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Boundary Proposals of August 31, 2002 The Commission published its Proposals for dividing the province into electoral districts (hereinafter called the “Proposals”) in a supplement to the Canada Gazette, Part I, of August 31, 2002. These Proposals sought to respect the elements outlined in paragraph 15(1)(b) of the Act, which served as constant guidelines, always keeping in mind the provincial electoral quotient, the foremost rule as set out in paragraph 15(1)(a). During the course of the Commission’s work, it quickly became obvious that certain inevitable restructuring would necessarily have direct effects on at least one neighbouring electoral district and, often, indirect effects on a number of others. This is known as the domino effect, which one person likened to a chain reaction. In light of these constraints, and given that such readjustment has a time horizon of a decade, the Commission, aiming for a certain equity, targeted a variance of more or less 5%, giving no greater priority to this target than to the other factors set out by the Act. Thus, the Commission was able to maintain a variance of more or less 5% for seventy-one (71) of Quebec’s seventy-five (75) electoral districts. These changes were also made by taking into account both the new reality, namely the evolution of the population and the merging of municipalities, as well as the historical pattern, namely the current boundaries, the former cities, regional county municipalities and natural boundaries, as mentioned in the Proposals.
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