Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the comments of my House of Commons colleagues, and I would like to thank them for their presentations.
This morning, we have had some great presentations from Mr. Williamson and my other three colleagues.
For folks who are watching us at home, all members of Parliament were provided guidance in terms of what types of questions we should be asking.
These are all very important questions, and I think that many of them have been answered by your presentations this morning. In terms of what your rationale was and whether your objection has community support, all three of you have spoken to those things. As to what the demographic consequences of what you're proposing are, these are all issues that you have very cogently laid out in your presentations.
I was particularly taken with Mr. Battiste's use of the term “catfishing”. I did not know what that meant so I had to go look it up. When I took a look at that, I saw that it is a process of luring somebody into a relationship using a fictional persona. In other words, what you were saying—and what all three of you were saying—is that there was an initial proposal by the Nova Scotia commission, which was pretty much acceptable to a large number of your populations, and as a result, no one was particularly bothered by it. Then, after those consultations, they introduced something very different from what was originally proposed, which, of course, then set people's hair on fire and they didn't have an opportunity to come back and let the commission know because that public consultation process was over.
Mr. Fraser, where are the representatives from the cities? Where are the representatives from the indigenous and the historical Black communities in Nova Scotia? How do they feel about the changes in your riding?
Mr. Battiste, what effect does splitting up indigenous communities—historical Mi'kmaq communities—have in terms of their representation in the House of Commons?
Ms. Diab, about the notion of procedural fairness, how does that affect the demographics within your riding and within your larger communities?