, “Don't worry. These people will do a good job. They're impartial; they will do a good job.” Basically, they carved us up like a Christmas turkey. It was really awful.

    I objected to a number of things. First of all, this Friday it's going to be exactly a year since I spent the whole day in the hearings in Edmonton. I took the time off to actually go there, because I wanted to hear what everybody said. I was there from about either 9 or 10 in the morning—I don't remember the time—until 9 at night. I listened to every presentation—except mine; I didn't listen to it.

    This is what happened there. The commission decided in its preliminary report that because Calgary's population had increased within its boundaries it would get two more seats. The chair of the commission actually said in his introduction on that Thursday morning, “We feel that because Calgary is now getting eight seats, Edmonton should have eight as well”, which is a violation of the whole concept of the thing; it's supposed to be based on population. The fact of the matter is that in the Edmonton area we had a lot of growth too, but the growth was in the outlying communities rather than within the boundaries of the city.

    Population-wise, Edmonton had increased, but not nearly as much as Calgary. Consequently, they had to get some way of doing this. What they did was just reach out in fingers to make eight ridings and have these different places come into the city of Edmonton, with all of these outlying areas, and thereby get enough population to warrant the new eight seats.

    Well, you know, I listened to those presentations on that Thursday all day. I was amazed. There was only one presentation, from the little town of Beaumont—it's fifty-fifty French and English, south of Edmonton; it used to be in Elk Island riding before the boundary changes in 1997. The mayor of Beaumont was the only one who stood in front of the commission and said, “We used to have a member of Parliament who was way over there in Sherwood Park”—that was me—“and now we have a member of Parliament who is way over there in Wetaskiwin.” And it's true; I was 20 minutes away—big deal; Dale Johnston, their MP now, is an hour away. So they felt miffed. They said, “Now if we're in with Edmonton”—because they're a little community just 10 minutes south of Edmonton—“we'll have an MP who's close, and we like that.”

    They were the only ones who said they liked this proposal to have part of the city of Edmonton with a leg out—or a branch, or whatever—that included a rural community. They were the only ones. Everyone else said they didn't like what was being done. Every community, the main county that I represent—their presentation objected to this. They wanted to keep their people in the homogeneous group, taking into account the fact that the commission is supposed to take community of interest into account.

    Our population in Sherwood Park, which is the major town in my riding, has increased by 20%, so I thought, if anything, my riding would just shrink a bit because it was now oversized. They would just bring the boundaries in a little bit. Instead, they chopped the whole bloody thing to pieces. My neighbours who live in the same county, who pay the same taxes I do, and I are no longer going to be in the riding of the seat of the government. In fact, they moved me out of my riding. I don't care. That's irrelevant. That's a personal thing.

½  (1930)  

    Sherwood Park is the main town, as I've told you. They're taking that together with this and then a part of the north side of Edmonton. All of the riding is south of the North Saskatchewan River, which runs through Edmonton, except that I have to cross the river and go through a neighbouring riding to get to the rest of my riding, which is over on the other side of Edmonton.

    Community of interests. Certainly these people have an interest in the city of Edmonton. They pay taxes there. That's their municipal government. Out here, out in the country, where we live, it's primarily Strathcona County. We all pay taxes and we have our representative and our councillors and so on. That's our community of interest. Suddenly we get ourselves chopped in half and arbitrarily associated with the city of Edmonton. I have not made a big scene about this publicly, because it's a fact, and I'm not going to say that we can't do the job. But the job is made much more difficult.

    I want to also say the city of Edmonton's presentation to that commission was—this is almost a quote—we would rather have six members of Parliament that represent our city in concentration than eight members of Parliament with divided interests. Except for the little town of Beaumont, every presentation said they didn't like what was done. When we got the report from the commission, instead of reflecting what they heard, they gave a two-page dissertation on why they shouldn't do what they were told. It was really a huge disappointment.

