Alberta Premier Danielle Smith answers questions at a news conference in Calgary, on Feb. 20.Todd Korol/The Canadian Press
Premier Danielle Smith’s government has officially restarted the process of overhauling Alberta’s electoral map after she rejected the advice of an independent redistricting commission last week, triggering accusations of gerrymandering.
On Tuesday, the governing United Conservative Party voted to pass a motion to select a committee of five MLAs who will oversee the new map-making process. Three members of that committee will be tapped by the government and two by the Opposition NDP. They will then create a new independent panel that will later this year propose a redrawn electoral map and report its findings to them.
The UCP government announced the move last week after a majority of the original commission’s members endorsed a map that would have added seats in Edmonton and Calgary, where the NDP’s support is centred. Abandoning the work of the commission, a bipartisan body designed to limit political influence, upends Alberta’s long-standing process for adjusting the boundaries of its provincial electoral constituencies.
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The new expedited process will happen without public hearings. Criticism of the revamped process has come from the Alberta NDP, two of the original boundary commission members, and many observers who have expressed concern about political influence over a traditionally independent mechanism.
Nearly the entire legislative assembly, minus the Premier, filled the chambers for the debate and vote on Tuesday. Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi started the debate by speaking for about 30 minutes. He outlined his party’s opposition to the new plan.
Before the debate began, Mr. Nenshi grilled Ms. Smith on the issue for a third consecutive Question Period. He has repeatedly pressed her on whether her office interfered with the independent commission and asked whether she would commit to adopting the commission’s maps of Alberta’s four largest cities.
“I’m not sure the Premier does understand the math problem she has created,” Mr. Nenshi said.
Ms. Smith replied: “I’m not involved in the process. The government’s not involved in the process. This is a decision of the members of the Legislative Assembly.”
Electoral map-making – a process designed to foster compromise and limit political influence – happens every eight to 10 years in Alberta, often with little fanfare.
That changed in late March when Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission delivered its final report, revealing a panel that was divided on how to arrange the province ahead of the fall 2027 provincial election.
Three members representing a majority presented a map, endorsed by Dallas Miller, a judge and the commission chair, that eliminated two rural seats from the 89-seat map they were required to deliver, up from the current 87. Provincial law establishes the number of seats.
That group noted that the two new seats afforded to Alberta were not commensurate with the vast population growth that has happened in the province since the last boundaries redraw in 2017. Had the commission been given the power, they wrote, it may have proposed a map of at least 91 electoral divisions.
A second map, introduced by two UCP-selected members, presented more than a dozen merged urban and rural ridings, which would have diluted the power of the urban vote. This marked the first time in Alberta that a commission had produced two competing maps.
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The two members defended it as “necessary to respond to demographic change, reduce polarization and reflect Alberta’s increasingly interconnected urban-rural landscape.”
The three commissioners who wrote the majority report responded by calling the minority’s proposed map unconstitutional and hinted that it was an attempt at U.S.-style gerrymandering, a process by which political parties design electoral maps to their own advantage.
Last week, Ms. Smith’s government decided not to adopt either of the maps, instead adopting a recommendation by Mr. Miller, the commission chair.
In the report, Mr. Miller suggested striking a government committee and appointing a new panel to increase the number of electoral divisions to 91 from 89 and restore the two rural ridings that were lost in the majority report. Because of the laws governing the boundaries process, he wrote, “my hands are tied by the legislation and the case law.”
Mr. Miller suggested it as a compromise to ensure the province didn’t accept the minority report, offering his recommendation as an option if the government didn’t agree with the majority report.
The Premier has since said the government will mostly adopt the majority report while making space for two new rural ridings.
Under the process now created by the Smith government, the new independent panel will have until Oct. 22 to file its report to the committee of MLAs. The committee will then deliver its report within two weeks, which will face a vote in the legislature.
Cindy Jefferies, mayor of Red Deer – Alberta’s third-largest city and a conservative stronghold in provincial politics – told The Globe and Mail in an interview that the province’s new direction came “a little bit from left field.”
“I just have concerns that you would go through that process and then, I don’t know, maybe don’t like the result and decide to do something different, [it] seems not to represent democracy very well,” Ms. Jefferies said.
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Asked whether she accepts the province’s arguments, she said: “Personally, no.”
Elections Alberta will now have a compressed timeline to prepare for the fall 2027 provincial vote.
Last week, the agency said it needs at least 18 months – though two years would be ideal – to make changes to electoral divisions before a provincial election.
“Any change to boundaries involving adding new electoral divisions and/or changing multiple boundaries significantly affects virtually all aspects of Elections Alberta operations,” agency spokesperson Robyn Bell said in a statement.
Last week, Ms. Smith said the province may give Elections Alberta extra funding to prepare for the 2027 vote.