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.     

What Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission Act Says

• Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, 2024, R.S.A., 2000, c.E-3

The federal Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and New Brunswick’s Electoral Boundaries and Representation Act mandate that the Governor-in-Council must proclaim the electoral boundaries contained in the commission’s final report into law within a specific timeframe as secondary legislation, which prevents the politicians from interfering in any way with the new electoral map.[3]  Quebec’s Electoral Act and Manitoba’s Electoral Division Act use an even more efficient and logical process where the new electoral map contained in the commission’s final report takes effect automatically upon the next dissolution of the legislature, with no further intervention at all by either the legislature or the Lieutenant Governor-in-Council.[4] All the other provinces should adopt this method because it prevents governments from using their majorities in the assembly to manipulate electoral boundaries and substitute their gerrymanders for the work of an independent electoral boundaries commission.

But the equivalent provincial statutes of Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia break the link and the chain of custody over the their commissions’ final reports and the final electoral map enacted into law; instead of either making the commission’s final report law automatically or forcing the Lieutenant Governor-in-Council to make the commission’s final electoral boundaries official without further interference, the government in these wayward provinces tables separate primary legislation, which, in turn, gives the legislative assembly the chance the alter, reject, and twist the independent commission’s electoral boundaries into a gerrymander.[5]  Nova Scotia’s House of Assembly Act also forces the government to table a bill to implement the commission’s final report as the new electoral map but really ought to have adopted the same method as Quebec and Manitoba, given that nothing would prevent the House of Assembly from amending the government bill and enacting a gerrymander.[6]

Danielle Smith has shamelessly taken advantage of this bad wording and loophole, and not unexpectedly, given her temperament as Premier thus far. For his part, Justice Dallas Miller, who chaired the most recent provincial electoral boundaries commission, showed extremely poor judgement by practically asking Smith to do a gerrymander and for having given her the political cover to do so. Thus far, the media coverage has not acknowledged the poor statutory construction of Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, much less the appallingly poor judgement of Justice Miller. Contrary to popular belief, judges can and do frequently make mistakes, just like the rest of us.

Section 11(1) of Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission Act says: “If the Assembly, by resolution, approves or approves with alterations the proposals of the Commission, the Government shall, at the same session, introduce a Bill to establish new electoral divisions for Alberta in accordance with the resolution.” Therefore, the Assembly can legitimately reject the commission’s final report and instead plot a gerrymander in its place. In contrast, section 10(5) of Manitoba’s Electoral Division Act leaves no room for such chicanery: “The report comes into force and replaces the Schedule on the first dissolution of the Legislature to occur after the end of the year in which the report is submitted to the Speaker, and has the same force and effect as if it were enacted by the Legislature.” It stands to reason that if Alberta’s law worked in Manitoba’s, then Justice Miller would never have included his addendum to the majority and his personal fifth recommendation either, because he wrote it as a conditional hedge against the minority report and under a system where the legislature retains the authority to reject outright or alter at its discretion the work of the electoral boundaries commission.

What Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission Recommended 

• Final Report

Alberta’s most recent electoral boundaries commission issued its final report on 23 March 2026; the majority (consisting of the judge acting as chair and the two members nominated by the New Democrats) issued a reasonable electoral map that came to only 2.89% on the Loosemore-Hanby Index, while the two members nominated by the Conservatives dissented in an overtly political minority report that would increase the disproportionality to 4.28% by oafishly mashing together previously urban ridings in Edmonton and Calgary with their rural environs. The final report lamented throughout that the Electoral Divisions Act limited the Legislative Assembly to 89 MLAs, given Alberta’s rapid growth in population over the last decade, and the majority said that 91 ridings would have “provide[d] Albertans with more effective representation.”[7] The majority even acknowledged that the commission would probably have saved “Rimeby—Rocky Mountain House—Sundre and/or Lac Ste.Anne—Parkland” if the legislature had provided 91 ridings instead of 89 instead of eliminating them and redistributing them into the fast-growing areas in Calgary and Edmonton.[8]  The Conservatives hold both these ridings which the commission abolished, and Jason Nixon of Rimeby—Rocky Mountain House—Sundre also serves as the Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services.