    The second thing--and with this I will end, because I'm sure my five minutes is nearly up--is that I think these commissions also have a job to make sure that members of Parliament can do their job. I have been in a combination urban-rural riding. It takes me about an hour and a half to get from my office to the far reaches of my riding, driving at highway speeds. That's fine. We have ridings like that. But now, instead of having these.... I'm a bit of an amateur mathematician. If you have an area to splice up with a minimum amount of travel, the best shape geometrically, without consideration of where the roads are, is to have squares, or at least near-square rectangles.

    What these guys have done is they have made it like the bricks along the wall there—long ridings going from the middle of the province to the Saskatchewan boundary. They have these long slices. That means that members of Parliament, instead of doing their work, will now be just sitting in their cars listening to the talk shows, I guess, on the radio. You can do very little useful work while you're driving. They have arranged it so that the north part of what is now Elk Island is expanded to the west and to the east, all the way to the Saskatchewan boundary. No kidding. It's going to be a three-hour drive. Meanwhile, the guy on the other side of the highway is going to drive from here all the way to the other side. It's a huge concentration of population, and a whole bunch of people are now going to be 200 miles away from their member of Parliament. The whole thing is just wrong.

    I've said my piece.

½  (1935)  

    The Chair: And eloquently at that.

    I have myself, Michel, Claude, and Dick.

    I have just a couple of questions. Although this committee didn't hear from MPs from P.E.I., Newfoundland, and Saskatchewan because there was no second round of objections, I understand that in P.E.I. the commissioners actually recommended they get a rural person on the commission somehow--that they make a special effort. They also recommended that a representative of the community of interest, like a school board trustee, a business person, or somebody like that, might serve well on the commission.

    That's all well and good in a province of 110,000 people that's being divided in four. I'm not sure that Rose-Marie's recommendation for a community-of-interest person would be the same as mine, Bob Nault's, or even yours, Maria, in the downtown core. I'm not sure how we would manage that, if anyone wanted to make a recommendation that the commission be expanded, or something, to make it a better committee.

    On the bigger issue I have, I encourage all members to get a copy of the changes that were recommended in Bill C-69, which died on the Order Paper in 1996 or 1997 when we prorogued. There were some changes to the process, including a five-year rather than ten-year redistribution.

    It's just this whole issue of the education process and how this thing works--that it's not MPs who make the decisions, it's commissions; that they are going to change. In my case, the city of Burlington isn't the same as the federal riding of Burlington. Someone from the city of Burlington said, “I'm from Burlington and you're the MP for Burlington, so you have to be my representative.” No, Julian Reed is your representative. When they took a piece of Burlington out and gave it to somebody else, it was a free-for-all for the media.

    How do we educate the public? Whose job is that? Would the five-year process help? What do we do in terms of weighing responses? Some people said there were 14 people who objected to this, or none in another place. If there's one brilliant recommendation, does that outweigh the 14 less so that all coalesced around an idea? How do you recommend commissioners weigh the information or the representations they're given?

    Maria, you mentioned that in Toronto it seemed there were some changes just for the sake of change. Certainly members from the older part of Montreal versus the suburbs of Montreal also felt things were changed just for the purpose of changing.

    How do we manage some of these issues? Ultimately, it's never going to be perfect. We asked people, and whether they were judges, commissioners, political scientists, community activists, or a group of MPs, ultimately not everybody was happy with what we recommended after we did our process. So how do we educate people about that? How do we make changes that will satisfy a greater number of people? Whether we answer that in the next 20 minutes or whether you want to get back to us, we're more than happy to have your suggestions.

    I have Michel, Claude, Dick, and Maria.

[Translation]

    Mr. Michel Guimond: Thank you, Paddy.

    Let me come back to the second set of public hearings. Personally, I would agree, on the condition that at the end there be an appeal process for appealing those decisions made by the commission which might seen doubtful. A second round of public hearings with a commission that has already defined its views, perhaps even before hearing the witnesses on the first round, is of no use. We could have two, three, five or ten rounds, and nothing at all would change. Let's not waste people's time.

