Motion to take second run at redrawing Alberta’s electoral ridings set to pass

The Alberta Legislature in Edmonton.

EDMONTON — Alberta’s Opposition NDP says Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives are undermining democracy with their plan to revisit election maps.

“What we’re seeing before us is something that’s never been tried before by any Canadian parliament, by any Canadian legislature,” NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said during debate Tuesday ahead of a legislature vote to revisit the maps.

“It’s not fair and it’s not right. And fundamentally, it is not Canadian.”

The motion would see a committee of legislature members struck to oversee the work of a new advisory panel tasked with reviewing and redrawing by the fall recently proposed riding maps.

That panel would take the majority opinion put forward recently by a bipartisan commission that split largely along party lines and came up with profoundly different proposals last month.

Smith says the new process is in line with a recommendation from the commission’s chair, who had suggested creating more seats in the legislature to prevent the loss of rural ridings.

The chair’s recommendation came out of concern that the government would adopt a second set of maps put forward by the United Conservative Party’s appointees, who wrote a minority report with a slew of urban-rural hybrid ridings that critics and other members of the panel warned was a clear attempt at rigging electoral maps in favour of the rural-dominant UCP.

Nenshi has said going back to the drawing board is just a smokescreen for the government to at least partially adopt the minority’s maps, and he reiterated that argument Tuesday.

“The fix is in,” Nenshi said. “It’s been clear for some time that the goal here is to dilute the voices of people in Calgary and Edmonton.”

He also called the upcoming work of the new committee and advisory panel “illegitimate” since it won’t be required to do any public consultation.

UCP cabinet minister Jason Nixon dismissed the accusations.

“We have the NDP, again, acting as if the sky is falling and freaking out,” he said in debate.

Nixon argued that the NDP’s opposition to the second review is hypocritical given the NDP have argued in the past to have more ridings to keep pace with Alberta’s population.

“They somehow want to reject Albertans receiving more seats despite the fact the population has grown,” Nixon said.

Earlier Tuesday in question period the NDP prodded the government on the boundaries plan, with Nenshi again demanding that Smith’s government admit to drafting the maps for its appointees on the commission, which Smith promptly denied.

When Nenshi suggested it was suspicious the reworked maps were done so quickly, the premier suggested the possibility they were crafted with artificial intelligence.

“The members should take our AI academy because then they’d learn how to use the marvels of modern technology,” Smith said.

The NDP also rolled out a new public advertisement campaign Tuesday against Smith’s plan to redraw the maps. It has rented a truck that drove through downtown Edmonton decorated on all sides with a picture of the premier alongside the words “Danielle Smith trying to rig the next election.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2026.

Jack Farrell, The Canadian Press