Introduction
Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission Act contains key structural flaws that encouraged a judge to exercise poor judgement and gave Premier Smith an opening to exploit. First, in all other provinces and in Ottawa, an electoral boundaries commission consists of true independent experts – judges, chief electoral officers, senior civil servants, or academics – rather than overt political appointments. But Alberta bucked this trend through its Electoral Boundaries Commission Act and allows the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition each to nominate two members of the commission, which stacks it with political appointees and necessarily makes it less independent from the outset than its counterparts elsewhere in Canada.[1] Second, Alberta’s enabling legislation defines the function of the Commission as “to make proposals to the Legislative Assembly as to the area, boundaries and names of the electoral divisions of Alberta” – not to establish the definitive electoral map.”[2] Third, the bad law expressly gives the politicians the power to reject the commission’s “proposals” and allows the Legislative Assembly to tamper with what the commission recommends and impose gerrymanders of its own. The Smith government has set out to do precisely that – yet all this chicanery hews to Alberta’s law, because Alberta’s law remains flawed by design. If Alberta had adopted legislation like Manitoba’s, then the final report endorsed by the majority of the members of the last electoral boundaries commission would already have become law and spared us all this upcoming gerrymander. Continue reading
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