    Let me make a final comment. Obviously, there is not much enthusiasm for my proposal to have three judges as members of the commissions. I would be ready to withdraw it; on the other hand, I want to say that those for whom the situation makes no sense should propose another procedure. A bit earlier, I had a brief exchange with Mr. Williams—unfortunately, he is gone, and those who are absent are always wrong—and I asked him what he would propose to replace my idea of having three judges. He answered that he would accept anything so long as the individuals are honest. Integrity is a very subjective judgment. If I think that someone has integrity, perhaps, in someone else's view, he has no integrity, and vice versa. How can we measure integrity? Is it sold by the pound, by the metre, or by the kilogram? To be virtuous, must one be a good Catholic, who goes to confession?

    We cannot simply say that anybody can do the job so long as they are honest. Everyone aspires to sainthood. As far as I am concerned, I hope that I will be canonized after I leave this world. I hope to be a saint. Unfortunately, only a few of us will attain that state.

    So let me propose something to those who do not agree with my proposal about judges: to appoint returning officers, you can use the same process as the one used in Quebec. Jobs for assessors and commission members should be advertised in newspapers, and the Chief Electoral Officer should be in charge of choosing them, according to objective and not subjective standards. I am sure that in this way, we can find people who have integrity.

    However, we should forever abandon the process of political appointments—I am sure that my Liberal friends will not agree—whereby the Speaker of the House consults the political minister in charge. If we want to be open and encourage integrity, we must proceed as does Quebec for appointing returning officers. Thank you.

½  (1940)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

[English]

    In your last minute available, I want to respond also—I made a note—to the commissioner's issue. I'm not sure that finding a commissioner who has never been interested in a political campaign will make him any better a commissioner.

    To the point about some guy who worked on Anne McLellan's campaign, frankly, nobody in Alberta was happy, so I'm not sure that makes the person more aligned with Anne McLellan than anybody else. I'm not sure that just having worked on a campaign is an indicator of someone's ineligibility.

    Mr. Ken Epp: The fact of the matter is that there were no changes on the appeal. Could that be because they got what they wanted in the first place and so they didn't want--

    The Chair: No, she appealed. Unlike you, Anne actually appealed the process and didn't like it. She didn't get what she wanted, in spite of this committee recommending that we implement the change.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Yes, I know, and here's the other thing, of course. How many recommendations did this committee make, and how many were accepted by that commission?

½  (1945)  

    The Chair: Yes, that was the question. Other provinces were better--

[Translation]

    They were not much better, just a bit better.

    Mr. Michel Guimond: Well, in Quebec, two recommendations out of sixteen were accepted. If you find that this is better... It is better than nothing, but it is not very good. I am not gone yet, Madam Chair. I am just about to leave, but we will set things right. The Bloc is there for you.

[English]

    The Chair: They rejected 14 of our recommendations in Quebec and accepted two on the boundaries, and they rejected three of our name changes and accepted nine, which is better than Alberta, but not much--zero, none, zip, nada, nothing.

[Translation]

    Mr. Michel Guimond: Two out of five.

    The Chair: Mr. Duplain.

    Mr. Claude Duplain: In view of everything that was said, I would like to make some specific recommendations, but first I would like to make a comment to our friends on the other side. Several times, they hinted that political appointments might have engendered some poor decisions. Let me point out that there are perhaps as many Liberals as there are opposition MPs who are not satisfied with the electoral boundaries. Thus, their statements may not be accurate.

    Having said this, I would like to support the proposal made by Mr. “Saint-Guimond”, so to speak.

    A voice: That will never happen.

    A voice: No, Saint Michael is the name.

½  (1950)  

    M. Claude Duplain: I very strongly support this proposal because these people will have to judge what other people in the field know about electoral boundaries. Thus, three judges would be appointed to judge the statements from people who are well acquainted with the field. First and foremost, these people are members of Parliament, who know their regions, their people, their common interests, and what the people need. In this case, these people were not listened to.

    Just by looking at what happened in Canada, we see that people were not listened to. You just had to read the instructions that dealt with communities of interest. I think that communities of interest were not really taken into account. Neither were the needs of the population, especially in the countryside. In Amos, in Abitibi, there was some consensus. Why should this consensus suddenly be set aside, so that the people of Amos, as we heard this afternoon, do not want to be included in a region? The people's needs must be taken into account. This happened in a rural area. Are you trying to tell me that in rural areas, we do not really have to listen to what the people need?