However, the final report concluded that “the majority recommends the adopting of the majority report in its totality”[9] and asked in recommendation 4 on the following page that the legislature “better assess the number of electoral divisions required for the next Electoral Boundaries Commission” – in other words, for the next round of electoral redistribution in the 2030s.[10] That seems straightforward and reasonable enough.

But then Justice Miller got a bit too clever and laid the foundation for Danielle Smith’s gerrymander. In his redundant and confusing “Addendum to the Majority Report,” Justice Miller once more “lamented the loss of two rural seats” and came up with a fifth recommendation not present in the main aforesaid series of four recommendations; worse still, he readily acknowledged that “my majority colleagues do not agree with me on this point” – always a promising start.[11] Miller presented his lone fifth recommendation with “the express purpose of dissuading the Legislature from accepting the minority report”[12] and declared:

In the circumstance that the Legislative Assembly of Alberta finds that it cannot concur in the proposals of the majority of the Electoral Boundaries Commission in its final report to remove two electoral divisions from areas outside of the Cities of Edmonton and Calgary, the majority of the Commission recommends that the Assembly make amendments to the Electoral Divisions Act, increasing the number of electoral divisions from 89 to 91 for the next general election, and restore the two electoral divisions that this Commission has removed. The rest of the province as we propose must be maintained to the extent possible. This would need to be studied by an all-party Select Special Committee or other equivalent Legislative Committee in accordance with its Standing Orders.[13]

Not surprisingly, Danielle Smith’s government has now ruthlessly exploited the idea that Justice Miller planted in their minds. And worse still, the status of Justice Miller’s lone fifth recommendation remains ambiguous under section 9 of the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act: “If there is more than one report submitted under section 6 or 8, the report of a majority of the members of the Commission is the report of the Commission, but if there is no majority, the report of the chair is the report of the Commission.”[14] The best answer is probably that Justice Miller’s fifth recommendation does not fall under the majority report “in totality” but that it still counts as the most definitive because it came from the chair of the commission. Justice Miller should never have issued this recommendation at all, and especially not within the support of his other two colleagues. He tried to hedge his bets but only made a bad situation (the existence of the minority report) far worse by casting doubt on the majority report.

What the Politicians Said in the Legislative Assembly

• 2026-04-16 Order Paper on Gerrymandering Committee
• 2026-04-16 Hansard

The Order Paper for 16 April 2026 contains the motion by which the government would first table a bill to amend section 13 of the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act to increase the Legislative Assembly from 89 to 91 members. Second, the Legislative Assembly would then establish “a Select Special Committee on Electoral Boundaries to oversee an independent review of electoral boundaries of Alberta” by 22 October 2026. The legislative committee would consist of three Conservatives and two New Democrats and create an “independent advisory panel to carry out” the electoral readjustment. The rest of the motion from there then replicates most of the criteria under the EBCA but would give this “independent” advisory panel less latitude than a proper electoral boundaries commission and orders that it “incorporate the recommendation provided in recommendation 5 in the Addendum to the Majority Report.”[15] The legislative debates on 16 April quickly unravelled into a series of indictments, counter-indictments, and points of order as the Conservatives and New Democrats accused each other of acting like American politicians. But stripping away the artifice left two main assertions. Naheed Nenshi argued that Justice Miller’s recommendation 5 “is not a recommendation of the commission”;[16] sadly, however, it probably is under section 9 of EBCA, or at least plausibly could be. Smith, in turn, responded that “we were proposing the majority report with the addendum of recommendation 5.”[17]

Conclusion

Once this Select Special Committee on Electoral Boundaries has completed its ersatz “independent review of electoral boundaries in Alberta” in October, I shall examine the results on the Loosemore-Hanby Index and look at the compactness, or lack therefore, of the new 91 ridings. Yet whatever abomination this committee produces might well remain impervious to litigation because Alberta’s legislature deliberately created a stupid system full of structural flaws under EBCA. The Smith government has, in fact, followed the procedure until section 11 of the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act and the advice which Justice Miller provided in his addendum to the majority report. The courts would therefore have to rule not merely Smith’s eventually gerrymander but the key flaws of EBCA which enabled the gerrymander as unconstitutional under the doctrine of effective representation and section 3 of the Charter. But purely from a political standpoint, Smith really ought to have implemented the electoral map of the majority report, without Justice Miller’s absurd addendum, based on the 89 ridings that she herself had supported only two years ago.

