Mayor Knack calls for rethink of Alberta election boundary recommendations

Edmonton city council is pushing back against proposed electoral boundary changes, warning they could weaken the city’s voice in the legislature.

After a closed-door session Dec. 17, council voted to have Mayor Andrew Knack send a letter to the Electoral Boundaries Commission opposing the changes. The commission’s interim report proposes merging Edmonton-Glenora and Edmonton-Riverview into a single riding and creating a sprawling new district that would combine Parkland County, Enoch Cree Nation, and rural west Edmonton. While the report suggests Edmonton could gain a seat overall, Knack and council argue the changes would actually reduce the city’s influence.

“In the written report, it shows that Edmonton has increased its number of seats from 20 to 21,” he said during the meeting. “I would argue that because the additional one is not an entirely Edmonton boundary that we have not actually added a full additional seat to the city of Edmonton. Arguably, based on populations, we could stand to gain more, especially because a lot of the population growth happens within our city limits.

“Edmonton representation at the legislature should be contained within the city of Edmonton. We love working with our regional partners and First Nations and all communities around us, but when it comes to ensuring proper MLA representation, I believe that it’s critically important that the boundaries are contained within Edmonton.”

A letter from Mayor Andrew Knack to the Alberta Electoral Boundary Commission asks the committee to rethink proposed changes to the electoral riding map, noting the changes do not accurately represent the population growth in the area over the past few years. In the letter, Knack expressed his sympathy for the challenges in “balancing factors to accommodate population shifts,” but cautions the changes effectively undermine the rapid population growth the city has experienced. Between the two ridings, which represent nearly 23 per cent of the city’s growth, up to 36,000 Edmontonian voices could be skirted by the changes.

A large hybrid riding mashing a rural municipality, a First Nations government and western Edmonton together would be very difficult for a lone MLA to represent properly, Knack wrote. Most notably, the policing, transit and infrastructure needs for each of the three communities are worlds apart.

Knack urged the commission to find solutions that preserve the city’s current electoral ridings, noting the federal electoral commission did so when it previously updated ridings for the last national election.

“Just to give a few additional pieces of context, in a recent federal boundary redraw in our last federal election the Edmonton St. Albert boundary and the Edmonton — I think it was Edmonton-Wetaskiwin boundaries, were changed so that now the ridings were exclusively within the city of Edmonton,” he said. “So if we’re applying that practice federally, to me it makes perfect sense to continue to apply that practice provincially.

“We even saw in the written report that one of our neighbouring municipalities, my hometown of Spruce Grove, had submitted and asked for the map and the new boundaries to reflect Spruce Grove’s growth and trying to keep it contained within as much as possible, and so it actually split up what was previously Spruce Grove-Stony Plain. So if it’s good enough for Spruce Grove, my hometown, I think it’s good enough for the city of Edmonton to make sure that our representatives are contained within our boundaries.”

A five-member electoral commission is legally required to be appointed every eight to 10 years. The last time the districts were redrawn was in 2021. Since then, Alberta’s population has surged to over 5 million, largely thanks to Edmonton’s rapid growth.

While the next provincial election is not scheduled until October of 2027, the Alberta government launched the commission a full year and a half earlier than required. The deadline to establish the commission was October 2026. The urgency to complete the electoral redrawing early has some political watchers anticipating the United Conservative Party intends to go to the polls much earlier than legally required, but there has been no indication from Premier Danielle Smith or her cabinet to confirm this.

Electoral ridings vary dramatically in how many people actually get to decide who represents them. Currently, none of Edmonton’s 20 ridings or Calgary’s 26 ridings represent fewer than 42,000 voters. At the upper level, Edmonton-South represents 68,950 voters. At the other extreme, the ridings of Lesser Slave Lake and Central Peace-Notley represent 26,715 and 27,155 voters, respectively. Most of the 41 ridings outside Edmonton and Calgary range between representing between 40,000 and 55,000 people, with Airdrie-Cochrane an outlier at 63.765 voters represented.

ebowling@postmedia.com

Related

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun.