2015 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 40th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 29, Number

ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)

ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)

CONTENTS

Page

Routine Business

Speaker’s Statement

Parliamentary language

Orders of the Day

Government Motions on Notice

Motion 26 — Electoral Boundaries Commission report proposals (continued)

J. Rice

D. Plecas

S. Fraser

M. Hunt

D. Donaldson

J. Martin

S. Robinson

M. Morris

D. Eby

L. Throness

N. Simons

J. Yap

L. Krog

[ Page 9679 ]

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Speaker’s Statement

PARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE

Madame Speaker: Hon. Members, I reviewed the Hansard of both yesterday and today. With respect to Standing Order 40, Parliamentary Practice in British Columbia , page 99, please note:

“The proceedings in the House are based on centuries of tradition and mutual respect…. ‘Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language. Parliamentary language is never more desirable than when a member is canvassing the opinions and conduct of his or her opponents in debate.’”

I would ask all members to be mindful of this caution in their deliberations.

Orders of the Day

Hon. T. Stone: I call continued debate on Motion 26.

Government Motions on Notice

MOTION 26 — ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES

COMMISSION REPORT PROPOSALS

(continued)

J. Rice: I’m pleased to rise today to speak to the motion in regards to the Electoral Boundaries Commission final report and recommendations.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

I’d like to just do a little bit of background for the thousands of viewers that I know I have at home that are watching the legislative channel right now. They’re glued to it. I wanted to talk about the Electoral Boundaries Commission and what the mandate is and, if I could, speak a bit about the background.

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Every second provincial general election, a new Electoral Boundaries Commission is appointed to propose changes to the provincial electoral boundaries. Under the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, the British Columbia Electoral Boundaries Commission must consist of:

“(

a) a judge or a retired judge of the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal who is nominated by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, (

b) a person who is not a member of the Legislative Assembly or an employee of the government and who is nominated by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, after consultation with the Premier and the Leader of the Official Opposition, and (

c) the chief electoral officer appointed under the Election Act.”

One of these individuals must be appointed as chair.

On May 9, 2014, a three-person, independent, non-partisan Electoral Boundaries Commission was appointed. The commissioners are Mr. Justice Thomas Melnick, justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, who is the chair; Beverley Busson, OBC, former commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and Keith Archer, the Chief Electoral Officer for the province of British Columbia.

The function is to make proposals to the Legislative Assembly as to the area, boundaries and names of provincial electoral districts. If deliberations dictate that the number of electoral districts should be increased, the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act allows them to make proposals of up to two electoral districts to a maximum of 87. However, they cannot recommend fewer than 85 electoral districts.

The Legislative Assembly is responsible for approving or amending the proposals before passing into law. So here we are today to debate this motion.

Speaking from the point of view of the MLA for North Coast, which is an area over 100,000 square kilometres in size, I am pleased to note that there are no recommendations to make changes to the electoral area of North Coast.

It’s a wonderful constituency to represent. I know we’re all partisan as far as our preference to our own constituencies. I can safely say that I think I have, by far, the most beautiful constituency out of the 85 in the province of British Columbia — including Haida Gwaii, Prince Rupert, Port Edward, many First Nations communities down to the central coast of Bella Bella and Bella Coola and Oweekeno territory.

That beauty, therefore, makes for some hard transportation for not only myself but for the constituents I represent. Many of the issues that plague our constituency, whether that be health care or access to ministry services, revolve around the challenge of a lack of transportation options and mobility options of getting around our great constituency.

I must say I think I am the only constituency that has communities that are only accessible by seaplane or by boat.

Interjections.

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J. Rice: Oh, I’m sorry. I already stand corrected. Oh, we have a few.

[1340]

Okay. I must say the MLA for Stikine does have a larger constituency than I. I do have the second-largest constituency by land mass. I do note that I have the largest constituency if you include the water within the constituency — the massive water between Haida Gwaii and the mainland, Hecate Strait, and the amount of fjords and inlets in my community.

Unfortunately, it’s challenging for some of my constituents to access me in my Prince Rupert office, and it’s also challenging for me to get out to see them. I note that last year it took me, I believe, three tries to visit the community of Klemtu on the central coast.

The challenges of the nature of the geography and the weather and the climate make it very hard for people to get in and out. Again, that’s a community that’s only accessible by seaplane or by ferry. You cannot drive there from anywhere in the province. So it’s pretty frustrating for not only myself but for the people of Klemtu, the Kitasoo/Xai’xais, to not have their representative able to come and speak to them face to face.

In the north, we commonly operate by face-to-face interactions. We’re not necessarily a constituency that is using digital technology. Some of my communities don’t have Internet access or have very limited Internet access. Even sending an e-mail is challenging.

I corresponded with constituents via satellite phone, which in itself has its challenges of time lag and the normal snap, crackle, pop that you would hear in ancient technology. That’s a reality of my constituency and the lives of the constituents that I represent in the north.

Again, I’m pleased to say that I am happy that there are no changes to the boundary for North Coast. It’s a difficult constituency to get around as it is. Adding other communities, I believe, would have been a disservice to those communities as well as the existing communities, considering how hard it is for me to get around and for them to get around, as well, and to communicate with their representative.

The Electoral Boundaries Commission Final Report states that there are changes to 48 of the 85 districts plus the inclusion of two new seats that were proposed for Surrey and Richmond, which, if adopted, would bring the total amount to 87 seats in the Legislature.

I would just generally like to note that I think the Electoral Boundaries Commission Final Report and recommendations should be adopted. I will be voting in favour, I suspect, of this report. These recommendations I think are apt.

I guess I would like to speak to those folks at home. I spoke earlier about the thousands of people from the north coast that I know are glued to channel 64, the legislative channel in our region, who are watching this. I wanted to do just a little bit more background so that they understand what’s going on here and what we’re talking about today.

All British Columbians have a right to be represented by an MLA. As you know, there are currently 85 MLAs which represent the 85 constituents in the 85 provincial electoral districts. In accordance with the principle of representation by population, each MLA should, to the degree possible, represent a similar number of constituents.

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Recognizing that population growth is not uniform throughout the province, periodic reviews of the boundaries ensure that the representation of constituents by MLAs remains equitable and effective in all areas of the province.

As prescribed by the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, a new Electoral Boundaries Commission must be established every second general election to propose changes to the area boundaries and names of the electoral districts of British Columbia.

Between September and November of 2014, the commission travelled the province, visiting 29 communities and hearing from 128 presenters. They received an additional 295 written submissions, largely through the website, during that same period. All this input was helpful in understanding how British Columbians interact with their elected representatives and how the electoral boundaries affect and enable these interactions and effective representation.

The majority of the public input received was regarding three areas, Hope and the Fraser Canyon, Surrey and the Comox Valley.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m pleased to say that the commission did not recommend expanding the boundaries of the North Coast constituency, because it is so difficult to get around to the communities within the constituency as it is, even though it is one of the constituencies that does not have the representative population as the other constituencies do. We have a small population in our constituency of around 25,000 people, and many other constituencies have more than double that population.

Nonetheless, even though the population is small, the geography is vast, making it challenging to communicate and have the face-to-face interaction that is so necessary for my constituents in North Coast.

In conclusion, I’d just like to say I think this report and recommendations should be adopted, and as such, I will conclude my remarks now.

D. Plecas: On behalf of my constituents in Abbotsford South, I rise today to speak to Motion 26 on the proposals contained in the final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission.

As you know, this government has introduced legislation to adopt all of the commission’s recommendations. We want to ensure that all British Columbians are effectively represented in both urban and rural areas of the prov-

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ince. This is especially important, because our province, as we all know, has dense and growing urban areas, and we also have the more remote northern and rural areas.

These recommendations proposed increases to 87 seats, two additional seats. These two new ridings will be in Surrey and Richmond–New Westminster. This reflects the growing population in these areas.

As well, boundary changes will be made to 48 districts in our province. Most of these are relatively minor changes, although there are substantial changes in the Fraser Valley — Hope and Princeton — and Comox Valley and mid–Vancouver Island regions.

The riding I represent, Abbotsford South, is one which will have minor changes.

The increase in the number of seats in this House reflects the growing population of the province. As we all know, B.C. is a desirable place to live and work, and people are attracted to British Columbia for many reasons. It’s beautiful in every part of the province, the people are beautiful, and we have great respect for diversity. I might add that we also have great government.

This government recognizes that it’s important that citizens in less densely populated areas and large geographical districts be effectively represented by their MLAs. That is why we are making sure that the current districts in the north, Cariboo-Thompson and Columbia-Kootenay regions are preserved.

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We want to ensure that these areas are not at risk of losing representation and that they retain the existing number of electoral districts. While there are other rural areas in our province, they were not at risk of losing representation. In fact, the commission has not recommended any reductions.

It is not an easy task to balance democratic representation with geography, and finding this balance was a task that the Electoral Boundaries Commission undertook. We all want fair and effective representation for all British Columbians in this House. Urban and suburban districts, on average, have more people than rural districts do. It is generally easier for an MLA to represent and serve their constituents because the population is concentrated in a much smaller area.

Every province grapples with how best to manage the urban-rural divide. The larger provinces, especially, have rules for exceptional circumstances, including how to best accommodate rural areas. B.C. is no exception, and the act has always permitted commissions to go beyond the 25 percent population deviation rule in special circumstances. It is not a new situation in B.C. to have districts outside that threshold.

The commission continues to do a good job of balancing population and taking community interest into account. The commission undertook a public consultation in March through May of this year. Public hearings were held across the province, and dozens of written submissions by the public were contributed. In 2014, we introduced the Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act to give the independent commission the ability to adjust the boundaries for all electoral districts while, at the same time, preserve the existing number of electoral districts in the northern and rural regions.

The intention was to help the commission balance population between districts and ensure effective representation. Throughout the process of the electoral boundary changes, politics was not even a consideration for government in preparing this legislation. This legislation is proposing exactly what the independent commission recommended.

These changes will be adopted and in place for the next two provincial general elections. This means all British Columbians will continue to be effectively represented in this House.

S. Fraser: It’s always a pleasure to rise, in this case to debate the motion, Motion 26. I’m going to read the motion in its entirety, for those that are…. The title of the motion and the intent….

It is: “Be it resolved that in accordance with

section 14 of the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act…the proposals contained in the Final Report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission tabled in the Legislative Assembly on September 28, 2015, be approved.” This is the debate for that motion, for those watching from afar and glued to the TV, as my colleague from North Coast was suggesting.

These are very important roles that the commission play. I can’t overstate the importance of the Boundaries Commission’s work. It really goes to the heart of democracy and fairness in democracy in this province and in other parts of the world that have the great fortune, as we do in British Columbia and Canada, of having democracies in place.

That’s why it’s so important that the commission’s work be understood, that it be respected and that people realize that it’s not an easy job, in some cases, to make these decisions. Sometimes it goes against the wishes of the public in individual constituencies that might be facing boundary changes. That is a job that I have great respect for the commissioners in wrestling with, as it were.

