Riding changes unfair
There are reasons why certain decisions need to be taken out of the hands of politicians. One of them is the shape and plotting of electoral boundaries.
When politicians mix their priorities on how these boundaries are shaped — as Premier Ed Stelmach literally bragged about having done Wednesday — the result is a loss of democracy.
If the will of the people cannot be expressed in a true or accurate measure in a legislative body, then we do not have democracy.
Right now, Alberta can be said to be an urban province. More than two-thirds of the population lives in the boundaries of the four largest cities. The population of our 10 largest cities is about 80 per cent of the provincial total.
Yet people who live in cities have little more than 60 per cent of the representation in the legislature. And the urban ridings contain far more voters per MLA than rural ridings.
The result is that rural voters have a political voice in the legislature far exceeding their population weight.
Apparently, this suits the premier just fine.
Speaking among friends — the annual meeting of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties — on Wednesday, Stelmach actually crowed how he managed to interfere politically with the business of the commission appointed to do its regularly-scheduled re-draft of Alberta’s electoral boundaries.
The excuse was to defend increasing the legislature from 83 seats to 87, but if anyone was upset over the cost of adding more politicians to the house, they weren’t saying much at the AAMDC meeting. The representatives there were more concerned about what would happen to them and their priorities if Alberta ever became truly democratic.
“Because we’re here at the AAMDC, at a rural convention, if we had not increased the number of seats we would have lost three (ridings) just in the horseshoe from Lloydminster coming around to Rocky Mountain House,” the premier said.
Losing those ridings (which would have to be accomplished by amalgamations) would have created a number of rural constituencies that are bigger than Canada’s smallest province: Prince Edward Island. And this to create new urban ridings that people cross every day by bus.
On the sound of it, that’s also undemocratic. How can one MLA adequately get to know a riding that large, much less attempt to represent its varied interests?
The answer is in Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo, one of the seats geographically larger than P.E.I. It contains the urban zone of Fort Mac, which has more than 70,000 people (unofficially — its last census was an extrapolation, not an actual count), and a huge zone that holds considerably less. How does one MLA even begin to represent a population as diverse as that?
Well, as it turns out, you do it by being kicked out of the Tory caucus, but that’s another story.
Under the re-draft that Stelmach says he helped engineer, a large portion of South Red Deer will become part of the rural riding of Innisfail. Innisfail-Red Deer is going to be part of a large riding, containing farms, high-growth urban areas, plus villages and hamlets that are gradually emptying themselves out.
Whose interests are served by your MLA, if you need a school built in one place, but one is closing in another; or a hospital expanded in one area, but closed in another?
Whose interests are served when a few thousand votes will get you an MLA in one riding, but might not be enough to even get your candidate’s deposit back in another?
More important, whose interests are served when politicians meddle to take voting power away from some Albertans, to give more to others?
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.
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