New district boundaries, more seats as Alberta's federal electoral landscape shifts

Calgary will gain a federal riding and Edmonton's nine electoral districts will become fully urban in a newly redrawn federal electoral boundary system.

A three-member electoral boundaries commission for Alberta has released its final report, showing how it massaged three additional House of Commons seats into the province's electoral map.

As part of a process that repeats each decade, the commission was tasked with splitting Alberta into 37 districts of roughly equal population, while trying to group together communities with common interests.

"In Canada, we're pretty good at our boundaries," said Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Calgary's Mount Royal University.

Unlike in the U.S., where governments draw the lines — and face accusations of gerrymandering — a non-partisan panel drew up an Alberta proposal, published it and asked for written feedback, held hearings last year, and then released updated maps.

Some Alberta members of Parliament presented to the commission, debated the boundaries at parliamentary committee meetings and raised objections, but they didn't determine the final result.

However, commission members wrote that they were "disappointed" by what appeared to be a concerted effort, led by one unnamed Alberta MP, to maintain existing boundaries in their district. Commissioners received a flood of 171 email submissions after a 2022 public meeting in Lethbridge, which commissioners said all praised the MP or echoed talking points. The report says commissioners afforded these submissions no weight.

Two years ago, Canada's chief electoral officer announced population growth in Alberta, Ontario and B.C. necessitated adding more representatives for those provinces — three in Alberta, and one each in Ontario and Quebec.

Although the additions improve these provinces' ratios of representation to population, Bratt says Quebec and Prince Edward Island still have a higher proportion of seats.

Bratt said the changes now give B.C. and Alberta 80 collective seats, which will exceed Quebec's 78 seats. The math could make it more difficult to argue that federal elections are solely won and lost in Eastern Canada, he said.

The new boundaries would take effect in April 2024 at the earliest, which means the timing of the next election will determine whether Alberta has 34 or 37 seats in the next Parliament.

View the current and incoming electoral boundaries for the province on the commission's website here.

Among the changes Albertans will notice is the reunification of the city of Red Deer into one riding after the last redistribution split it in half.

Red Deer Mayor Ken Johnston says the split sometimes left civic politicians getting the runaround when they wanted help with a federal issue.