I just want to give a little bit of a background from the executive

summary of the Boundaries Commission’s work in this case. This is from their executive

summary, and this is a good segue to this discussion, I believe, because it’s important that people understand just what the Boundaries Commission is about.

“All British Columbians are represented in the Legislative Assembly” — this place — “by a member of the Legislative Assembly, MLA. There are currently 85 MLAs to represent the constituents of 85 provincial electoral districts.

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“In theory, in accordance with the principle of representation by population, each MLA should, to a degree possible, represent a similar number of constituents.”

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That’s one of the basic premises for the reviews that happen every second election.

I would further, from the executive

summary of the report…. This is from the Boundaries Commission, and this is since the preliminary report, so I should highlight that this is the final report.

The commission’s work began between September and November of 2014. They travelled the province. They visited 29 communities, and they heard from 128 presenters. They also received 295 written submissions, largely through their website, which was well advertised, and that was during the same period.

All this input was very helpful for them, I’m sure, in understanding how British Columbians interact with their elected representatives and how the electoral boundaries affect and enable these interactions and effective representation.

They submitted their preliminary report containing their initial proposals to the Legislative Assembly on March 26, 2015. I’m not aware of any significant changes, or any changes, for that matter, that were made from the original report to the subsequent report that amounts to the final recommendations we see today.

So in April and May, they looked again to British Columbians to provide those opinions on the proposals from the initial report, either on line or at one of the hearings. And they had hearings here in Victoria also. I was able to attend one of those hearings and present to the commission.

They heard from 144 presenters at 15 community hearings and received 426 written submissions. That informed the decisions for the final report.

In making their proposals, they were guided first and foremost by the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which we all hold so dearly.

They also considered all of the input received from British Columbians about the existing boundaries and where they felt change was warranted. They reflected upon that input, and they developed additional guidelines flowing from the legislation that could assist in the decision-making within the framework.

I should note that I am the representative for Alberni–Pacific Rim — sort of central Vancouver Island. It’s certainly not one of the largest ridings in the province, but it’s not a small riding either, and it has, certainly, a great number of geographical challenges, Alberni–Pacific Rim.

But I first got elected to this place in 2005, and it was Alberni-Qualicum at that point in time. That was my first term in office here — for four years, representing the riding of Alberni-Qualicum.

The Boundary Commission, at that point, just before the 2009 election, went through this process. At that point in time, a different commission. They’re appointed for each session, where they do their work, every eight years. They determined that there were changes needed to Alberni-Qualicum, which was, again, the riding which I was the sitting MLA for.

Then in the 2009 election, following that, my constituency became Alberni–Pacific Rim. And I want to thank the citizens from Alberni–Pacific Rim and, previously, from Alberni-Qualicum for electing me for that second term.

So I was able to become an MLA for a brand-new constituency. It was relatively uncontroversial. The change removed one section, Qualicum Beach, from the riding.

Again, this is based on population. There is a formula that says the population for representation in this province. If there is a significant deviation in that population — often from population changes, people moving in or out of the riding — that can certainly affect the boundaries, as the commission reviews the changes that have been made in population change.

This current commission’s work is proposing in their recommendation, in this debate that we’re having today, that my current riding, which was previously Alberni-Qualicum and is now Alberni–Pacific Rim, would now become Mid Island–Pacific Rim.

[1400]

I have to refer to that. It’s going to take me a little while to get used to that. Alberni–Pacific Rim rolls off my tongue quite fluently at this point in time, so I’m going to mess this up a few times. Mid Island–Pacific Rim is a substantial change from Alberni–Pacific Rim.

I should say the current riding, Alberni–Pacific Rim, incorporates Port Alberni as the centre part of the riding — it’s a small city — and the Alberni Valley, a beautiful valley. It’s a relatively small population. There are 20,000-plus people in the valley.

Then the riding continues to the west coast of Vancouver Island. It incorporates all of Clayoquot Sound, from Hesquiaht territory, Nuu-chah-nulth territory at the very north of Alberni–Pacific Rim, right down through Ahousat, another Nuu-chah-nulth community, a large community, isolated. Hesquiaht and Ahousat are both accessible only by boat, not by road or by float plane.

Just moving south, further in this graphic description of my current constituency, there is the district of Tofino. That’s in Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation territory — Nuu-chah-nulth still. Then we go through the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve — beautiful Long Beach; I’m very fortunate to be the representative for this area — and then down through Ucluelet and the Ucluelet First Nation, another Nuu-chah-nulth nation.

The Tla-o-qui-aht nation is there also in Barkley Sound. Barkley Sound is included. If you cross Barkley Sound through the Broken Group islands, that brings you to the town of Bamfield and the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and, further south still, to the Pacheedaht First Nation.

That’s the west coast — very difficult in many ways, depending on the time of year, to get from place to place as it is, a challenge that I’ve certainly taken on. But the

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roads to Bamfield and the Huu-ay-aht and Pacheedaht territory are logging roads. They’re not up to public safety standards. They’re industrial roads, so challenging there. And of course, as I mentioned, to the north on the west coast, many of the communities, the Nuu-chah-nulth communities, are only accessible by boat and by seaplane.

That current riding that I represent — if we move back eastward from Port Alberni, there’s Whisky Creek, Coombs, Errington. Just north of Qualicum Beach, I pick it up along the coast again through Dashwood, Lighthouse Country, Bowser, Deep Bay. The current north boundary, on the east side of the Island, is near Rosewall Creek, which is actually the boundary for the regional district where it moves from the Nanaimo regional district to the Comox regional district.

The proposed changes incorporated within the boundary commission’s work for Alberni–Pacific Rim would be…. It would grow in size geographically — substantially in size. It would increase to include areas like Fanny Bay, Union Bay, Royston and the islands of Hornby and Denman and further still to incorporate a large town, the town of Cumberland — a beautiful historic town, also, which is right in the Comox Valley. That is a big change.

For myself, if I were to be fortunate enough to get re-elected, that riding would increase the size and the challenges that go along with that, the geographical challenges. Again, there are islands that would require ferry travel to get to and from. That’s Hornby and Denman. There are two different ferries required to get to both of those.

I would submit that any future MLAs would need to consider the changes proposed here in the creation of Mid Island–Pacific Rim electoral district. The changes would definitely necessitate incorporating more, better representation through at least another constituency office. I do not believe…. My constituency office right now is in the centre of my riding. It’s in the city of Port Alberni. But Cumberland now creates another anchor area for the new riding.

[1405]

I would like to refer to the boundaries commission’s statements about this new riding. I’m going to read from their report, on the

section that deals with Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast. This gives a good background into the issues and some of the decision-making process and some of the controversy from the public that led to the changes from Alberni–Pacific Rim to Mid Island–Pacific Rim.

“We were reminded of the transportation challenges faced by residents on the Sunshine Coast, the islands east and north of Vancouver Island and the remote communities on the north and western coasts of Vancouver Island.” The input “also emphasized the Malahat as a natural divide between districts in the south and the rest of Vancouver Island.

“Most of the current electoral districts in this area are at or near the provincial average. The exceptions are the rapidly growing Comox Valley, which is currently 22 percent above the provincial average, and neighbouring Alberni–Pacific Rim” — my current constituency — “at 18 percent below the provincial average.” This disparity is too great and creates “the necessity to rebalance the population in this area in order to provide more effective representation for both of these communities.

“We also propose changes in the Nanaimo and greater Victoria areas to respond to public input, rebalance populations and provide more effective representation.”

By far, the largest and most significant changes in the boundaries, as they’re being proposed here, are to my current constituency. I’m going to pause from quoting from their report. The rationale for a population change is key here. Now, the growth of the Comox Valley has led to it being 22 percent over the provincial average, which, according to the boundary commission’s mandate, is too high.

When you consider that the constituency that I represent just south of that on Vancouver Island, Alberni–Pacific Rim, is 18 percent low and has not shown the growth potential of the Comox Valley, I can understand the rationale for the proposed changes, which would increase the riding of Alberni–Pacific Rim significantly. It moves it to 14,099 square kilometres. That would be the change, if these final recommendations are approved here in this House.

The Mid Island–Pacific Rim electoral district would have 14,099 square kilometres, and the population would have been brought up within a percentage point of where it’s supposed to be as a provincial average. That population would be 52,833, although friends of ours in Port Alberni have just had a baby a couple of days ago. I bet you that is not in there. That would make the population 52,834. I think that would be appropriate, and I give congratulations to those friends.

These proposed changes did cause controversy. Most of the controversy and the concerns were being raised in the area that currently is not represented in Alberni–Pacific Rim. I’ll speak specifically about concerns raised in the town of Cumberland.

Cumberland is within the Comox Valley, a beautiful town, a historic mining town. Right now it has opened up into an eclectic mix of interesting businesses, attracting young people. There are great opportunities for sports and mountain biking. The area is gorgeous, and it’s so close to Mount Washington, a wonderful ski area — lots of recreational potential. It’s a growing community also. That area, Cumberland, is traditionally associated with Courtenay and Comox — the three major communities within the current Comox regional district.

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The three communities have been together under this rubric previously. Having that separated…. I understand the concerns raised by a number of people to the com-

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mission from Cumberland. Their association, for social, family and economic reasons, spans into Courtenay and Comox. Separating that out into another electoral district causes concern.

I made a point when I addressed the commission in their work, when they had their public hearings…. After their initial proposals for change, when they went through their second round of public consultations, they had hearings here just down the street from this place in Victoria. I spoke to them, and I reiterated the concerns that were raised to me and that I learned about from areas like Cumberland that voiced their concerns already to the commission.

That being said, I do understand very much the rationale of the commission. This is going to highlight that — how the commission arrived at their decisions to change the ridings, such as they did from Alberni–Pacific Rim to Mid Island–Pacific Rim.

I’ll just cite from the report, if I may. This is under the

section “Comox Valley and mid-Vancouver Island.” Also, just for those that have access, it’s page 117 of the Boundaries Commission’s report.

“In recent years, the Comox Valley electoral district has shared the same boundaries as the Comox Valley regional district…. However…the population of Comox Valley has now outgrown a single electoral district. At 22 percent over the provincial average, Comox Valley is just within the plus or minus 25 percent population range but is projected to exceed it by 2017.”

That is well before the next Boundaries Commission’s work would begin — six years before. You can see why the Boundaries Commission needs to address these potential changes at this juncture.

I’ll continue:

“Therefore, we determined that we must address this issue now and propose boundaries that provide more effective representation by reducing the population within the district…. The current Alberni–Pacific Rim electoral district” — which I am honoured to be the MLA for — “is by far the smallest electoral district on Vancouver Island by population.”

Obviously, there are many much smaller electoral districts. Certainly, within the urban centres, like in Victoria, you can walk around your constituency in an hour. I would be hard-pressed to walk around my constituency in a year, and even then, I don’t think it would quite work.

That being said, continuing:

“The current Alberni–Pacific Rim electoral district is by far the smallest….

