Alberta's NDP warns of gerrymandering as new boundary map recommendations released

Conflicting recommendations on redrawing Alberta’s electoral boundaries ahead of the 2027 election are leading the Opposition NDP to warn that Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives are trying to gerrymander electoral districts to increase the voting power of its bedrock support in rural areas.

The majority opinion in the Electoral Boundaries Commission’s final report, released Thursday, recommends Edmonton gain one new seat in the legislature while Calgary gains two, with the additions coming largely at the expense of less populated rural areas in central and west Alberta.

The minority opinion, put forward by the two UCP-appointed members, similarly recommends more seats in Edmonton and Calgary, though it suggests creating more than a dozen new hybrid ridings to bring rural and urban voters together. It also doesn’t eliminate any rural ridings.

Both plans would bring the seat count to 89 from 87, as the government required through legislation in 2024 when it started the redrawing process and removed the requirement that electoral boundaries respect municipal boundaries as a guiding principle.

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The commission’s majority, which includes Alberta judge and commission chair Dallas Miller and the two members appointed by the NDP, wrote in the report that the minority members have put forward unreasonable and indefensible suggestions, and openly questioned their motivations.

“Our friends south of the border may have a term for this type of redistricting,” the majority wrote, adding that following through with it risks “jeopardizing faith” in Alberta’s democracy.

“The majority objects in the strongest terms to this unconstitutional minority report and wishes to warn the Legislature against its adoption.”

The law dictating the boundary change process says the legislative assembly can implement the commission’s majority report in full or with amendments.

Chief government whip Justin Wright said in a statement that the UCP caucus is reviewing the recommendations and will have more to say at a later date.

Smith’s office deferred questions to Wright’s statement.

NDP leader Naheed Nenshi told reporters he thought the minority’s proposal, which includes 11 hybrid ridings in Calgary and four each in Lethbridge and Red Deer, was “nuts.”

“They want to carve Lethbridge up into a pizza with four slices so that the people of Lethbridge don’t have the majority in any individual riding,” he said.

“That is obvious gerrymandering.”

The fracture on the commission seemingly came as a surprise to the majority, who wrote that the minority had a “radical about face” in the months after the commission published its unanimous interim report last fall. The interim recommendations are largely in line with what the majority put forward on Thursday.

Nenshi said he thought the change of heart was a result of “political pressure” being put on the commission members by the UCP.

“The fact that the UCP-appointed chair of the commission felt the need to write that he thought it was unconstitutional and wrong tells you what you need to know,” he said.

The minority, in their report, noted the skepticism of hybrid ridings but concluded more are “necessary to respond to demographic change, reduce polarization, and reflect Alberta’s increasingly interconnected urban-rural landscape.”

They added that many if not all of the hybrid ridings they proposed featured communities intertwined economically or through shared transportation networks and public services.

But the majority wrote that the ridings, especially in Calgary, paid little attention to population figures. They wrote that the non-hybrid ridings in the city’s north would be near the maximum population allowed, while the new hybrid ridings in south Calgary would be below or at the provincial average.

“It is difficult to see how creating electoral divisions with highly unevenly distributed populations within the same city creates more effective representation,” the majority wrote.

The minority, in turn, argued in their report that the majority’s “inclination to delete or mangle” rural ridings would reduce rural representation.

“The Majority’s insistence on eliminating and amalgamating certain rural divisions weakens effective representation.”

Miller, the commission’s chair, acknowledged the loss of rural representation, saying in his own letter in the report that the majority wasn’t happy about it either.

The majority’s proposal features hybrid ridings too, though significantly fewer than the minority’s plan.

Calgary would have four hybrid ridings, including one that would amalgamate the Tsuut’ina First Nation with a southwest neighbourhood in the city.

The majority plan also proposes two hybrid ridings in Edmonton.

Despite gaining seats both cities would also see one existing riding dissolved into neighbouring districts. Edmonton’s downtown core would shrink to five ridings instead of six due to limited population growth in the area.

One of the biggest changes put forward by the majority compared with the interim fall plan is to maintain the sprawling rural riding of Lesser Slave Lake.

The majority wrote that it heard a significant amount of concern and “very persuasive” arguments to keep it so that northern representation was protected.

“We did it! Our riding of Lesser Slave Lake has been saved,” reads a Thursday social media post from the riding’s current representative, Scott Sinclair, an Independent MLA.

If the legislative assembly doesn’t support the majority’s proposal, Miller is recommending that the government increase the overall seat count to 91 rather than 89 so that the two rural ridings his plan would dissolve could be maintained.

This would likely be a better solution regardless, the majority wrote, noting that adding only two more seats doesn’t come close to matching Alberta’s massive population growth since 2017, the last time Alberta’s electoral ridings were reworked. The majority also said future commissions should be granted the power to determine how many new seats are necessary.

Miller wrote that he was making this recommendation for “the express purpose of dissuading the legislature from accepting the minority report.”

“The minority’s radical about face and substantive unreasonableness regarding these hybrids, to say nothing about the many other administrative and constitutional law problems with their report, is not something that I can condone.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2026.

Jack Farrell, The Canadian Press