Bet that the federal electoral boundary adjustments will stand as currently proposed, and you'll likely lose money.

The 2012 Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for British Columbia has been charged with the daunting task of carving the province into 42 federal ridings of approximately equal populations.

There's no way to do that in any way that will make everybody happy.

For starters, all of B.C. has been short-changed from the outset. Riding sizes are based on population figures from the decennial census, and aimed at having one Member of Parliament each represent 100,000 persons, across Canada. So the 2011 census outcome of 4,400,057 (up from the 3,907,738 of 2001) should have given B.C. 44 MPs.

On the other hand, being two MPs short of the mark this time around leaves this province better than with the deficit of about four it had for the past 10 years. (B.C. currently has 36 seats in Parliament, which should have been at least 39 and probably 40 in 2001.)

But Ottawa's anti-West, pro-Quebec politicking aside, we'll grant that the job of deciding where to draw the lines - especially among the huge growth areas of the Fraser Valley and the Okanagan - is a tough one.

Some of the new boundaries proposed by the commission make a lot of sense, but others have us scratching our heads. For instance, while the proposed Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge riding seems fairly sensible at first glance, a closer look shows that the less-populous eastern half of Maple Ridge will likely have little to say within the proposed new Mission-Matsqui arrangement.

If you have better ideas, help the commission out. Public hearing dates and times can be found at www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca.

If you're going to complain, make your complaints worth something.

- B.G.