Tag: Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission

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Alberta Politics

NDP MLAs Sarah Hoffman and Samir Kayande first candidates nominated for 2027 election

MLA Sarah Hoffman (left) and MLA David Eggen at the Edmonton-Glenora NDP nomination meeting on March 3, 2026. Hoffman was acclaimed for the nomination. (source: Sarah Hoffman / Facebook)
MLA Sarah Hoffman (left) and MLA David Eggen at the Edmonton-Glenora NDP nomination meeting on March 3, 2026. Hoffman was acclaimed for the nomination. (source: Sarah Hoffman / Facebook)

Candidate nomination season kicks off in Alberta

It could be 18 months before Albertans line up to mark their ballots in the next provincial election but that isn’t stopping Alberta’s main opposition party from starting to nominate candidates ahead of the vote.

The Alberta NDP started nominating candidates this week, far ahead of the scheduled October 2027 vote. A much earlier election was rumoured but appears increasingly unlikely as we move further into 2026.

NDP MLA Sarah Hoffman became the first candidate nominated ahead of the next election when she was acclaimed in Edmonton-Glenora on March 3. Hoffman has represented the riding since 2015 and served as Deputy Premier and Minister of Health in the NDP government led by Premier Rachel Notley from 2015 to 2019.

The following night, on March 4, the NDP nominated first term MLA Samir Kayande for re-election in Calgary-Elbow and, last night, MLA Peggy Wright was selected to run for re-election in Edmonton-Beverly-Clarevew.

Read more on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

Rakhi Pancholi takes the lead – NDP deputy leader takes centre stage, again, in response to Danielle Smith’s nine referendum questions

Edmonton-Whitemud NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi (source: Alberta NDP Opposition / YouTube)
Edmonton-Whitemud NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi (source: Alberta NDP Opposition / YouTube)

“Cut the bullshit. Call the election.”

Those were the words Alberta NDP deputy leader Rakhi Pancholi directed at Danielle Smith the morning after the Premier took to the television waves to blame immigration for the provincial government’s budget problems and announce a suite of nine referendum questions to be put to Albertans on October 19.

The 38-MLA NDP opposition has struggled to gain traction and define itself since former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi replaced former premier Rachel Notley as leader a year and a half ago, but those six words from Pancholi last Friday cut through the noise and were a blunt reminder that she is one of the party’s most effective voices.

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Alberta Politics

Will Danielle Smith call an early election in Alberta?

Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones and Premier Danielle Smith at a government press conference in December 2025 (source: Alberta Newsroom / Flickr)
Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Matt Jones and Premier Danielle Smith at a government press conference in December 2025 (source: Alberta Newsroom / Flickr)

After months of speculation, Premier Danielle Smith said during her 2025 year-end interviews that she isn’t planning to call an early election in 2026, but anyone who pays attention to politics knows: circumstances change.

The next provincial general election is scheduled to happen in October 2027 but there continues to be wide speculation that an early election could be called — and there are plenty of reasons to believe why.

Smith’s UCP remains ahead of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP in the polls and the governing party continues to raise large amounts of donations. And there is little doubt that Smith remains one of the most effective and shrewd political communicators in Alberta and in Canada’s conservative movement.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

Alberta is getting a new map for the next provincial election

Alberta is getting a new electoral map and the commissioners tasked with the job of redrawing the province’s political boundaries released their interim report in October.

The Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission is now collecting input about the interim map before the commissioners go back to the drawing board to sketch out their final report, which will be submitted to Speaker Ric McIver by March 28, 2026.

The new map would be used for the next provincial election if it is approved by the Legislature and if a provincial election isn’t called next spring, as some political watchers suspect could happen.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

All about Alberta politics in Fall 2025

Alberta’s Legislature Building through the view of a broken glass panel in summer 2025 (credit: Dave Cournoyer)
Alberta’s Legislature Building through the view of a broken glass panel in summer 2025 (credit: Dave Cournoyer)

Danielle Smith and Naheed Nenshi will spar in the Legislature but the most interesting politics will be on the road

A recent fundraising email from Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi with the subject line “Sooner than we think?” includes speculation that Smith’s United Conservative Party is “so afraid of losing power, they’re trying everything to give themselves an unfair advantage. Including US-style gerrymandering.”

Nenshi’s “US-style gerrymandering” comment was a reference to UCP cabinet minister Nathan Neudorf’s controversial proposal to split the southern Alberta city of Lethbridge into four sprawling rural-urban ridings (a story that was first reported on Daveberta). It’s certainly clear what Neudorf’s preference is, but whether it gets included in the soon to be submitted interim report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission is yet to be seen.

