By CHAT News Today

Province passes new electoral boundary legislation

Dec 14, 2017 | 9:26 AM

EDMONTON, AB — Alberta will have new provincial electoral boundaries in two years.

During the final day of the sitting of the legislature, the Electoral Divisions Act was passed in third reading by a vote of 41-25.

Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes voted against the bill, saying the bill would reduce the voice of rural Albertans, making it harder for their concerns to be heard in Edmonton.

“There are some extra needs when you’re representing a rural constituency, that being our distance from Edmonton, the size of these constituencies and our primary industries are all in rural Alberta,” he said. “These are reasons that taking three seats out of rural Alberta is just wrong.”

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 The changes will consolidate 16 rural ridings into 13, and add three new ridings to Calgary, Edmonton and the Airdrie-Cochrane area. The province would still be left with 87 ridings.

The ridings and boundaries were designed by the Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, an independent agency, to address population shifts in the province. The rural riding changes was a result of slower growth in those areas compared to other parts of the province, according to 2016 census data. The final report was submitted to the legislature in October.

Locally, Brooks, Bassano and the County of Newell would join the northern half of Medicine Hat, Redcliff and Suffield to create the new Brooks-Medicine Hat riding. Strathmore, which currently shares a riding with Brooks, would become a part of the new Drumheller-Strathmore riding.

Cypress-Medicine Hat would still be around, but would be made up of the southern half of the city, Dunmore, Irvine and Elkwater.

Bow Island, Manyberries and Foremost move out of Cypress-Medicine Hat, and into the new Taber-Warner riding.

Barnes says he heard from people in his riding that they wanted the boundaries to stay the same.

“If your voice from rural Alberta is going to have a much, much harder time being heard, I think the best balance for ensuring that we have people engaged in our process, that we have people willing to come out and vote, is if we would’ve kept those three rural seats,” he said.

The new boundaries will not take effect until the writ is dropped for the next provincial election, scheduled to take place in 2019.