“To provide more effective representation for both communities, the boundaries between the two districts are altered to assign some of the population of Comox Valley to the other mid-Island electoral district” — Alberni–Pacific Rim.

“While the majority of the public input from the Comox Valley requested we not make any changes to the current electoral district, it also emphasized that if we were to make changes, the communities of Courtenay and Comox would be best served in the same electoral district.”

I’m going to pause for a moment, because it’s a good point to remind. This same process that we’re debating today in Motion 26 occurs at the federal level with federal ridings. They had their changes proposed and voted on and adopted just prior to this federal election that we just went through this Monday. There were significant changes made there, too, in this same region.

In the federal boundary changes that were adopted, they actually separated out the two cities of Comox and Courtenay. They actually did the separation that this Boundaries Commission at the provincial level suggested should be resisted because of just the closeness of those…. They’re seamless communities in many ways, Comox and Courtenay. It’s an interesting parallel where the federal process, using….

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The federal ridings are quite a bit larger. Their population requirements are larger also. But they were not able to achieve their changes to meet their mandates of population by representation without separating out the cities of Courtenay and Comox. In this case, provincially, they have worked to keep those two centres together, and Cumberland has become the centre that will be removed from that representation and brought down into the new riding.

“Our preliminary report proposal to include Cumberland in Mid Island–Pacific Rim was not well received by a number of those who provided public input” — as I referred to earlier. “However, we continue to believe that the inclusion of Cumberland in Mid Island–Pacific Rim will provide more effective representation for both communities. With its sizeable population, Cumberland will act as an anchor community for the eastern portion of the district, similar to the role that Port Alberni plays for the central portion and Tofino and Ucluelet play in the west.”

As I referred to the rationale by the commission to make these changes, they did so knowing full well that there was controversy, that there was resistance to the changes being proposed. For the most part, the concerns were raised around the removal of Cumberland from their current riding and moving it southward into Mid Island–Pacific Rim.

I do not fault the Boundaries Commission here. Anyone who is purporting to represent this new, much larger constituency known as Mid Island–Pacific Rim would need to take into account the population changes and the reality that Cumberland and the areas just south of there, which I cited before — Royston, Union Bay, Fanny Bay, Hornby and Denman Islands — would definitely require, I would suggest, an office opened probably in Cumberland to ensure that there is adequate representation and access to adequate representation in that area.

Geographically, getting from Cumberland to Port Alberni is not necessarily practical. Certainly, whoever is the MLA in this future configuration would have other challenges. To get from Hornby and Denman Islands to, say, Bamfield, on the west coast, I don’t think…. In many cases, you wouldn’t be able to do it in the same day and get back again.

There are challenges that the new MLA for this post-election constituency will have to deal with. Certainly, I think key to that is ensuring that there is another office,

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at least another office, available to the people — probably, as recommended by the commission, in the town of Cumberland, which is not currently, of course, in the Alberni–Pacific Rim riding.

I’m going to start to wind down. I think it’s very important that we’re doing this debate, that the people that are watching have some understanding of why we’re supporting the good work, the tough work, of the commission and the commissioners. This is not easy work.

The concerns raised by the public around such changes as are being suggested here — major changes, in my constituency — have to be heeded by the commission. They also have to be tempered by the main mandates of the commission, which largely revolve around population changes and the trends of those changes to make sure that there is some form of consistency in representation in this House.

There are realities in this House that we all know of. For those of us who have been here a number of years, this configuration that we’re facing right here, where it looks like somebody maybe had a couple of drinks before they drew the lines down…. Well, these were always straight lines before. This was not a mistake doing it this way. This was actually very clever engineering. In 2009, the changes moved us from 79 seats, which means 79 electoral districts, to 85, which is the current configuration here.

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The addition of those seven seats was a challenge. It does raise the spectre of what will happen in 40 years, when the population of British Columbia will arguably be considerably larger. Future boundary commissions might have to figure out: “Well, how will we seat that much more representation in this place?” I’m not sure how that will work.

We can’t get too much closer. There is a parliamentary history that suggests we need two sword-lengths apart in this House to keep things somewhat civil. You know, I don’t know how strong that parliamentary history will dictate what we do here, but it certainly is part of the history and the legend of this place. I know we all try to honour and respect that too.

With that in mind, I would just like to close by suggesting that these changes are supportable. I realize they focus primarily on my constituency, but I think that’s appropriate. Others are standing to speak on effects in their constituencies and their future constituencies, and that is appropriate also.

I do support the work of the commission. I will certainly, as this comes forward as a bill in the very near future — probably next week — be supporting the work of the commission. I’m sure that this bill will be passed, and these changes will be incorporated for the future government of this place after the 2017 election.

With that, I will take my seat. I thank those watching for listening to what is sometimes a tedious debate, if you will. But again, I think it’s so important to our democracy that we have a boundary commission process that is objective and is not political.

Just going back in history, there’s a term known as gerrymandering. That is something no government or governance body ever wants to be accused of, trying to manipulate boundaries for political reasons. This process, in my opinion, has worked in a way that that could never happen. The independence of the boundary commission I applaud, and I thank them for their work.

M. Hunt: It’s my pleasure to rise to speak to Motion 26, which, in essence, is saying that we bring forth the final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission of September 28, 2015, and that their recommendations be approved.

I want to speak to it because, of course, in 2014, we introduced the Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act, in which we gave the independent commission the ability to adjust the boundaries of all the electoral districts while preserving the existing number of electoral districts in the northern and rural regions of this province.

It is the case already that urban and suburban districts, on average, have more people than the rural districts do. However, the urban districts are much easier for MLAs to represent.

In my case, I can go from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner of my constituency in 15 minutes by car. It’s not a problem for me to get around my constituency. However, there are others in this House where it can take them a day to get from one corner of their constituency to the other corner of their constituency, because they ultimately have to fly down to Vancouver to fly back up to the other corner of their constituency.

We have these tremendous changes and diversity within this province, but ultimately, the goal is to get fair representation for the citizens of British Columbia by their members. The bottom line, ultimately, is that we need to be fair and effective in our representation, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have equal representation by population here in this House.

By allowing the commission to propose up to two additional districts, the commission has added flexibility to address the population growth in the province. Of course, we know where that growth is.

Right in Surrey, we have the two largest electoral districts — my electoral district being the second largest and the largest being immediately east of my district, Surrey-Cloverdale. Also, the Richmond–New Westminster area is being affected by getting a new electoral district, to try and strike that balance between population growth and the geographical differences that we have in this province.

[1425]

Now, the commission undertook a public consultation through March and May. They heard many comments from this province and throughout this province. Their challenge was to come back with a report that balanced everything, and that is not an easy task.

[ Page 9686 ]

All I have to do is look at my own riding, Surrey-Panorama. We were the second-largest riding by population. Obviously, something had to change. Something had to be done. The question was simply: how would the commission take that? Would they take that off the east side of our riding, or would they take it off the south side? The interesting thing is that their initial proposal was to take it off of the south end, which in fact is the northern part of the South Surrey peninsula.

It was an interesting one, what has happened to that portion of the riding. Before the previous commission, it was actually in Surrey-Cloverdale. That, of course, is a complete anomaly — to think that Crescent Beach is in Cloverdale. It’s not. Geographically, there are a few miles between the two of them. But in order to balance populations, that’s the way it was. We get these kinds of anomalies within the districts in order to try to balance the issues of population.

Obviously, it’s a disappointment to me to lose the northern part of South Surrey from my riding. It’s a great group of wonderful constituents, tremendous supporters down there. Of course, we have Crescent Beach, itself, being Surrey’s only major beach that we have on ocean. I lose that. But this is life. This is democracy. This is how things work in order to get fair representation so that we allow those in the north, in particular, and also in more rural areas to be covered.

I also want to speak of another change that has happened in Surrey. By the stroke of the pen, when the royal assent comes to this, although I still live in the same house, I will suddenly move from Fleetwood to Cloverdale. You know, although I live in Fleetwood — I can guarantee you that I live in Fleetwood — I will live in Cloverdale. I will instantly move, and so will my neighbours.

One of the interesting anomalies of this process was in the first report of the commission where they said one of their objectives was to try to keep town centres whole. That is a good and laudable objective. However, when you start doing those divisions, it becomes a challenge, and particularly when it came to Fleetwood.

The first proposal was that they took the town centre of Fleetwood, and one-quarter of Fleetwood town centre remained in Fleetwood. Three-quarters of the Fleetwood town centre all of a sudden became Cloverdale, which is miles away. That’s exactly what happened. Obviously, the good citizens of Fleetwood raised their objection as the commission came the second time through Surrey and also in their sittings here in Victoria and objected to this.

In that first proposal, Fleetwood high school, Fleetwood Park, Fleetwood Community Centre and Fleetwood Library were all in Cloverdale — which, of course, they’re not. The commission, in their wisdom, has looked at this, and they have at least put Fleetwood high school and Fleetwood Park, the library and the community centre into the continuing of Surrey-Fleetwood. But they have gone from one-quarter now to one-half of the town centre remaining in Fleetwood, the other half going to Cloverdale.

These are the challenges of the commission. These are the challenges to try to deal with these numbers. Like I said, we had that same problem with the south portion of my riding with the previous commission, which had it in Cloverdale. Now we have Fleetwood going to Cloverdale. I don’t know what it is. Cloverdale just wants to attract so much more of Surrey to itself, and it just sort of gobbles the rest of us up.

But we are Fleetwood, we will remain Fleetwood, and we will continue to be Fleetwood, even though we don’t get to vote for Surrey-Fleetwood in the next provincial election.

I would like to thank the commission members for their diligence in creating this report. I want to thank them and all British Columbians for participating in this process. It is a challenging process. It is a difficult process.

Ultimately, as has been previously spoken by members on both sides of the House, no one in this House wants to be accused of gerrymandering. Nobody in this House wants to bring political…. Well, we would sort of like to on a selfish basis.

[1430]

But on the big basis, we don’t want to bring partisanship in this process, because we want everyone in the province of British Columbia to be represented fairly in this House by those whom they choose to elect.

Although it personally affects me, in that I suddenly am no longer in Fleetwood, the Fleetwood that I love, I will be supporting the adoption of the commission’s recommendations and their published final report, because I think, ultimately, it’s good for British Columbia. It’s good for all of us.

I want to again thank the commission for their work. I will be supporting this resolution and the act, when it also comes forward.

D. Donaldson: I’m happy to take my place today in debate on Motion 26, the Electoral Boundaries Commission report proposals.

[R. Lee in the chair.]

Really, what we’re doing here today is considering the final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, 2015. I’m going to talk generally about the commissioners’ work, then talk about how that work impacts Stikine, the constituency I represent, and then talk specifically about some of the recommendations of the commission.

I think I would like to start, though, by saying that the comments by the member for Surrey-Panorama…. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. I represent the largest and least populous constituency in the province, and he’s talking about boundary modifications in the biggest city in the province: Surrey. It really shows the diversity

[ Page 9687 ]

of B.C. — what makes it strong, what makes it beautiful, what makes it resilient — and also the challenge that the commissioners had in front of them. I think it’s a great example of what we face in B.C. and what makes B.C. strong. So I appreciate his comments. I’ll be talking about quite a different reality compared to downtown Surrey.