    As Ms. Ur and Ms. Minna said, everyone should be given the same amount of attention, whether they live in rural areas or in some small area around which you can ride three times a day on a bicycle. As Mr. Epp just said, does an MP from a rural area have to travel for two or three hours to meet someone who is in urgent need? Taking three and a half hours to visit someone and to come back to work in your office is out of the question. You have to have a second office.

    Therefore, I very strongly suggest that three judges should come out and hear what people have to say. I think that with today's technology, we could have a permanent process, in continuous operation, whereby judges could listen to briefs. Besides, why shouldn't the House of Commons, with its members who are aware of what people need, not also submit briefs to judges? Thus, our map might be constantly shifting, because various briefs would be presented from time to time. Instead of hearing many briefs all at once and changing the entire map, why could we not set up a process whereby the map could be changed periodically? I think that this could be done with today's computerized means of communication. With a simple click of the mouse, you could see whether your proposition is impossible or quite feasible.

    Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Mr. Proctor.

[English]

    Mr. Dick Proctor: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    I want to pick up on a point that I think, if I understood the translation, Mr. Proulx was advancing. The translation said, frame the leeway the commissioners have. I want to just throw out a word of caution about that and I would like to use the example of Saskatchewan over the last 10 years.

    In the last redistribution process, back in the mid-1990s, the Saskatchewan commission decided to have eight of the 14 ridings that touched on Regina and Saskatoon to be urban and rural. When the judge who was in charge of the commission this time started the first round of public hearings, he said that they had been informed these urban-rural ridings didn't work and were therefore not to be used this time.

    I recall asking Mr. Kingsley--and maybe Mr. Bickerton, who is here tonight, can help us--and Mr. Kingsley assured this subcommittee or the procedure and House affairs committee that nobody at the commission in the hearings that they had before they really got into this process had ever told anybody that urban and rural ridings didn't work. But the judge said it in Saskatchewan, and I'd heard other people saying it as well.

    The point that I'm trying to make is that there was no significant population shift in Saskatchewan over the last decade. Twenty-nine of the 30 public briefs in Saskatchewan said, in effect, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This has worked in Saskatchewan. We are an urban and a rural province. And to its credit, the commission did basically reverse the decisions and came in with tinkering around the edges, but essentially the ridings are the very same riding formations that we will now have into a second decade.

    On Michel's point, this does recognize that we have an enormous riding in northern Saskatchewan that goes up to the Northwest Territories border. It has a little more than half the population that the other 13 ridings in the province have, so there's some recognition of that reality as well.

    I guess what I'm fundamentally saying, Madam Chair, is that it's a big country, and one size does not and will not fit everyone. It may not work for Edmonton, the urban-rural stuff, but it certainly has worked for Saskatchewan. I think it will work for the next decade or so as well.

    The Chair: Thank you. Certainly that is something that we were surprised by, but the flexibility of the process allows Saskatchewan ultimately to be happy and other provinces to be furious. So I'm not sure.

    Mr. Dick Proctor: But that's presumably why you have 10 commissions as opposed to one.

    The Chair: Yes, yet ironically--and you guys missed this--members of this committee saw that each report looked different and each report had different priorities, and we kept thinking, but surely we're all Canadians and this is a process that should be a little more consistent across the country rather than inconsistent. Ultimately, though, some of the inconsistencies made some places happy.

    I have Maria.

    Hon. Maria Minna: I just want to recap a couple of things.

    In your presentation earlier you posed some questions. One was every five years as opposed to 10. It's difficult enough now to try to redo ridings and found meetings and reorganize, and for the electorate to become educated and to learn where they're voting. I know it becomes quite stressful for people.

    I remember when my riding was changed substantially in 1997, I inherited a big chunk of David Collenette's riding in the north, and it was a big deal for people to readjust themselves to Beaches--East York rather than whatever it was. Doing this very five years, which would mean every election, basically, would create a tremendous amount of confusion, I think. It's difficult enough to get people out to vote.

    People become attached to ridings, to a particular area, a lot more than people realize, and to a constituency office, whatever it is. I'm not sure that every five years, or the frequency, is really the issue; I would say it's more how it's done.

    I think I understood Marcel Proulx—and correct me if I'm wrong—when he was talking about changing to some degree the mandate the commissioners might have. I think he was wanting to make sure it was made clearer, so that it could be a bit more consistent in terms of the priorities they need to look at, that is, population shifts and all of the other communities, and so on.

    I think to some degree that might have to happen, because in my case there was no shift. No community or communities were changing. No population was changing. There was really no reason, other than the fact that there was one presentation that suggested it should, for other reasons that really had nothing much whatever to do with the shifting of things, and it went that way anyway.

    There needs to be some stricter guidelines that really prevent this kind of stuff from happening. I would suggest, as I said earlier, that the second time the changes from the preliminary proposals come, there should be a second consultation process. The appeal should still stay with the MPs, but the report of the standing committee shouldn't go to the same commissioners but maybe to three judges in this case—I don't agree with the judges at the commission, but maybe this is where they come in, to try to give a fresh look at the thing.

    I think population shifts should trigger it, because that's why we do it after the census. If there isn't a major population shift in an area, then.... I know there's sometimes a ripple effect and you can't avoid it, but that generally happens where you have a fair amount of population shift and growth.

    As I said earlier, I think there are about 20 seats in the old city of Toronto and it's not a growing area. Its population is just not growing in the city, because they are old, stable communities.

½  (1955)  

    The Chair: And where its growing, it's not evidencing the growth in the rest of the province.

    Hon. Maria Minna: Yes, you're not going to add seats, so you might just leave areas that aren't shifting as they are and concentrate on seeing whether it's possible to do the adjustments where there are shifts, without having to redo every single map and every single riding in the country, if at all possible. It might save money and time if that were to be one of the directions as well.

    The Chair: Before I turn to Ms. Ur for the last comment, our researchers have clarified and reminded me that the five-year process was specifically where there were large changes in population. Maybe some people weren't here then, but it addressed issues like this. When some of us were first elected in 1993, Maurizio Bevilacqua represented 350,000 people, as did Carolyn Parrish, because there had been massive population growth in the outskirts of Toronto. Because there is no process and it continues to anticipate where housing developments are planned and using municipal planners in the process, they became three and a half times bigger than any riding in Ontario, and no associated massive budget.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: In response to that, I know Ms. Parrish has told me that her riding didn't necessarily need to be divided. She just needed an extra person or two, because the size was not the situation. She said, just give me one or two more persons in my offices and I can handle the situation, which I think is certainly something to perhaps look at.

    As to Maria's every five years, my God, it's bad enough to go through this every 10 years. Let's not do it every five years.

    As an FYI for here and Ontario, as you're well aware, we had a provincial election, now we're going to have a federal election, and the boundaries are going to change. People get so agitated by that, because the provincial member serves one boundary area, and the federal the other. It just adds another flag to the whole situation. People throw their hands up and get totally disgusted with the political system.

    The Chair: Yes. I think it may have been easier before, when we were on the same boundaries.

    Okay, just in terms of process-- Yes.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Can I just make another point? Most of us in Alberta, myself included, cover the same area that's covered by four provincial MLAs.

    The Chair: In Nova Scotia it's 11, and 7 in New Brunswick.

    In terms of a point of interest for all of you who have participated in the round table and those who have already left, thank you very much for the benefit of your ideas. This committee is going to have to write a report. We'll have to figure out among ourselves where we're going to meet next and who else we need to hear from. The researchers are going to give us some research materials before we finalize that report. Those of you who have joined us tonight, if you have additional ideas or if you're talking to other members who want to participate and give us the benefit of their brilliance and experience, we'd be happy to have that. Then we'll make decisions on what we include, and some people will be very disappointed.

    Thank you. Merci, collègues.