If you live in Erin Ridge, Oakmont, Kingswood, Pineview, or Woodlands, you will be joining 27,542 other people who live in rather far flung places like Waskateneau, Vilna, Smoky Lake and Goodfish Lake to choose your next MLA.
That’s what an interim report released by the provincial Electoral Boundaries Commission suggests. Every eight years the province looks at its 87 electoral boundaries and makes adjustments based on shifts in population, and there have been major shifts. The province has grown by more than 600,000 people in the last eight years, and a majority of those people have settled in urban areas.
St. Albert gets impacted, in part, because the commission is trying to account for population shifts in four electoral divisions: Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills, Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater, Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville, and Bonnyville-Cold Lake. In these four electoral divisions, the population has grown at a rate below that of the province as a whole. The commission was fully established on October 31, 2016 and these areas have, in some cases, seen populations shrink because of the downturn in the oil industry.
One can only conclude that, in an attempt to be fair, the commission chose to realign constituency boundaries based on representation by population. At first blush, that seems entirely reasonable. The idea is to try and have each electoral division have the same number of voters to ensure that each Albertan’s vote has the same effect. But is representation by population really fair?
First of all, let’s have a look at the proposed new St. Albert-Redwater constituency. The riding would stretch 187 kilometres east to Goodfish Lake. What do the urbanites who live in the northern neighbourhoods of St. Albert have in common with Bon Accord, Gibbons, Redwater, Smoky Lake, Waskateneau and Vilna? Next to nothing. The rural portion of this riding is agriculture-based, while many of those St. Albertans commute to Edmonton daily to make their living. How does the new MLA balance the interests of 17,844 St. Albert residents with the 27,542 who live in the rural, outlying areas?
Secondly, the new St. Albert-Redwater constituency is vast in size. There are legitimate concerns that the geographic size would impede the MLA’s ability to provide an adequate degree of access to constituents. There are numerous, small municipalities in this proposed new riding, and with that comes obligations to attend public functions, including high school graduations, parades, and local rodeos. The MLA will also have to contend with the needs of the municipalities themselves, and the accompanying politics. By contrast, an MLA who represents a riding located in a large city may only have two or three city councillors residing in that riding, and there would be significantly less number of community events to attend.
Representation by population may appear logical, but the potential impact on rural ridings could be substantive. Adjusting boundaries because of population shifts without consideration for true democratic representation is a dangerous approach. The commission’s mandate, unfortunately, doesn’t allow for adding new constituencies, which puts rural ridings at a disadvantage. Adding to the current 87 constituencies would alleviate the pressure on rural representation, and provide continuity for urban and rural voters.