First off, I would like to thank the commissioners who created this final report that we’re considering in this motion, an independent commission that put this together. It was headed by Mr. Justice Tom Melnick, a justice of the Supreme Court. He was the chair. The other two members were Beverley Busson, a former commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Keith Archer, who is the Chief Electoral Officer for the province of B.C. We know him well here in the Legislature. So three very independent people who were on the commission that created the final report.

I thank them for their work. I’ll get into a little bit during my comments as to what challenges they faced. It was difficult work that they undertook, so I thank them for their work and for this final report.

A little bit about the process. The commission, between September and November 2014, travelled around the province gathering input. They visited 29 communities, heard from 128 presenters and received 295 written submissions. They came into Stikine. They visited the town of Smithers in September of 2014. That was just over a year ago. They heard from a number of presenters, and I know that many people made written submissions, as well, from Stikine to the commission.

After they did that, they created a preliminary report that was presented to the Legislature here on March 26, 2015. And then in April and May, again the commission went out to gather input on that preliminary report. They visited 15 communities and heard from another 144 presenters, and another 426 written submissions were received on the preliminary report. So that was in the neighbourhood of over 600 written submissions and about 300 presenters — very extensive work that they undertook. It was important work and difficult work. It’s important and difficult, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

[1435]

Once they started formulating the final report, there were some constraints. We’ve heard about those from previous speakers, and we’ve considered those constraints in previous debates in the Legislature, where in their deliberations, there was an overarching constraint.

There were three regions of the province — the north region, where Stikine is located, the Cariboo-Thompson region, and the Columbia-Kootenay region — in which the commissioners were not permitted to reduce the number of constituencies from the current number. Then they were also permitted to increase the number of seats, in this constituency, from 85 to 87. Those were the constraints, and I’ll get to those a little bit later in my comments.

Again, it’s very important work. It’s really talking about democracy and what democracy means. Every second provincial election, a commission, through the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, considers boundaries of the constituencies, because we see populations increase and populations decline. The essence of the act, the primary consideration to ensure effective representation, is representation by population, based on an average.

The reason I say this is difficult work, and I will get into this as I discuss more thoroughly the characteristics of Stikine, is that effective representation really also means access to the services provided by your MLA and access to the MLA in general. When you’re looking at some of the constituencies in B.C., that’s really impacted by what we enjoy and what we believe in, in B.C. — the amazing geography, the amazing vast spaces where there aren’t a lot of people, as well as the thriving cities and towns that we find in B.C.

Trying to find that balance, looking at democracy meaning more than simply representation by population — these are really important issues. We know in Canada…. Canada has become the most urbanized country in the world: 80 percent of people living in Canada live in urban areas. So it comes down to the issue of fairness and the ability of people that don’t live in those urban areas to be effectively represented in places like the Legislature here so that their views and their perspectives are fairly represented when it comes to making legislation, passing laws, as well as the services that MLA offices and the MLAs can provide to their constituents in the constituency.

We have this trend of increasing urbanization. We’re the most urbanized country in the world. Yet there are people living in rural areas that deserve as much representation in a democracy as those who don’t. This is what the commission grapples with when they try to realign boundaries and yet still try to remain as true as possible to the concept of representation by population based on average.

In B.C., as the report points out, the representation by population based on average…. If you looked at the 87 constituencies that the report lays out, the average population is 53,119. That’s the average in each of the constituencies if you take 87 and divide it into the population of B.C.

Under the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, the population can deviate, in a constituency, by 25 percent — so in other words, 25 percent higher than that average or 25 percent lower than that average. That would mean that a constituency population could be anywhere from 39,839 at the minus-25-percent deviation up to 66,399, and that’s at the plus-25-percent deviation.

The act also says, in trying to be true and have the primary consideration that effective representation is by representation based on population…. The act says that although the deviation shouldn’t be more than 25 per-

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cent either way, it can exceed 25 percent under special circumstances.

[1440]

I will be talking about that in quite a bit more greater detail when I talk about Stikine, the constituency I’m very lucky and honoured to represent.

The report. The commissioners have done a very, very bang-up job in trying to remain as true to that as possible, as far as only under certain special circumstances should the 25 percent deviation be exceeded. In the report we are considering today under this motion, 66 of the 87 constituencies proposed are within 15 percent of that average. In other words, that 53,199 population average — 67 of 87 of the proposed constituencies are within 15 percent of average. So they’re doing very well as far as keeping the deviation under that 25 percent, either way.

Ten of the constituencies are under the 25 percent deviation. In other words, their populations are below that 39,839. Now, that exceeds what should be, although under the act, under special circumstances, that can happen. The ten that are under the 25 percent represents a number that wasn’t any higher than when the last commission considered a boundaries report, which was back in 2008. So we haven’t gotten any worse on those cases of special circumstances. It’s still ten. It was ten in the previous report as well.

None of the constituencies are over the 25 percent. None exceed that 25 percent deviation. None of the constituencies go beyond 66,399, which again, is a good thing. When you start getting that kind of population per MLA, it does put a lot of stress and overstretches the constituency offices to be able to fulfil their duties to serve the members of their constituency. None, under the report, are over 25 percent.

Stikine, you might have guessed by now…. I know many of the members in the Legislature here know about Stikine from what I’ve talked about over the past six years. Stikine is one of those ten that is beyond the standard deviation on the lower end. Remember, the 25 percent low level would be about 39,839 people. Stikine, as pointed out in the Boundaries Commission report, has 20,166. That’s a deviation of 61.2 percent from the average. It’s the largest constituency in the province with the smallest population. It’s 196,484-square kilometres.

As I said, the previous speaker from Surrey-Panorama was talking about certain boundary changes within his constituency that would move a school into another area or a community centre back into the area he represents. We’re talking, with Stikine, around an area of 196,484 square kilometres.

In their wisdom, the commission decided not to make that constituency of Stikine any bigger in order to try to raise the population from 20,166 up closer to the 39,000 lower threshold. I’m very appreciative of that. I think they understand the special circumstances, which they’re allowed under the act, to grant for the kind of deviation we see in Stikine from the provincial average. So in their wisdom, they didn’t make it larger.

I don’t know how they could have considered making it any larger, when I start to get to explain a little bit more about the specifics of Stikine. We’ll get to that in a minute.

[1445]

B.C. is an amazing province, geography-wise. There are lots of physical boundaries, geographically, between many of the communities, whether they’re mountain ranges, rivers or lakes.

Physical configuration can be a part of the special circumstances. This will be a very important part of what I’m going to talk about as well — communication and transportation. How are the communication systems in a constituency? How are the transportation options and availability of transportation in a constituency?

Those are some of the circumstances that the commissioners are able to consider to grant a constituency-size population beyond the 25 percent standard deviation. These are some of the factors the commissioners took into consideration when they did that with Stikine, as outlined in the report. I’m glad they did that, because that was the real thrust of the presentations made in Smithers that day in September a year ago, and that was the thrust of the written submissions as well.

Again, it relates to effective representation. As the commission pointed out in their report, in effective representation the primary consideration is representation by population, but there are special circumstances to go beyond that. That’s what the commissioners have done when it comes to ten of the constituencies in the province, Stikine being the prime example of a special circumstance.

Interjection.

D. Donaldson: Yeah, very special.

Now I’m going to talk a little bit about Stikine. Again, I talked about the size — 196,484 square kilometres. That’s 20 million hectares. That’s the size of Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark and Netherlands combined. So it’s not a small place, and there are 20,000 people there. There are many places in the northern part of the constituency where there are more moose than people, and sometimes it’s pleasant to be there.

I’m going to describe a bit. You know, I’ve been MLA for Stikine for six years, and I haven’t even been to all of Stikine. There are parts of Stikine, up in the northwest corner, that border the Yukon and Alaska, the Tatshenshini, where there is a road. What you have to

[ Page 9689 ]

do to get there is drive up to Whitehorse, head west from Whitehorse towards Alaska, turn south on Highway 2, and then you enter back into British Columbia. If you ever have the opportunity and want to go rafting on the Alsek-Tatshenshini, one of the best wilderness rafting experiences in the world, a world-class rafting trip, that’s where people put in for the Tatshenshini — although there are no communities.

That’s one reason I haven’t been to that area of my constituency. I don’t know how many other people living in a more urban area can say: “Well, that’s one place I haven’t been in my constituency.” But after six years, I haven’t been there. I think maybe I will find time to go there and say: “I’m exploring my constituency, and I won’t be in touch for a couple of weeks because I’ll be rafting on the Tatshenshini. I won’t have any cell phone service. Don’t worry; I will come back.” It shows the size of the constituency.

I’d like to take you, hon. Speaker, and those in the chamber who would like to listen on a little bit of a travelogue through this constituency, with the intent of showing the special circumstances that relate to this report, as to why the commissioners were able to not add any more to Stikine, to leave it the way it is even though it’s 20,000 people and much below the provincial average.

Atlin is the most northwest community in Stikine. Atlin Lake is the headwaters of the Yukon River. The Yukon River flows north out of Atlin Lake and heads northwest through the Yukon, out through Alaska to the Bering Sea. That’s the northern part of my constituency. The watershed is to the Bering Sea.

[1450]

Atlin, as you might guess, because I mentioned the Yukon River, was a town of 10,000 back in the Yukon-Klondike gold rush days. Now it’s about 300. It is on the traditional territories of the Taku River Tlingit. There’s a Taku River Tlingit reserve right beside Atlin on the shores of Atlin Lake.

Atlin doesn’t have any municipal representation. It’s not in a regional district. Its 300 members have organized under the Atlin community improvement district, so they do have a self-organized group that looks out for the interests of the community but, again, no municipal organization, no regional district.

From Atlin, if you drive north, you can get to Whitehorse in about three hours, maybe a little less, so many of the services they access are through the Yukon and through joint service agreements with B.C., for social services and other services.

They have a school there. Many of the students who are in the more senior grades end up going to Whitehorse and boarding, boarding out with families or in a boarding facility at the school.

The telephone system there — we’re talking about special circumstances involving transportation and communication — is antiquated. It’s serviced by Northwestel. It’s not on the Telus system. Telus, I believe, owns the equipment, but Northwestel services the equipment. It’s very antiquated.

They have a local Internet service provider. Internet is not what we would be used to in places like Victoria as far as high speed.

That’s Atlin.

The road down from Jakes Corner, which is the closest community in the Yukon…. It’s where the Alaska Highway crosses the bottom part of the Yukon, and then you head down to Atlin. It’s about a 100-kilometre drive. In the last, I think, about 40 kilometres of that, you re-enter into B.C. The road can be tricky and at times treacherous.

Transportation and communication are big issues and something that I know the commissioners considered when they decided not to add any more to Stikine. If you head….

I get to Atlin about once a year. I can drive there, take maybe a week or so and visit communities along the way. I drive there, possibly after landing in Smithers and after flying up from Victoria. It is about a 1,262-kilometre drive. I use it to visit other communities along the way.

