Back to the drawing board! UCP scrapping Alberta boundaries commission and appointing MLA committee to draw new electoral map

Every day is a new round of chaos in Alberta politics

Another day, another unprecedented decision in Alberta politics.

The United Conservative Party government surprised the opposition, political watchers, and probably a few of their own MLAs with plans to introduce a motion in the Legislature to scrap the final report of the bipartisan Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission and replace it with an MLA committee and advisory panel tasked with redrawing riding boundaries ahead of the next provincial election.

The motion placed on the Order Paper by UCP Government House Leader Joseph Schow would create a Special Select Committee on Electoral Boundaries, composed of Leduc-Beaumont UCP MLA Brandon Lunty as chairperson and 3 UCP MLAs and 2 NDP MLAs. The MLA committee would oversee a new advisory panel that would include a government-appointed chairperson, two UCP-appointees and two NDP-appointees.

The government’s motion to create an entirely new process to draw the next electoral map comes soon after the boundaries commission, which is made up of a government-appointed chairperson, two UCP-nominated commissioners and two NDP-nominated commissioners, submitted its own final report to Legislative Assembly Speaker Ric McIver.

The MLA committee and advisory panel would replace and possibly duplicate much of the work done the boundaries commission that spent the last 12 months working on its own recommendations for the new riding boundaries.

The advisory panel would have six months to complete its work and not be required to collect any public input in the process, according to Schow’s motion. The report is due by October 22, 2026, three days after the long list of proposed referendums questions are voted on by Albertans.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Alberta's new electoral map will be a fight

After unanimously endorsing an interim report last year, the commission remerged divided in its final report that included a majority report endorsed by the chair and two NDP commissioners that stuck close to the interim report and a radically different minority report endorsed by the two UCP commissioners.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I make a real effort to not stray into hyperbole when I write about Alberta politics, but I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to describe the minority report as gerrymandering. It’s difficult to read the minority report maps without thinking that they were drawn to increase the partisan advantage for the UCP in the next election.

The minority report notably included a large number of “hybrid” rural-urban ridings that sliced the cities of Calgary, Lethbridge, Red Deer, and Airdrie into the surrounding rural areas. The minority report echoed recommendations made by Lethbridge-East UCP MLA and cabinet minister Nathan Neudorf to dissolve Lethbridge’s two urban ridings and carve the southwest Alberta city into three or four large “agri-innovation corridors.”

UCP MLA Nathan Neudorf wants Lethbridge carved into 3-4 big rural-urban ridings

Neuford’s proposal was not included in the commission’s interim report or the majority report.

Number of ridings increasing from 87 to 91

The MLA committee and advisory panel would be given a mandate to increase the total number of ridings by four from 87 to 91, up from the two additional ridings UCP MLAs voted to allow the commission to create in its final report.

Adding four extra ridings was an escape hatch offered by boundaries commission chair Dallas K. Miller in the majority’s final report as a way to deal with the removal of rural ridings caused by faster population growth in urban centres.

Like much of the current UCP government’s chaotic approach to legislative bills and motions, it feels like they are making this up as they go.

Five questions about the new MLA committee and advisory panel

1. Why is the government doing this?

The only reason for the UCP government to introduce this is that UCP MLAs didn’t like what the majority of the commissioners, including the government-appointed chairperson, recommended in the final report.

Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP caucus is dominated by rural MLAs and sweeping the ridings outside of Calgary and Edmonton is key to the UCP winning re-election in 2027. It’s very likely that UCP MLAs did not like the prospect of having to challenge each other for their party’s nominations in newly redrawn rural ridings ahead of the next election — a situation that would cause tension in any caucus. The addition of competitive urban seats in cities where the population has grown the fastest also risks slimming the UCP’s majority.

I’m willing to bet that’s the main reason why the UCP government has intervened to send the map back to the drawing board.

2. What’s going to happen next?

We don’t really know, but it’s easy to speculate. The UCP has a majority in the Legislature, so it is unlikely that the motion to create the MLA committee and advisory panel would fail.

Schow’s motion calls for Lunty to chair the MLA committee, but we don’t know who the other committee members would be or who would be appointed to the advisory panel.

Under the circumstances, a best case scenario might have the committee and advisory panel adopt the recommendations of the commission’s majority report while adding four additional ridings instead of only two new ridings. In this scenario, the UCP would likely use to two extra ridings to rescue the Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland and Lacombe-Ponoka ridings that were dissolved in the final majority report.

But there’s not many reasons to believe the UCP will take a moderate approach in this process. It is much more likely that the government will appoint a chair and commissioners who are much more agreeable to the map the UCP government would like to have to run for re-election in 2027. This could mean Alberta’s new map could look much more like the commission’s minority report that included “hybrid” ridings that sliced cities into sprawling rural-urban ridings.

The UCP under Smith’s leadership have demonstrated a troubling eagerness to break political norms, concentrate power, and weaken independent institutions, so it would not be out of character if they adopted a map very similar to the one proposed in the commission’s minority report.

Because the government motion doesn’t replace the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, it is unclear whether the UCP government has further plans to change the entire commission structure in the future.

3. Will the NDP participate in the advisory panel?

That is unclear. NDP leader Naheed Nenshi said in a press conference at the Legislature yesterday that the opposition is weighing their legal options at this point. The UCP motion states that the panel will “conduct its review despite any vacancies in its membership,” meaning that the UCP have already prepared for the NDP to boycott this process.

4. What if we get another majority and minority report?

The UCP won’t accept the commission’s majority report but they will accept the majority report of the advisory panel.

The UCP motion states that “if the independent advisory panel submits more than one report to the Committee, the report of a majority of the members of the independent advisory panel is the report of the independent advisory panel, but if there is no majority, the report of the chair is the report of the independent advisory panel.”

5. Will Alberta’s new election maps be gerrymandered?

Gerrymandering, the act of politically manipulating electoral district boundaries to advantage a party, is one of the most toxic and corrosive features of American politics. This kind of political manipulation has largely been avoided in Canada and the courts have been quick to strike down any maps that strayed too far in that direction.

We don’t know what the new maps will look like, and I will be watching this process closely, but Canadians should vigorously guard against any attempt to import attempts to gerrymander ridings into our electoral system

Instead of the ad hoc system proposed in Schow’s motion, Alberta should consider adopting a non-partisan model for future boundary redistributions, similar to the one used to redraw federal electoral ridings.

Preserving the independence and credibility of institutions that should be free from direct partisan manipulation, especially when it comes to drawing electoral maps, is key to preserving public confidence in our election system and democracy.

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🎙️ Daveberta on the radio

I was up early on Monday morning to talk with CBC radio about Alberta’s divided electoral boundaries commission. It can be a bit of a confusing and dense topic so I did my best to explain it in a way that most folks can understand (and understand why it’s important).

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Dave