The new boundaries will certainly play a big role in the next provincial election but regardless of how the provincial map is redrawn, most voting intention polls show not much has changed since the last provincial election. That vote resulted in two-way race between the UCP and NDP, with Smith’s party’s dominance over almost all of the rural and small city ridings giving them a numerical edge against Rachel Notley’s Edmonton-based NDP.

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Alberta Politics

Former Speaker David Carter warns of too many Alberta MLAs

Former Calgary PC MLA David Carter, who served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 1986 to 1993, wrote to the commission expressing his concern about increasing the total number of MLAs from 87 to 89:

“This will result in crowding. Including potential hinderance in the event of fire or evacuation from the Chamber. In my opinion, these additional seats are an ill-advised intrusion by the government and should be regarded architecturally as the absolute limit to the number of seats within the Chamber. I recommend this limitation be noted in the report.”

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Alberta Politics

UCP MLA Glenn van Dijken on the “Unique Burden of Rural Representation”

Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock UCP MLA Glenn van Dijken asked the commission to consider what he described as the “Unique Burden of Rural Representation” when redrawing Alberta’s electoral map.

The three-term MLA urged the commission to lower the population averages in rural ridings so that rural MLAs will not have an increasingly large geographic region and more municipalities to represent in the Legislature, even if that means increasing the population averages in urban ridings.

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Alberta Politics

Former Calgary mayor Al Duerr asks commission to respect city’s municipal boundaries

Former Calgary mayor Al Duerr argued in his written submission to the commission that lumping rural and commuter communities into Calgary ridings would be impractical, unfair and a detriment to effective representation.

The former four-term Calgary mayor, who served from 1989 to 2001, wrote that Calgary residents share different interests than people in neighbouring communities and they access different services and go to schools in wholly different school systems…

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Alberta Politics

Former Medicine Hat MLAs Rob Renner and Bob Wanner want big changes to provincial ridings

East of Lethbridge, two former Medicine Hat MLAs are asking the commission to redraw the Medicine Hat ridings after the city was divided into two large rural-urban ridings when the riding boundaries were last redistributed in 2017.

Different submissions from Rob Renner, who was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Medicine Hat from 1993 to 2004, and Bob Wanner, who represented Medicine Hat as an NDP MLA from 2015 to 2019, argued that pairing the Medicine Hat with the City of Brooks in the current Brooks-Medicine Hat riding doesn’t well-serve the interests of Alberta’s sixth largest city.

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Alberta Politics

UCP MLA Nathan Neudorf wants Lethbridge carved into 3-4 big rural-urban ridings

Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf speaks at a government press conference in Edmonton on April 10, 2025 (source: Alberta Government / Flickr)
Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf speaks at a government press conference in Edmonton on April 10, 2025 (source: Alberta Government / Flickr)

I read all 197 submissions to Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission so you don’t have to

The City of Lethbridge could be carved into four provincial ridings that sprawl into the surrounding rural areas if a local United Conservative Party MLA gets his wish. Lethbridge-East MLA Nathan Neudorf submitted a written proposal to the Electoral Boundaries Commission calling for the southwest Alberta city to be reconfigured into “three or four complementary ridings that create a cohesive “agri-innovation corridor.”

Neudorf’s submission, which is one of 197 written submissions received by the commission and posted on its website, proposes a dramatic change in the electoral map he says would give “producers, processors, researches, and urban businesses a unified voice in the Legislature.”

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

Redrawing Alberta’s electoral map

Alberta Electoral Map

Voters only getting 2 more MLAs despite huge population boom

Alberta will have a new electoral map when the next provincial election is called. An Electoral Boundaries Commission has been named and will begin travelling the province next week to collect feedback from Albertans about how new riding boundaries should be drawn to reflect population changes since the last time the map was redrawn in 2017.

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Alberta Politics

UCP cuts the “length” off arms-length AIMCo

Minister of Finance Nate Horner and Premier Danielle Smith on February 29, 2024 (photography by Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta/Alberta Newsroom)
Minister of Finance Nate Horner and Premier Danielle Smith on February 29, 2024 (photography by Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta/Alberta Newsroom)

Alberta’s $160.6 billion investments now under a government controlled cone of silence

Secure in her party’s leadership after earning the support of 91.5 percent of members at the United Conservative Party AGM earlier this month, Premier Danielle Smith isn’t skipping a beat in implementing her government’s political agenda.