I’d love be able to get to Atlin more often. It’s a beautiful community, but it’s far away, very far away. Sometimes I will fly up to Whitehorse from Vancouver, rent a car and then drive down back into B.C. and to Atlin.

You can see why the commissioners would consider transportation and communication a special circumstance. The people of Atlin can always try to phone me on their antiquated telephone-line system or send me an e-mail on their less-than-high-speed Internet access. But in the north, we do business primarily face to face. Development of relationships are important, and face-to-face is the preferred way for people to do business.

If people from Atlin are not ending up driving to Whitehorse, flying to Vancouver, and taking a ferry to Victoria to see me, we usually end up seeing each other face to face about once a year.

If I were to start in Atlin and then drive up to the Yukon border, the next town, village, in my constituency is Lower Post, and that’s 473 kilometres from Atlin. There are some neat caribou herds along the way there, but there are not a lot of people until you hit Lower Post.

[1455]

To get to Lower Post, I drive from Atlin up into the Yukon, dip down once or twice into B.C., back into Yukon through Watson Lake, then head a little south and into Lower Post.

It’s the community that’s furthest northeast in Stikine. It’s Kaska territory — Kaska Dena. This is Kaska territory. It’s on the Liard River. The Liard River is part of the Mackenzie watershed, so it flows into the Arctic. So we’re going from Atlin, being the headwaters for the Yukon River, flowing into the Bering Sea.

To the other side of the northern east part of the constituency, the Liard River flows eventually into the

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Mackenzie and then into the Arctic Ocean. You get some pretty different fish in that river: Arctic char — ones that we don’t see down further south in the watershed.

In Lower Post again, transportation and communication issues, compared to other constituencies. That’s why the commissioners were able to see that Stikine is a special circumstance.

We head south now. Driving to Lower Post, I drive back towards Watson Lake, back into the Yukon west, and then I’ll hang a left and turn south. Now I’m on Highway 37, the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, about one kilometre, and I’m back into B.C. and heading south now towards Good Hope Lake. Good Hope Lake is, again, Kaska territory.

Then after that, there’s Jade City. Jade City has its own reality TV show now, in case you haven’t known that. It’s been on for about a year now, based on the jade trade.

Again, we’re not talking any cell service here. If somebody is on the road and has a question for their MLA, they have to wait maybe a couple, three, five hours to actually get to a phone — a land line — where they can call the MLA office or call me here in Victoria — so no cell service.

Then we’re getting a little further south now. Again — I don’t know — we’re probably talking a three- or four-hour drive, and we’re into Dease Lake. Dease Lake is part of the regional district of Kitimat-Stikine. It does have organized local government, although the regional district is headquartered about a ten-hour drive south of there, in Terrace. It’s a pocket of the regional district, which they voted recently to join.

We’re in Tahltan country now. Dease Lake does have an airport, as the Transportation Minister knows. The airport is in need of repair. It’s in need of resurfacing. Air Ambulance is worried about landing there. People are facing transportation issues. If they wanted to fly out of there to come visit me in Victoria or come to one of the offices, there are transportation issues out of Dease Lake as well.

I’m going to talk about Telegraph Creek a little bit now, which is 150 kilometres to the west of Dease Lake — again, in Tahltan territory — and on the Stikine River, an amazing river flowing out to the Pacific Ocean. Now we’re into the rivers that flow into the Pacific. Telegraph Creek. It was a long time of, obviously, a Tahltan community. It’s their traditional territories.

The reason the road was built down there into it is that it was used as a staging area during the Second World War for the building of the Alaska Highway. The U.S. engineering corps knew that they needed a halfway point for planes to land to refuel. That halfway point was Watson Lake, as I mentioned, up by Lower Post.

Watson Lake was the airport. That airport needed to be built in order to fly in the equipment needed to build out, on both ends, the Alaska Highway during the Second World War. The equipment to build that airport was brought in through Telegraph Creek.

[1500]

It was dragged with D9 cats, I suppose, up to Dease Lake — so Dease Lake became a community then — put on barges down Dease Lake, the equipment, and then down the Dease River to the Liard, to Lower Post, then dragged up from Lower Post to Watson Lake. That’s how the airport there got built to bring in equipment for the Alaska Highway during the Second World War.

Telegraph has a local Internet service provider, and it’s got pretty good Internet. But, you know, telephone systems aren’t good there, either, and it’s a long ways away. Telegraph is probably the most isolated community in Stikine.

I’m just covering…. I see my time is almost out, which I find…. I haven’t even made it halfway down my constituency. It’s crazy. I guess this is why the Boundaries Commission was able to grant special status to a constituency like Stikine. I’m happy to support their report, and I know that we’ll be discussing it further.

J. Martin: It’s a great pleasure having the opportunity to rise on behalf of the fine people, my constituents, in Chilliwack. As one might suspect, I’m very proud to support this motion.

First, though, I would like to thank the members of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for their exemplary work in crafting their report. It is thorough. It is thoughtful and sensitive to the realities of our large province with its densely populated urban areas and vast rural regions where communities are often great distances apart and sparsely populated.

This act recommends an increase in the number of electoral districts in British Columbia by two, to 87 from 85, with new ridings in Surrey and in the Richmond–New Westminster area. There will also be boundary changes to 48 ridings, including substantial changes in the Fraser Valley, where I come from; the whole Princeton area; and the Comox Valley, mid–Vancouver Island region.

Our province is thriving, and it’s no surprise that people from other parts of Canada want to come to British Columbia. They want to take advantage of job opportunities and set down roots in our beautiful province. People want to come here to retire, because our standard of living is second to none in the country. They want to come to a province that has a stable, disciplined government that sees the value in balancing its budget year after year and all the benefits and all the possibilities that come with that.

Our government has introduced legislation to adopt all of the Electoral Boundaries Commission’s recommendations, which will ensure British Columbians are effectively represented in both urban and rural areas of the province.

We live in a province with dense and growing urban areas and more remote northern and rural regions, and we have an obligation to ensure all British Columbians are represented appropriately. We plan to retain districts

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in the north, the Cariboo-Thompson and the Columbia-Kootenay regions, to ensure British Columbians in less densely populated yet large, sprawling districts can be effectively represented by their MLAs.

I’m reminded that it was just a year and a half ago that members of the opposition were against a bill that protected the number of northern and rural ridings. Amendments to the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, 2014, required that no reductions in electoral districts can occur in B.C.’s north, Cariboo-Thompson and Columbia-Kootenay regions.

Well, during the second reading debate of this bill in March 2014, opposition MLAs unanimously spoke against the proposed bill. Opposition members representing the large, mostly rural ridings of Columbia River–Revelstoke, Kootenay West, Nelson-Creston, Stikine and Skeena did not voice support for the bill, which suggests to me they put the interests of their urban colleagues ahead of the needs of their constituents.

This is despite the fact that Skeena, for example, is one of the ridings that has been protected despite its small population. In debate, the member for Skeena did not voice his support for the bill, despite the fact that Skeena is one of the ridings being protected by the proposed legislation. Opposition MLAs from northern and rural regions should have been standing with the government in solidarity, making it clear that protecting those ridings and giving residents of small, rural and remote communities proper access to their MLAs is essential in a democracy such as ours.

[1505]

Thankfully, hon. Speaker and colleagues, there will be no reduction in the number of seats in the rural regions of the province, because in 2014, we mandated a freeze on changes in remote regions. Now, that doesn’t come as any great surprise. It wasn’t that long ago that the opposition wouldn’t even take their election campaign much north of Quesnel, somehow under the impression that that’s kind of as far as British Columbia goes. Well, we view things very differently on the government.

We gave the independent commission the ability to adjust the boundaries of all electoral districts while preserving the existing number of districts in northern and rural regions. The intention was to help the commission balance population between districts and to ensure effective representation. Our government has voted to approve all of the commission’s recommendations and introduced legislation to support this.

The commission undertook a public consultation in March through May of this year and considered the many, many comments gathered. The commission’s task was to balance democratic representation with geography, which is not an easy task in some areas. Our government respects the commission’s proposal and the independent, non-partisan work they carry out and has proposed legislation that adopts these recommendations.

The commission held significant consultations across the province on the proposals — 44 public hearings across the province and dozens of written submissions. I would like to thank the commission members for their diligence in creating the final report and all British Columbians who participated in the process.

As noted, there is a great desire of people to come to British Columbia. From time to time, we are going to have to adjust our electoral boundaries to accommodate those areas that have seen higher growth than others. Now, this is very, very different than the 1990s, when there was literally a stampede of people trying to leave B.C. as quick as they could. Residents were leaving, head offices were leaving, and investment was leaving for greener pastures elsewhere.

That is no longer the case. Today we have people coming to British Columbia because they understand that this is the best-governed part of the country.

The independent commission has weighed every factor and ensured every British Columbian will have effective representation in the next election, the one after that and beyond.

S. Robinson: That was certainly a rousing little speech that we just heard about representation when in fact we have two seats that are sitting empty, one for 100 days. I would like to caution some of the members from the other side when they talk about representation. That they can actually stand very comfortably, recognizing that there are two seats that are sitting empty right now out of the 85….

I would like to actually start my comments about this motion that is before us, Motion 26, about the Electoral Boundaries Commission. I think it’s really important for us to recognize that this commission’s job was to make sure that democracy was enacted in a way that people can fully participate in the electoral process. That means that when we’re elected as MLAs, we are elected to represent people. It’s a little disappointing that we have two communities that have no representation. I hope that in the days ahead, we’ll find out when they’re actually going to have a representative.

Right now we know that there are 85 seats across the province. The process of getting a commission together to take a look, to make sure that people have access to their elected representative, is a critical component of democracy. So I’m proud to take my place in this discussion on this motion and to recognize the work and the value of the exercise that was undertaken by the commission.

Part of what happens, I will agree with the member for Chilliwack, is people do like to come here. We are a growing province. There are parts of the province that grow more than others. Different parts grow at different rates. It’s always fascinating to me, as the representative for Coquitlam-Maillardville, to listen to my colleagues

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on both sides of the House who represent, particularly, rural ridings.

[1510]

I come from a suburban part of the province. I’m very familiar with urban and suburban life and the challenges that come with that. When I listen to my colleague from Stikine and he talks about Denmark and Ireland and the Netherlands and Switzerland, all together, is about the size of his riding, it blows my mind. It’s such a vast space. Moving around and being in touch with the 20,000 residents certainly presents some challenges.

I think it’s really important that we do take the time every other election to make sure that people are fairly represented by their MLA. It just so happens that this was the year to do that. I want to take a moment to thank the commission that was appointed back in May 2014 — Mr. Justice Thomas Melnick, Beverley Busson and Keith Archer.

I think it would be a daunting task. When I took a look at all the maps…. I love looking at maps. That has to be so challenging — to take a look at the numbers of people that are in an existing area and making sure that the boundaries are adjusted so that it’s fair all the way across. Once you adjust one boundary, it bumps into another boundary and bumps into another boundary. Being sensitive to all the needs of communities really must be a challenge. So I take my hat off to the members of this commission, because I think they dealt with the issue sensitively.

I do want to let my constituents know that there was a real valuable process that the commission undertook. Between September and November of 2014, they travelled the province, visited 29 communities and heard from 128 presenters. They received an additional 295 written submissions. It was on that basis that they started their deliberations.

What I also really appreciated was that there was a preliminary report that they put out — a preliminary report that just provided British Columbians with another opportunity to take a look. Is this really what representation looks like? How is that going to affect me? I do appreciate that, as human beings, we are all somewhat self-centred. What we want to do is say: “How does it affect me in my community? Am I now lumped in with a different neighbourhood? Am I going to be represented by somebody different? What does that mean for me?”

I also believe that our identities are tied up in the names of these communities. It could have serious implications.

Once they put out the preliminary report, they spent some more time inviting British Columbians to provide opinions. They held some more hearings, and they heard from another 145 presenters at 15 community hearings and received 426 written submissions. Clearly, they had the attention of people around British Columbia. In fact, what caught my attention about this process was that once the initial, preliminary report was put together, there were even more people who wanted to have their say, more people who wanted to make a presentation before the commission.

What that says to me is that British Columbians care. They care about this process, they care about democracy and they care about making sure that their voice is heard in this lovely House.

What we have before us are the final proposals — in this document. They are recommending 48 of the 85 districts have a shift in boundary, and they are proposing two additional seats.

When I squish in here, I try to imagine those who are responsible for adjusting these desks and finding ways to fit in two more seats. I think they’re going to have, perhaps, a far greater challenge than maybe even the commission had, because it’s pretty tight in here. I think it does speak to the importance — and I know that we’ll find a way — of making sure that people have representation and have access to their MLA.

The two additional seats will be located one in Richmond and one in Surrey. That makes sense. They’re high-growth communities, and people need to have access to their MLA. I think it’s really, really important value.

I do also appreciate, in terms of process, that it’s really up to this House. It’s up to the members of this House to actually adopt the recommendations. While the commission does all the work…. They go out into the community. They look at maps. They look at, I suspect, statistics and look at population growth. They go out into the community. They hear from people. They read written submissions. They make some recommendations. They go back to the community. They listen some more. They read some more. They come back with a report, and it’s really up to the members of this House to say yea or nay.

[1515]

When we think about all those British Columbians who took time to make their voices heard, I think it’s important in this House…. All members of this House should take a moment to thank those people. We represent them. This is not about us.

I do remember when the preliminary report came out, this House was all atwitter. It was like people couldn’t get their hands on the copies of the preliminary report fast enough. It has impact on us, on our constituents, on what it means for us as politicians, but the reality is that this is about British Columbians. This is about people and making sure that they have access to this House through us.

There are hundreds of them who took time out of their busy day, took time out of their busy schedule, took time away from being with their kids or being with their parents, time away from their jobs — whatever it was that they might have otherwise been doing. They got informed, they read, they talked, they put together their thoughts and ideas, and they made a presentation to this commission.

Now, people in this House are used to getting up and speaking. We do that all the time. For many, to get up

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and speak in front of a commission — judges and the like here, lawyers…. That has to create some anxiety. It was important enough to them to put their thoughts to paper and to share their concerns — that they liked this boundary change, or they didn’t like this boundary change.

But I want to focus my comments mostly around the greater Vancouver area, mostly because that is where we’re seeing the greatest amount of growth and because it happens to be where I’m from and I’m most familiar with. Because greater Vancouver has the greatest growth, resulting in most of its electoral districts exceeding the provincial average — some exceed by the permissible 25 percent — I suspect it’s where we’re going to see ongoing changes as we project out. I don’t think squeezing two more seats in here is the end. I think it’s the beginning.

I imagine that over the next 15 or 20 years, we’re going to continue to see some of these challenges about how we make sure that people are represented in the Lower Mainland, in particular, making sure that there’s some balance.

One of the things that was in the report that certainly caught my attention is that the commission notes they received input on the importance of keeping neighbourhoods within municipalities intact. We heard the member for Surrey-Panorama go on about Fleetwood and the tension in that community, and I think that the commission was sensitive to that. I really appreciate that, because people’s identities are tied up in where they live, who they associate with, where they shop and what schools their children go to. Those are the bases for our communities.

People think that the family structure is the most important structure. Yes, it is an important structure, but the community structure is an equally important structure. Community is where we get our support for families. Communities are where we live and where we get our needs met when our families can’t meet our needs. It’s where we make friends. It’s where we have business contacts. It’s where we, I think, do the best and where we thrive. So the fact that the commission was sensitive to neighbourhoods is, I think, a tremendous compliment to them.

[1520]

They said in the report that they’d heard from a lot of community members that they wanted their communities to remain whole. They didn’t want this line. While a dividing line that looked like a straight line down a road would make sense, it really didn’t make sense because there was a park or a school or something that pulled people together, that grounded them. That there was some sensitivity to that, I think, is important to acknowledge, and I think it’s important for my colleagues to acknowledge.

Now, I want to speak more specifically to the Tri-Cities, because that’s where I’m from, and I happen to think it’s one of the best communities in British Columbia. No offence to my colleagues, but Tri-Cities rocks. I’m sure the member for Port Moody–Coquitlam will agree and the member for Port Coquitlam would agree. If we had somebody from Burke Mountain here, I’m sure that he would agree as well.

I really found the report very sensitive to the unique needs and the unique challenges of the Tri-Cities. While those of us from the Tri-Cities speak of the Tri-Cities as a unit, it’s actually three cities — hence Tri-Cities — and two villages. It’s not a municipality like other municipalities. It’s not like Richmond or Burnaby. It’s an amalgam of three distinct municipalities, two villages. Each has its own distinct identity.

Creating boundaries — because there are far too many people in the Tri-Cities to be one; there needs to be four — and finding out where to put those boundaries I would imagine would be a very difficult task, to be sensitive to the idea of neighbourhood and to the idea of belonging that people have to their communities.

I just want to read this into the record, because I thought it was done so sensitively. The commission said: “The Tri-Cities is made up of the cities of Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and Coquitlam. Although they are three distinct municipalities, these cities work closely together, and many residents view this area as a community in itself.” I just want to acknowledge that one sentence in this report, because I think they did a really excellent job of capturing how people in the Tri-Cities feel about their community.

We have one school district. We have one chamber of commerce. We live and play and work in each other’s communities interchangeably. It’s pretty unique. You don’t see it in other communities.

We’re bounded by New West on the south, and we don’t have that sort of interplay the same way. We have Burnaby to the west, and again, you don’t see that sort of interplay. That North Road dividing line just really does seem like a barrier, even though that’s where we all go to access the Millennium Line — but not for much longer, because we’re getting the Evergreen line coming into the Tri-Cities. Burnaby is really quite distinct from the Tri-Cities. People have a real sense that it’s in a different place.

Of course, we’ve got Pitt Meadows on the east. Again, it’s a very different place. It’s a barrier. It’s not this flow-through, this easy relationship, that we have in the Tri-Cities. I want to acknowledge the excellent job that the

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commission did in recognizing the uniqueness of this community.

When I take a look at the actual changes…. There are changes that are being proposed to Coquitlam-Maillardville. I have some folks…. What’s very interesting, I guess because there are dividing lines through the city, is that there are some residents who don’t really make a distinction. They say: “Oh, yeah. You’re my MLA.” And it’s like: “Well, technically, actually, I’m not your MLA. You’re over on the Port Moody side” or “You’re over on the Burke Mountain side.”

There’s this little bit of confusion because there’s this sort of dividing line, and it’s going to change again. It’s being proposed that it changes again.

[1525]

I think that, for a while, that might cause some confusion. But when I take a look at the existing map, the 2008 redistribution, and what’s being proposed, I do think that this will really simplify for constituents where the boundaries are and how to determine who their MLA is.

The existing map, if I start in the north, starts at the railway, at the CPR tracks, and moves south. It just follows along Lougheed, and it encompasses Riverview as well as Colony Farm and the Kwikwetlem First Nation. Then it’s easy, because it just goes right down to the water. People sort of recognize that as a natural boundary, so it’s very easy for them to recognize. I don’t have anybody living on the water, at least not yet. And there’s no island over there, so it feels like a pretty clean line.

As we come and move along the edge, there’s another really nice line along New Westminster. It’s a pretty clear, easy dividing line. It goes up North Road — again, dividing from New West, to the south, and Burnaby, over to the west. But it sort of ends there. The existing northern boundary zigzags and zagzigs and dipsy-doodles in ways that…. It’s like you need to sort of superimpose it on a road map. It jumbles around and moves through and cuts through, arbitrarily, different roads.

When people would say, “Well, I live on Blue Mountain,” I’d say: “Okay, are you north or south of Foster?” It just would become this directional conversation about: “Which corner do you live on?” It was hard to communicate with people. They just didn’t understand.

The boundaries perhaps made sense from a numbers game, I’m sure, if the previous commission was running through the numbers and looked to make the numbers work. But from a practical perspective, it’s been a very a difficult map to work with. It is very difficult for people to understand who their representative is. Especially, you know, if their neighbour across the street had a different representative. People would say, certainly: “How come they have you, but I have this other representative? We sort of live in the same area. Our kids go to the same school.” That presented some problem.

If they had a joint concern, one would have to go to the member from Port Moody, and one would come to me.

The zigzag that was on the north border has been shifted, and I am quite pleased to let my constituents know that the boundaries have changed. That, I know, will make it so much easier for them and so much easier for me and, certainly, so much easier for my constituency assistants. I know that members here…. We all run constituency offices. A lot of people think, especially in the Lower Mainland, they’re not really sure who their MLA is. There’s only so much time that our CAs have. One of the things they do is make sure that this is actually a constituent, and if they’re not, they send them on to the appropriate constituency office. This will just make it so much easier.

This new map. What’s interesting is they’ve changed it. Instead of following some of the roads, they actually follow a hydro right-of-way, which is very interesting. They follow the hydro right-of-way down Mariner to the train tracks. They follow the old map, following the CPR railway right up to Westwood, the boundary to Port Coquitlam, and then it follows that train track — again, includes Riverview and Kwikwetlem First Nation and then comes out at the water. We have this really easy boundary. It continues all the way to Braid Street.

Actually, what I should articulate…. I misspoke earlier. I do have an island. I have Tree Island. I don’t think there are any people living there. Maybe there are trees there. I’ve never been there. Tree Island — it’s right here on this map. It includes the Fraser River. Apparently, I have to visit Tree Island. I’m going to have to kayak out or something.

[1530]

I follow along the water, up Braid Street. It follows along the border with New Westminster. Then we get to North Road and go up North Road — Burnaby is on the west side; I have the east side — until we get to Foster Road. It continues east along Foster in a straight line. I was so excited to see a straight line.

