Thread by @GregClarkAB

Each time Alberta has established an Electoral Boundaries Commission to redraw election maps the government has accepted the commission’s majority report, so I was surprised and disappointed to learn that a committee of MLAs has instead been tasked with creating a new map. /1

As a member of Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission, I wanted to share some background on why we give independent commissions the job of creating election maps and also provide some details on what’s in the majority report. /2

In Canada, we don’t want elected officials drawing their own election maps. Instead, governments give independent commissions the job of drawing maps that reflect population trends while also respecting the challenges of representing diverse, rural and remote communities. /3

The Canadian model isn’t one-person-one-vote, it’s what we call “effective representation.” /4

Commissions are non-partisan. We travelled to every corner of the province gathering input from Albertans of all political stripes, holding nearly 50 public hearings in 16 locations across the province. Including written submissions, we heard from over 2,000 people. /5

In the end, the majority of the commission (two members appointed by the opposition and the judge appointed by the government) created recommended maps. /6

Our majority report balances the dramatic shift in population to urban Alberta while respecting the genuine difficulty of representing sparsely populated areas far from the Legislature. /7

It was a fair process that created a balanced electoral map delivering effective representation to all Albertans. /8

The majority’s view on number of seats in the Legislature was clear; we suggested future commissions be given the power to set the number of seats in the Legislature (like they do in BC), and if so “…we may very well have proposed a map of at least 91 electoral divisions.” /9

Or, we may not have. We would have drawn a map of 91 (or any other number) the same way we drew the map of 89; we would start with a blank map and independently consider how we could provide effective representation for all Albertans. /10

What we can’t do is simply drop two new seats onto an existing map. The commission goes where the data takes us, and context matters when we're creating a map based on effective representation for all. /11

It’s also important to know that the recommendation that a committee of MLAs implement a map of 91 seats came from only one member of the five-member commission. /12

I will end with what I think are the most important words in the 362-page Electoral Boundaries Report: /13

“…the Legislative Assembly should carefully consider the majority of this Commission’s independent, justified, and reasonable recommendations before adopting any alternative boundaries...the majority recommends the adoption of the majority report in its totality.” /14

Thanks for reading this far...you can read the full report here: elections.ab.ca/uploads/abebc_…