NDP calls Alberta electoral boundaries report worst gerrymandering in provincial history

Alberta's NDP opposition accused a UCP-majority advisory panel of redrawing the province's electoral map to protect incumbent ministers and dilute urban voters' representation, during a contentious Select Special Committee on Electoral Boundaries meeting on Wednesday in Edmonton.

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, attending his first meeting of the committee, said the report — which must be tabled in the Legislature by Nov. 2 — crosses a line not seen before in Canadian politics. "This government, in their effort to dodge accountability, has engineered the single worst case of gerrymandering in Alberta history," Nenshi said during the Oct. 28 committee meeting. "In Canada we don't cheat to rig elections. That is a MAGA practice. That is something we have never allowed to cross the border. No politician has even tried until this moment."

The independent advisory panel delivered its report to the committee on Oct. 22, as required under Government Motion 37. The UCP majority on the committee voted 3-2 Wednesday to conclude its review and proceed to tabling, with de Jonge, Rowswell and Wiebe voting in favour and Gray and Ganley opposed.

Nenshi said residents of Lethbridge will find their city's two urban ridings broken into rural-urban hybrids when the report is released. "People of Lethbridge will find that they've been wiped off the map," he said, adding that the community of Springbank would be divided to benefit two UCP cabinet ministers. "Not just a line we've never seen in Alberta before, but a line we've never seen in Canada before."

Nenshi described a pattern he said began in late 2024, when the Justice minister amended the electoral boundaries act to remove the requirement to consider existing community and municipal boundaries. He said an Electoral Boundaries Commission was appointed in spring 2025 and received more public submissions than any such process in Alberta history, producing what he called the first unanimous interim report of any Electoral Boundaries Commission in the province. He said that final commission report was tabled on March 28 and "promptly thrown out by the government."

He also said that during the second round of public hearings, a small number of people submitted maps that appeared to share a common template. "All the maps looked the same. They were in the same font, they were in the same style, and — oh, oops — one of them forgot to take the government document identifier off of the page," Nenshi said. "These maps were created by the government to interfere in a supposedly independent process."

NDP MLA Christina Gray said the majority panel exceeded its mandate and produced a report that fails basic tests of voter parity. "The most populated riding is more than double the population of the lowest populated riding," Gray said. She said opposition members had moved 28 motions at the committee seeking greater transparency and checks on the process, and all 28 were defeated by the UCP majority. "I truly believe that this is an attempt by the government to try to win and maintain their power through loopholes and skullduggery and gerrymandering," Gray said.

Gray also told the committee that a UCP candidate and a former UCP MLA were overheard discussing details of the still-unreleased report at a public event the previous evening.

NDP MLA Kathleen Ganley said the majority panel went far beyond what it was directed to examine. "The UCP and their friends didn't like the results of the independent public process, so they opted for another," Ganley said. She quoted the minority panel's own report, which said there is "no precedent for redrawing an entire province after an independent commission has completed the task in at least the past three decades in Canadian history" and warned that "interference in an independent redistricting process is constitutionally perilous."

On Lethbridge specifically, Ganley said the majority report referred to the city's population outside a proposed central riding as "spare population" and recommended that Lethbridge "lend a little population to Cardston." The minority report noted Lethbridge residents supported preserving the city's existing boundaries by more than a five-to-one margin in submissions to the earlier commission, and that those boundaries had been in place for 55 years. "Voters are meant to pick their politicians, not politicians their voters, but what we see in this report is politicians picking their voters," Ganley said.

Ganley also said the chair of the advisory panel was paid under a contract unlike any previous panel contract, including an extra $5,000 a month on top of the standard per-day remuneration. A motion she moved to compel the panel to disclose all individuals, organizations, legal advisers and government MLAs it had consulted was defeated 3-2. A separate motion by Gray to include payment records for panel members and external experts in the committee report was also defeated 3-2.

The committee heard from Clerk Nancy Robert that GIS modelling and mapping services were provided by Elections Alberta.

The full committee proceedings are available on the Assembly Online video archive and on YouTube.

After the meeting, Nenshi said the report was unconstitutional and the NDP would challenge the new electoral map in court if the Legislature passes it.

The committee authorized its chair to approve the committee report by noon on Oct. 31. The NDP's minority report is due by noon on Nov. 1, and the full committee report must be tabled in the Legislature no later than Nov. 2.