Now, the people on the north side of Foster are Port Moody–Coquitlam. The people on the south side, however, are my constituents. It makes it super easy for me. The boundary then goes north along Gatensbury. Unfortunately, I don’t have Como Lake in my constituency, which I was hoping for. It’s a beautiful, beautiful lake. It’s small, and you can see seniors fishing there most mornings. You have to be a senior or under 12, I think, or ten. But you can get a licence to fish. Tiny, little fish, but it’s a beautiful spot.

However, I do have the folks across the street. Those folks who live right on that lake are my constituents. Again, there is one little zig, but there’s no zag, and it turns east along Como Lake Avenue. Everything south of Como Lake Avenue is in my constituency, until they get to the hydro right-of-way.

It’ll be easier when I talk with people about who their representative is, and it will be easier to give them guidance on where to go. It’ll be easier to have some clarity.

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There’ll be less confusion, so from my very selfish perspective and on behalf of my constituents, I’m very excited to see this.

Now, one of the things that’s going to be really very interesting is that I do lose a

section of folks whose children go to the high school that is in my constituency, because of the catchment area. On the east side of the constituency, there’s the feeder school. That’s in the neighbourhood that I live in, in Ranch Park. But on the west side of the school, they are now in the Port Moody–Coquitlam constituency.

It may change some of the challenges around that school, in particular. I know that there are certainly some people who’ve worked closely with me, who have supported me and who have been very pleased to have me as their representative. I will no longer be, should this pass. I suspect that it will, because I’ve been hearing members on both sides of the House really pleased with this report. It will be very interesting to engage in dialogue when they discover, should this pass, that their boundary has changed, that their identity has changed.

That’s, I think, the thing that has impressed me most about my constituents — that they are proud to be in Coquitlam-Maillardville. They talk about how proud they are to be in Coquitlam-Maillardville. They identify that way, so for them to say that no, they’re Port Moody–Coquitlam, will, I think, provide some sadness to some folks, and I suspect there’ll be people who will be happy with that change. I think it goes both ways.

The other thing that I want to highlight in the changed boundary is that I’m pleased that the Vancouver Golf Club is now in my constituency. There’s an interesting story about this golf club. The golf club itself has to be 100 years old, easily — or close to it. It was considered the rural golf club, way out in Coquitlam. It’s called the Vancouver Golf Club, which is very confusing to people, because they expect it to be in Vancouver.

The only people who played in it were people from Vancouver, because nobody, really, lived out where the Deputy Speaker is from, from Burnaby — or from Coquitlam. There really weren’t many people there. So people would travel the great distance from, I suspect, my colleague from Vancouver–Point Grey’s area. They would travel the great distance all the way out to the Vancouver Golf Club in order to enjoy their 18 holes.

[1535]

Well, that golf club has been the home to several international golf tournaments — the women’s open twice in the last number of years. I’m really quite proud to have the opportunity to represent those that live around the golf course and to have the golf course in my constituency.

I also want to say that it is my honour to represent the Kwikwetlem First Nation, which is on the southeast corner. They are a community that is growing. They have invested substantially in housing in their community. They have worked tirelessly with the city of Coquitlam, the city of Port Coquitlam, Hydro and the gravel operators in the Burke Mountain area to bring salmon back to the river that is part of the dividing line — the Coquitlam River. I’m very, very proud to represent them as well. They’re an important constituent. I always feel honoured and humbled to represent them as the First Peoples of the neighbourhood, of the community.

Noting that my time is running out as I speak to this motion, I again just want to thank everyone who spoke to the commission. I want to thank the commission for their hard work. I don’t think I’d ever want their work. I think this is probably very, very difficult to do. I am pleased to hear of so many of my colleagues who are in support of it. Those who are responsible for organizing this chamber, I look forward to seeing how they’re going to squeeze in two more desks.

M. Morris: It’s my pleasure to get up and speak in favour of this motion, as well, as everybody seems to be in this House — everybody who seems to speak so passionately about their ridings. I’m equally passionate about my riding of Prince George–Mackenzie, which is halfway up the province. It’s not the largest riding by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still a little bit more than a three-hour drive from north to south.

Prince George is the economic hub for much of British Columbia. It’s a major centre in B.C. I host the Natural Resource Forum that’s been taking place there now for a dozen years. Major resource companies from across Canada — and around the world, actually — attend that particular forum, because they realize the importance of resource development in British Columbia and for Canada.

There’s a notion amongst many people in my riding who have come and talked to me about electoral boundaries and representation in the province that many people in urban B.C. don’t really understand the issues and the significance of rural B.C. I’ve got a report I’m going to quote from here in a moment or two. It indicates that we’ve got a high number of people who immigrate to British Columbia and live in urban B.C., down in the Lower Mainland here. We’ve got people that come in from other provinces and take up residence in the Lower Mainland.

I think we also have a significant number of people that, when they get up in the morning in their cozy apartment in downtown Vancouver or Victoria or Surrey or Burnaby or some of these other major urban centres, turn their thermostat up on the wall, and the heat comes on in their gas-fired fireplace or in their furnace. Their apartment gets nice and warm. Then they turn on the lights so they can go into the washroom and shave and shower and get ready for the day before they jump in their car and drive across one of the many steel-concrete bridges that we have in the province to get to their workplace. Then they take up their computers and use the fibre op-

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tics stretching across the land. A lot of these things come from rural B.C.

The natural gas that they and their constituents use in their ridings comes from northeast B.C. It’s transported through the ground in large pipes made out of steel. The steel is not only made out of the iron ore from back east, but it also utilizes the metallurgical coal that we have in rural B.C. That helps to make the steel that transports the natural gas down to the fine style of living that people have in urban B.C., down south here, and also the electricity when they go to turn on the lights.

[1540]

I have the southern half of Williston Lake in my riding. Williston Lake was created when W.A.C. Bennett created the W.A.C. Bennett dam and subsequently the Peace Canyon dam. Of course, we’re working on Site C up in that area right now. The power generated from that facility is transported by these giant, massive cables — copper, again, that we dig out of the ground from Highland Valley Copper in rural B.C. and from some of the other places that we have. It’s carried on these large steel-structured towers that we have — again, steel, iron ore, copper, or metallurgic coal in the ground in rural B.C.

So rural B.C. makes some very, very significant contributions to urban B.C. and to Canadians in general, not only with the products that we bring down here but with the economy that we generate by doing all that activity up there.

But we’re seeing some things occur that have been occurring since I came into this world, and I’m just going to review some Stats Canada figures here. When I came into this world in the early ’50s, we had a population of about 1.2 million people in British Columbia, and 32 percent of the population in B.C. at that particular time lived in rural B.C. Today — well, in 2011 — again according to Stats Canada, we’ve got close to four million people in B.C., and 12.4 percent of those people live in what’s considered a rural environment in British Columbia.

I looked at some other stats on line from B.C. Stats. I looked at our population from the end of the Cache Creek–Nicola Valley area —from, basically, halfway between Cache Creek and 100 Mile House — to the Yukon border and from the Alberta border out, including the Queen Charlotte Islands. We’ve got a population of 322,700 people. It works out to maybe 8 percent, or less than 8 percent, of the total population in British Columbia. That comprises the northern three-quarters of the province. The population in the northern three-quarters of the province is less than the population of Surrey. It is 50 percent less than the city of Vancouver.

The problem that my constituents have brought to me since we had our debate on this electoral boundaries bill last year was that we have a population down in Vancouver with many, many people who never venture north of the Lower Mainland. We have, according to this report here…. I’ll give a quotation from the report here. They say in the report that immigrants comprised 26.1 percent of the provincial population in 2001, and their share increased to 27.3 percent in 2011.

We need immigrants in this province to look after the work, to contribute to the economy and to contribute to everything that is great about British Columbia. We have a lot of immigrants who come into British Columbia from around the world. They take up residence in the city, they create businesses, they create business opportunities, and they work. A lot of them are very skilled and they’re specialized, but they never leave the Lower Mainland, or they never leave the urban population of British Columbia. Their paradigm is centred around the area that they live in.

If an issue comes up in the province here and we need to spend $9 billion on a bridge, or we need to spend $1 billion on a subway system under Broadway street, or we need to build new hospitals or schools or other systems, other infrastructure in the Lower Mainland, a lot of times they have no idea what the priorities might be or what some of the more significant needs might be in rural British Columbia.

That’s our job, as rural members of this House — to ensure that other members sitting in this House when we debate and when we discuss how we’re going to spend the hard-earned money of British Columbians…. It’s to let everybody know what’s going on down here. But when people vote, they vote from the paradigm in which they live. If they don’t have any experience of what British Columbia is all about, then there’s a deficit in how those decisions are made.

This report is called Strengthening Rural Canada . It was written by Dr. Bakhtiar Moazzami on behalf of Essential Skills Ontario and Decoda Literacy Solutions. It’s a new report. It’s been out just a few months.

[1545]

One of the quotations they have in there is on the findings of his research.

“The findings reveal that the population in rural British Columbia is declining in both absolute and relative terms. The rural population is aging rapidly, fertility rates are low, and a large proportion of working-age population aged 20 to 64 are moving to cities for education and employment opportunities.

“This trend is problematic because, unlike the urban areas of the province which are and have always experienced high immigration, rural British Columbia experiences very little immigration. If this trend continues unabated, the rural population will decline even further, going from its current population of 545,000 to 479,000 by 2025.”

I’ve seen statistical data that includes a more drastic drop than that.

Rural British Columbia needs strong representation. As we heard from our member for Stikine, as we’ve heard from many of the other members that work and operate in rural British Columbia, population is getting smaller, and their voice is becoming somewhat muted with the increase in seats down in urban B.C. Because of the population growth that we have down here, we’re going to see two more seats added after the next election.

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One of the important aspects of strong rural representation in British Columbia is that a large portion of our First Nations populations live in rural British Columbia. In fact, 60 percent of First Nations in B.C. live in the northern three-quarters of the province. Their voice needs to be heard as equally as anybody else’s voice in this Legislature and in this province.

Again, another reason why we need to maintain the number of rural ridings that we have in British Columbia is so that there’s strong — or as strong as we can get — representation in British Columbia to talk about the issues: you know, the school facilities that we need to address, the health facilities that we need to address, the infrastructure needs that we have right across this province.

We have some significant pressures on us in the Lower Mainland to build bridges, to build transit systems, to build all kinds of things — hospitals and schools. But if we don’t have those infrastructure systems in place, as well, upcountry in rural B.C.; if we don’t have adequate highways; if we don’t have the new bridges that we need up there; if we don’t have the hospitals to support the workers that are up there, because it’s such a long distance to bring them down to medical facilities in urban B.C. here; if we don’t have the educational institutions up there to attract and retain skilled workers, then rural B.C. suffers.

All of these things combine to point in the direction that we need strong rural representation from as many ridings as we can maintain in rural B.C., despite what the population figures are, just so that that voice is heard down in Vancouver here.

