'Rurban' ridings on the minds of Albertans as electoral boundary meetings conclude

During a Thursday afternoon meeting earlier this month in Brooks, Alta., Justice Dallas Miller, chair of Alberta's new electoral boundaries commission, outlined the central challenge facing the panel.

As Alberta's population now nears five million, most of it concentrated in its urban centres, the commission must decide how to redraw the electoral map ahead of the next provincial election.

"The population growth, as you know, has not been spread evenly across the province," Miller told attendees, according to transcripts released from the hearing. 

"We have some challenges, and are hearing from municipalities and areas where there has been huge growth, on how we deal with that growth."

The question of where new lines should be drawn has long been a point of debate in Alberta politics, with disagreement around what's fair for both growing urban centres and vast rural areas.

The commission held public hearings in late May and throughout June in Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Red Deer and other communities. They wrapped up earlier this week.

Where lines get drawn

Like Canada's other Prairie provinces, there has been a notably stark urban-rural divide in Alberta in recent provincial elections. The United Conservative Party has dominated in the rural parts of the province, but performed less impressively in the province's two major cities.

Electoral boundaries are significant, of course, as they determine which grouping of voters elects each member of the Legislative Assembly to the Alberta Legislature.

Every eight to 10 years, a five-member commission is appointed to decide where these lines go. 

This time around, the province is adding two new ridings, increasing the total number of seats in the legislature from 87 to 89. 

But one other change may have a longer-term impact, in that the commission is no longer required to align ridings with municipal boundaries. That could open the door to more mixed rural-urban ridings. 

Distinct perspectives and the rural-urban split

Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, said electoral boundaries are intended to try to keep "communities of interest" together — that is, people who might share the same concerns or perspectives because of where they live.

"One of the most significant cleavages in contemporary politics is between rural and urban dwellers. Their concerns tend to be different and they often have different perspectives on politics," Young wrote in an email.

"It's difficult to make an argument that an electoral district that combines urban and rural really captures communities of interest because of these differences."

Under mixed rural-urban ridings, Young said rural dwellers would worry that their votes and their distinct perspectives on political issues would be drowned out by urban dwellers. By the same token, urban dwellers might have the same concerns if they were the smaller group in a mixed district, she said. 

Keith Archer, who served on a previous Alberta commission and was chief electoral officer in B.C., previously told CBC News that the move was one of the more interesting things to watch in this review.

Up until now, it has been clear that electoral districts in the city of Calgary, for instance, should be 100 per cent aligned with the boundaries of the city, he said.

"You can imagine, that you could try to have fewer urban electoral districts by having an electoral district that is partly made up of, let's say … the central-eastern part of the city, and extend out into the Chestermere area," Archer said.

"You'd have kind of a rural part of the constituency, coupled with an urban part of the constituency … as a way of trying to adjust whether a constituency is principally an urban or a rural district. It'll be interesting whether the commission takes up that opportunity."

Participants weigh in

Whether Alberta should create more electoral boundaries which mix urban and rural caught the attention of many attendees at this past month's hearings.

Craig Burrows-Johnson, who spoke at the Pincher Creek hearing, has lived in both rural Alberta and Calgary. At his hearing, he argued against "so-called 'rurban' ridings."

He said he thought rural MLAs should be working on rural issues, including agriculture, small-town revival, surface rights, orphan wells, among others. 

On the other hand, he thought urban MLAs should focus on problems and opportunities in urban centres.

"The MLAs that represent those voters need to concentrate on their issues," he said. "If you spread their zone of responsibility… they're simply not as effective."

Dan Hein, who lives in Medicine Hat, Alta., said he decided to attend a meeting in Brooks after reading in meeting transcripts that most of the hearing participants were against "rurban" ridings.

He argued that establishing such ridings could lead to fewer representatives being stuck in an "echo chamber" around various matters.

"If a representative has to hear from a whole bunch of different viewpoints, he will probably be more rational and reasonable," Hein said.

"And I think that'll improve their ability to represent people on a provincial level."

Challenging work ahead

Alberta's Electoral Boundaries Commission Act states that most ridings must have populations no more than 25 per cent above or below the average size. However, should they meet certain conditions, there is an exception that allows up to four electoral districts to have populations up to 50 per cent below the provincial average.

Nine constituencies in Alberta are currently more than 25 per cent above the average size: Calgary-Buffalo, Calgary-Foothills, Calgary-North East, Calgary-Shaw, Calgary-South East, Edmonton-Ellerslie, Edmonton-South, Edmonton-South West, and Airdrie-Cochrane.

"There's a possibility of really significant adjustments to electoral boundaries and a shift from the current balance between urban and rural municipalities in favour of urban municipalities," Archer, the former commission member, previously said.

"But that runs counter to the support base of the current government. So I expect that the electoral boundaries commission will certainly get an earful in their public hearings, both before the interim report is issued, and before the final report is."

The commission, chaired by Justice Miller and made up of members appointed by both government and opposition parties, is expected to release an interim report in October. A final report is expected by March 2026.