The Electoral Boundaries Commission Act emerged from Alberta’s unique successive eras of one-party rule which began upon the province’s creation in 1905 and did not end until one hundred ten years later in 2015, when the People’s Republic of Alberta finally gave way to a normal two-party system like those which prevail in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The Liberals ruled from 1905 to 1921, followed by the United Farmers of Alberta from 1921 to 1935, Social Credit from 1935 to 1971, and the Progressive Conservatives from 1971 to 2015. Rachel Notley’s New Democrats broke the mold in 2015, though the new United Conservative Party took back power in 2019. In 2023, the Conservatives lost 11 seats and won only 49 out of 87, merely a majority of five, yet Smith keeps acting as if the United Conservative Party has already formed a new dynasty. If Naheed Nenshi leads the New Democrats to victory in the election scheduled for 2027, his government should table legislation to fix the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act for good. First, the new legislation should make Alberta’s provincial electoral boundaries commissions more independent and less overtly political by taking the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition out of the business of nominating commissioners. Second, the new legislation should replace section 11 with the Manitoban model and make the commission’s final report law automatically, with no further intervention from the politicians whatsoever. Third, the legislation should either contain a formula for expanding the number of MLAs in the legislative assembly at the start of each electoral redistribution, or allow the commission itself to expand their number, as the last final report had recommended. These reforms would prevent further gerrymandering and chicanery and take the politicians out of the equation.

Similar Posts: 

• Readjusting Electoral Boundaries
• The Final Report of Alberta’s Provincial Electoral Boundaries Commission Contains a Clumsy Conservative Gerrymander (March 2026)
• Ontario Needs to Readjust Its Provincial Electoral Boundaries Regularly (November 2025)
• Some Thoughts on Gerrymandering and Mid-Term Redistricting in the United States (September 2025)
• Doug Ford Wins Snap Election on an Extremely Disproportional Electoral Map (March 2025)
• Doug Ford’s Gibberish on Gerrymandering: Why Ontario Needs Its Own Separate Provincial Electoral Boundaries Commission (August 2024)
• Bowden, J.W.J. “Adjusting Federal Electoral Boundaries in Canada: Redistribution 2022,” Canadian Parliamentary Review: A Focus on Electoral Boundaries Redistribution 47, no.1 (2024): 3-13.

Notes

[1] Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, RSA 2000, Chapter E-3, at section 2(1).

[2] Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, RSA 2000, Chapter E-3, at section 3.

[3] Electoral Boundaries and Representation Act, RSNB 2014, chapter 106, at section 20(1-5); Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, R.S.C., 1985, c.E-3, at section 25(1).

[4] La loi électorale (Québec), chapter E-3.3, at section 32; The Electoral Divisions Act, C.C.S.M., C.E40, at section 10(6).

[5] Electoral Boundaries Act (Prince Edward Island), Chapter E-2.1, at section 18.1; The Constituency Boundaries Act, 1993, Statutes of Saskatchewan, c.C-27.1, at section 23(1); Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, RSA 2000, Chapter E-3, at section 11(1); Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, RSBC 1996, Chapter 107, at section 14. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Electoral Boundaries Act remains silent on this question, which means by default that the government must introduce separate primary legislation.

[6] House of Assembly Act, R.S.N.S., 1992 Supplement, Chapter 1, at section 5(8).

[7] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 58.

[8] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 58.

[9] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 59.

[10] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 60. I added the emphasis.

[11] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 66.

[12] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 66.

[13] Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission, Final Electoral Boundaries Commission Report, 2025-2026, 23 March 2026, at page 66.

[14] Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, RSA 2000, Chapter E-3, at section 9.

[15] Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Order Paper, 31^st Legislature, 2^nd session, day 47, Thursday, 16 April 2026, at pages 13 to 18.

[16] Naheed Nenshi (New Democratic MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona), “Oral Question Period: Electoral Boundaries,” in Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Alberta Hansard, 31^st Legislature, 2^nd session, day 47, Thursday, 16 April 2026, 1508.

[17] Danielle Smith (Conservative MLA for Brooks-Medicine Hat), “Oral Question Period: Electoral Boundaries,” in Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Alberta Hansard, 31^st Legislature, 2^nd session, day 47, Thursday, 16 April 2026, 1508.