We suspected that the new electoral maps coming out of the “do-over” Independent Advisory Panel on Electoral Boundaries would be bad, and so they are.
The Nov. 2 majority report accompanying these new, clearly gerrymandered, maps is rife with problems and contradictions, strained reasoning, and a simple lack of fairness to voters in various parts of the province.
The problem is that the government should have adopted the recommendations of the original Electoral Boundaries Commission. That commission heard from several hundred Albertans in written submissions and hearings around the province. An interim report, with recommendations for a new electoral map, was supported by all five members of the commission and tabled in the legislature last fall.
But when the final report was presented to the legislature last March, the two UCP-appointed members of the commission withdrew their support and instead submitted a minority report with a map that included several new “hybrid” constituencies.
Instead of accepting the majority report, the government decided to engage in a whole new process. A new “independent advisory panel” was formed. Tellingly, the acting chief justice of Alberta, the Law Society of Alberta, and the Canadian Bar Association declined to help circulate the request for a judge to chair the panel, citing the irregularity of the process, and failure to follow accepted protocol. The government hired a retired judge instead, again with two UCP-appointed members and two NDP-appointed members.
No new public hearings were held, so no members of the public or interested parties were given an opportunity to comment on any of the new maps.
Instead of soliciting feedback on the new urban-rural ridings, the majority on the commission embraced the idea, leaving the two NDP-appointed members to file a minority report reflecting the work of the original commission.
Hybrid ridings dilute the voting power of urban areas. It’s as simple as that. The most obvious example is in Lethbridge where the new map proposes discarding the two ridings the city has had for 55 years and instead create one urban riding and three massive hybrid rural-urban ridings extending out from the city.
It is a cynical but quite deliberate move to boost the power of rural votes which tend to favour the UCP. The authors of the majority report suggest that “Lethbridge lend a little population to Cardston” to solve a problem that is never sufficiently explained. What is stunningly ignored is the overwhelming desire of Lethbridge residents to keep their two city ridings and the fear of rural residents that their voices are going to be diluted with hybrid ridings. A number of Calgary ridings are reconfigured in ways that can only be described as extremely concerning.
The report dismisses concerns about the difficulty of representing rural and urban voters but, more importantly, makes no argument about why hybrids are a good idea.
The chair writes: “One of our panel who was the elected representative of such a hybrid electoral district for about 15 years assured that effective representation can be achieved in these situations if both urban and rural population share the same interests” and there is a “shared southern Alberta community of interest driven by dependency on agriculture and food processing.”
In other words, one person said it wasn’t a problem and Lethbridge voters are the same as rural voters because they live in southern Alberta.
The minority members express concern that the redrawing of maps could “actively undermine effective representation.” They say the report’s recommendations “exacerbate the underrepresentation of the four largest cities in Alberta,” and “before we tell an Albertan that their vote should be worth less than others, we must have a very good reason — ideally a non-partisan one that almost all people of goodwill will accept as reasonable.”
These excerpts from the report should concern every Albertan. The spirit of the majority report of the panel is both aggressive and defensive, adopting a divisive and accusatory tone aimed at the minority members. It is rife with contradictions and devoid of valid explanations for its recommendations.
One of the ironies in reading the report is to hear the panel chair scold its two minority members for “sanctimonious“concerns about the constitutionality of its proposals. One would think that might be at the centre of the chair’s concerns, rather than the subject of criticism.
And so, Albertans are faced with the prospect of more expensive litigation, given the broad concerns about the constitutionality and propriety of the report’s recommendations if they are passed into law. Debate on the highly controversial report in the legislature was limited to one hour on Nov. 4.
This issue is not just like any other political dispute where people of good faith may disagree. It is at the very core of how this province is governed. Free and fair elections require boundaries that reflect democratic concepts like effective representation, voter parity, and communities of interest. The creation of boundaries cannot be a partisan exercise, tipping the scales in favour of the party in power.
To do so breeds cynicism, distrust in the electoral system, and a deterioration in basic democratic rights that we hold dear. It invites the next party in power to rig the maps once again to favour them.
Albertans are feeling exhausted by the divisive referendum on separatism. We face a myriad of social, economic and political issues that need to be addressed urgently. But we cannot ignore the importance of this issue which is at the core of our democracy, and the future of our province.
Judith Dyck, Peggy Garritty, Marie Gordon and Anne McLellan, on behalf of “Before You Vote,” a citizens’ initiative created to help Albertans navigate the province’s recent referendum ballot.
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