It’d be great if we could get everybody living in urban B.C. to take a holiday and come up through the Interior and right through British Columbia to get an idea of what we have to offer and to give them a different paradigm when it comes to voting in the upcoming elections and whatnot — or at least to understand a lot of the issues that rural B.C. MLAs have to deal with and contend with when they’re speaking on behalf of their constituents up there.

We spend lots of hours in a vehicle. The member for Stikine was talking about flying and driving throughout his riding. I’ve driven every numbered highway in British Columbia. I’ve driven every resource road and every secondary highway in the northern three-quarters of the province. I’ve been to every community, First Nations community and otherwise, in the northern three-quarters of the province. I’ve flown over the area. I’ve travelled up the coast, in the RCMP patrol vessels, into all the coastal communities.

I’ve got a very good understanding of how this province looks and the socioeconomic conditions that we live in and work under right across the northern three-quarters of the province here. It’s a pretty significant job. I admire the MLAs who work in the more remote communities here, trying to have their voice heard in this big noise in urban B.C. I’ve often referred to it as the insatiable beast.

[1550]

You know, there’s always an opportunity or there’s always a need to spend money at every level of government in urban B.C. here, as there is right across the province.

I support this motion, as I think everybody does. We’re going to accept all of the recommendations of the Electoral Boundaries Commission. I look forward to hearing what my colleagues have during the rest of this debate.

D. Eby: I’m very pleased to rise in this place to speak a little bit about what the member just finished calling the insatiable beast, where I live, the city of Vancouver, the middle of the Lower Mainland. I guess it’s not the campaign slogan the government’s going to be using next election.

In any event, I see it slightly differently, and I’m glad to rise and speak about my constituency and speak about the Boundaries Commission’s work and the report in front of us here today. There are a couple of really important issues that I think need to be raised about this report.

First of all, I’d just like to note from the top that my constituency was altered slightly to include the boundaries of Pacific Spirit Park in its entirety within my constituency, as opposed to just part of it. I’m not sure it will have any major impact on voting. I guess for the sake of completeness, it’s a good idea for the commission to do that. Aside from that, no changes around the borders of my constituency. I continue to represent Kitsilano, Point Grey and the UBC neighbourhoods as well as the University Endowment Lands, also known as University Hill, and it’s my pride and pleasure to do so.

I’m going to focus my remarks on an issue that I think is critically important. That’s the mandate that was given to this commission, as set out in their report, and how they dealt with it in this report, in the context of a critical piece of legislation that governs everything that we do in this House, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Now, this is an entrenched statute. It’s the most important law in Canada. It governs all of the laws that we make, all the administrative decisions made by various bureaucrats at the federal, provincial and municipal levels, government agencies — a critically important law. It speaks directly to a fundamental right of every Canadian — every British Columbian, every Vancouverite, every Prince George resident — which is the right to vote.

The mandate of the commission, the job that these folks were given, is critically important. For those people in the gallery who are just sitting in briefly on the debate, what we’re talking about here is a commission set up every second general election in British Columbia. It’s got three members on it, chaired by a Supreme Court judge — in this case, Mr. Justice Melnick; a former commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Beverley Busson; and Keith Archer, Chief Electoral Officer for British Columbia.

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These three folks get together. They look at the map of British Columbia. They look at the population. They decide how to break it up into different constituencies to be represented by MLAs.

Now, when they do that, they have to consider some very important issues. I would argue one of the most critical issues that they have to consider is the idea of representation by population and vote parity. That’s the idea that each person that lives in British Columbia…. When they cast a vote, their vote shouldn’t have a disproportionate impact on who forms government over somebody else who lives in another part of the province. Everybody’s vote should have roughly the same amount of power, regardless of where you live in the province.

The reason why that’s an important principle is it’s enshrined within this Charter of Rights and Freedoms that I was talking about — that everybody has the right to vote and that that vote should be, the courts have interpreted, a reasonably equal vote, in terms of the impact and the power that it has.

In order to determine that, the commission looks at what they call the electoral quotient, or the provincial average, and they look at the deviation from that quotient. They take the entire population for the province, they divide it by the number of seats in the Legislature, and they come up with an average population per seat, per politician. Then they look at the actual numbers of people who live in the boundaries that they’ve drawn out, and they say: “By what percentage does this vary from the average for the province?”

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When they’re doing their map, when they’re doing their measurements and when they’re setting out these areas, they are asked by the government — as is proper, as should be the case — to make sure that they deviate from this provincial average by no more than 25 percent.

That number is not pulled out of the air. That 25 percent is a critically important number. That is the number that our Supreme Court of Canada has said is the constitutional measurement by which the validity of these areas will be determined. If you’re beyond 25 percent, you’re in the danger zone for constitutional validity, according to the Supreme Court of Canada. I’m going to go into that in some detail.

Now, the commission was given this particular mandate. They were also given an exception to that rule. In particular, there are three defined regions — Cariboo-Thompson, Columbia-Kootenay and North region — in which the commission was told…. It encompasses a number of electoral districts, about 20 electoral districts, in which the commission was allowed to exceed this 25 percent boundary. They were allowed to be beyond that 25 percent boundary set by the Supreme Court of Canada in interpreting the right to vote that’s protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

When they provided this report to us today, a key part of the report was to go through this issue of deviation and special circumstances. When are you allowed to go 25 percent beyond the average in either direction? If you’re over the average, it means the people in that constituency…. Their vote counts for less than the people who are at the average. If you’re under the average, it means your vote counts for more than people who are at the average.

How did they do in terms of coming to that 25 percent boundary that the court has said is permissible, constitutionally, in British Columbia? Well, in the appendix, the commission set out the 85 electoral districts. In fact, they did exceed the 25 percent standard in a number of constituencies across the province. I don’t think that you’re going to hear anybody complaining from a constituency where their vote now has a significantly higher impact in determining who forms government. You’re not going to hear people concerned about that.

I think where you’re going to hear the concern and where…. If this report runs into judicial review, which I think it will, I think the areas where you’re going to find concern are ridings like Richmond Centre, Richmond East, Surrey-Cloverdale and Surrey-Panorama, where people find that their votes are now worth less because they’re significantly beyond that 25 percent boundary. For example, Surrey-Cloverdale, at 46 percent over the provincial average, is significantly beyond the margins set out by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Now, I used to work for an organization called the B.C. Civil Liberties Association before I left in order to run and to be elected. The nice part about the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is it’s a non-partisan organization. I know that the Minister of Advanced Education, a former president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, proudly and rightly proudly states that fact in his bio, as he should. It’s a wonderful organization.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is an organization that has taken a great interest in this issue of voter parity. How close are we to that 25 percent average in B.C.? They provided submissions to various boundaries commissions.

In order to inform this House and to inform our debate, I’d like to read into the record some of their submissions on previous districting efforts that have taken place in B.C. I think the context of the law in Canada is critically important in understanding the impact of the decisions made in this report, to say some people’s vote is worth significantly more and some people’s vote is worth significantly less.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

In addition, I would also note for this House that this organization has not been afraid to take this government to court to challenge where they go beyond that 25 percent boundary. I think there are two considerations that we should have in relation to this report. One is our obli-

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gation, as people who are elected, to respect the laws of Canada, to respect the laws of British Columbia and to put forward our best proposals within those laws, as we understand them.

The second is…. One of the laws that we’re set out to respect is a critically important law that holds us all together as Canadians. That is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — this idea of equality and fairness among all Canadians. That is a particularly important context.

In a piece of litigation where the B.C. Civil Liberties Association sued the Attorney General of British Columbia in the 1980s, after the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into force…. Chief Justice McEachern was then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. He eventually went on to the Court of Appeal.

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He addressed a preliminary question that was brought by the provincial government. The question was whether the job of drawing these districts was immune from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The provincial government at that time said that since the job of drawing districts was defined in the Constitution Act, it was exempt from this idea that judges could come and review the job that we did and see whether we were within that 25 percent boundary. Chief Justice McEachern rejected those arguments. He started by talking about what the petition of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association was about.

“This petition questions the allocation of seats in the Legislature of B.C. on the basis of uneven electoral representation. In short, the petitioner says the Legislature has created electoral districts, and there are as many as 15 or 16 times more electors in some districts than others.

“The petitioner, whose standing was not questioned on this application, says ‘one person, one equal vote’ is guaranteed by various sections of the Charter, particularly

section 2(b), freedom of expression;

section 3, voting;

section 6, mobility;

section 7, liberty; and

section 15, equality.

“The petitioner, of course, relies on subsection 52(1) of the Constitution of Canada, which provides that any law inconsistent” with the Charter “is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.”

In other words, the court can invalidate anything that we do that is inconsistent with the Charter.

The judge, after reviewing the history and the technical arguments, said:

“It seems to me that the exercise of a legislative jurisdiction given by the constitution to a legislature” — like we are here today — “particularly when it results in a law such as the present Constitution Act of British Columbia, is subject to the Charter….

“Applying the foregoing to this case, I conclude that the authority of the Legislature to enact or amend the Constitution Act of B.C., particularly

section 19 and

schedule 1, is constitutional in the sense that no other body may interfere with such jurisdiction and no body can change that arrangement without a constitutional amendment.

“How the Legislature exercises this authority, and the validity of such provisions in the sense of conforming to the Charter, is quite a different matter. It is the court’s reluctant responsibility to examine the result of the exercise of such authority to ensure it conforms with the Charter.”

In other words, the courts don’t want to do this. They don’t want to look over our shoulders and make sure that we’re following this rule, but they will do it.

“Thus, although the constitutional tree may be immune from Charter scrutiny, the fruit of the constitutional tree is not. If the fruit of the constitutional tree does not conform to the Charter, including

section 1, then it must, to that extent, be struck down.”

In this case, very poetic language to refer to the fruit of the constitutional tree being the way we draw these boundaries. If it doesn’t comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, then it must be struck down.

It went to a full hearing on merits. It went up to the Court of Appeal. Chief Justice McLachlin, who then went on to the Supreme Court of Canada, reserved judgment, and she found the variation of voters among the provincial ridings to be extreme. She said — and this is where the 25 percent measurements comes from:

“At the extremes, the electoral district of Atlin is 86.8 percent below the equal population norm, while the district of Surrey-Newton is 63.2 percent above the norm, for a total variance of 149.7 percent.

“This is an extreme but not atypical example. Nine ridings are more than 25 percent below the norm, while ten are more than 25 percent above the norm. Twenty ridings are more than 10 percent below the norm, while 25 more are more than 10 percent above.”

She noted in her reasons:

“The effect of the disparities in British Columbia is to enhance the power of the rural voter. Votes in urban areas tend to be worth considerably less than votes in rural areas outside the Lower Mainland.”

She raised concern about that in terms of principles of equality and democratic governance. She said,

“Viewed in its textual context, the right to vote and participate in the democratic election of one’s government is one of the most fundamental of the Charter rights, for without the right to vote in free and fair elections, all other rights would be in jeopardy. The Charter reflects this.

Section 3 cannot be overridden under subsection 33(1). It is, in this sense, a preferred right that” has special status.

Chief Justice McLachlin was not done then. She said:

“It cannot be denied that the