The firing of the CEO and the entire board of directors of AIMCo, the arms-length Alberta Investment Management Corporation, was confirmed through a short 9:47 am press release from Finance Minister Nate Horner last Friday.

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Alberta Politics

Danielle Smith’s Fundraising Machine

Premier Danielle Smith at the United Conservative Party's leader's dinner in Edmonton (source: Danielle Smith / Facebook)
Premier Danielle Smith at the United Conservative Party's leader's dinner in Edmonton (source: Danielle Smith / Facebook)

A special weekend episode of the Daveberta Podcast

It’s rare that I send out a newsletter on the weekend but I thought subscribers would enjoy listening to a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast we recorded this week.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode of the Daveberta Podcast, including:

  • Premier Danielle Smith’s recent packed leader’s dinner fundraisers in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer and Bonnyville.
  • how the Alberta NDP leadership candidates are leaning into digital advertising on the Meta platform and what this might say about their campaigns.
  • how federal boundary changes are impacting the electoral map in south east Edmonton (I’m calling it the Mill Woods Shuffle) and former Progressive Conservative MLA Naresh Bhardwaj’s campaign for the Conservative nomination in the new Edmonton-Southeast riding (I’ve updated the list).
  • how electoral boundary commissions work in Alberta (one of my favourite topics).

The full episode of this Daveberta Podcast is available to paid subscribers of the Daveberta Substack.

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Alberta Politics

Oh, Grant Hunter. Where do I start?

Grant Hunter and Jason Kenney (source: Facebook)
Grant Hunter and Jason Kenney (source: Facebook)

Photo: Cardston-Taber-Warner MLA MLA Grant Hunter and UCP leader Jason Kenney. (source: Facebook)

While announcing his plans to run for re-election in the new Taber-Warner district, United Conservative Party MLA Grant Hunter is reported to have compared the New Democratic Party’s 2015 election win to the 2004 Tsunami that ravaged southeast Asia and is estimated to have killed upwards of 280,000 people.

Hunter offered an apology to anyone was offended by his comments, but this is just the sort of ridiculous anti-NDP hyperbole that we have become accustomed to hearing from some Wildrose/UCP MLAs over the past three years.

But when talking about his decision to run in the new Taber-Warner district, rather than challenging his caucus colleague Dave Schneider for the UCP nomination in the new Cardston-Siksika district, he made another statement that caught my attention.

“…the NDP have put us in a bad position in this southern part here, in that when the boundaries were redrawn, they split Cardston-Taber-Warner into two different ridings.”

The Cardston-Taber-Warner district Hunter currently represents will see significant changes when the next election is called. While he may have legitimate concerns about the redistribution of the electoral boundaries in southern Alberta, it is misleading to blame the NDP for putting him “…in a bad position…”

The new district boundaries for the 2019 election were drawn by a commission composed of an independent chairperson (Justice Myra Bielby), two NDP Caucus appointees (Bruce McLeod of Acme and Jean Munn of Calgary) and two Wildrose Caucus appointees (Laurie Livingstone of Calgary and Gwen Day of Carstairs). The commission was appointed in October 2016 and held public hearings and received hundreds of submissions from Albertans throughout 2017.

Of the Wildrose appointees, Livingstone supported the final report recommending the new electoral map, including the changes to Hunter’s district, and Day submitted a minority report opposing changes to rural district boundaries.

The bi-partisan commission submitted recommendations for a new electoral maps to the Legislative Assembly for debate and it were voted into law by 40 NDP MLAs and Alberta Party MLA Greg Clark last December.

The process used to redraw Alberta’s electoral boundaries certainly has its flaws (I will write more about this soon), but with Hunter’s own party’s handpicked appointees deeply involved in the process it is misleading for him to blame the party in power for changes he might not like.

Note: 25 MLAs voted against the new electoral map, including two NDP MLAs, Colin Piquette and Eric Rosendahl.

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Alberta Politics

A closer look at Alberta’s new electoral map

Alberta Electoral Map 2019

Readers of this blog will know that I have a long-time interest in the topic of redrawing electoral boundaries. Over the next few months I plan to take a closer look at some of the latest electoral district changes in Alberta that will take effect when the next provincial general election is called. If there is an area of the province, or a specific new district that you would like me to look at, please let me know.

South of the border, FiveThirtyEight has come out with a fascinating series of podcast episodes – the Gerrymandering Project – that focuses on how electoral boundaries are redrawn in some parts of the United States of America (we may have some problems in Canada, but they are nothing compared to the extreme level of partisan interference in some US states). Take a listen and enjoy.

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