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Boundaries commission making Westlock stop

The public will get a chance to share their thoughts on the constituency review next week as the legislative assembly gets set to redraw constituency boundaries in the fall. All are welcome to attend the public hearing at the Westlock Ramada Inn Feb.

The public will get a chance to share their thoughts on the constituency review next week as the legislative assembly gets set to redraw constituency boundaries in the fall.

All are welcome to attend the public hearing at the Westlock Ramada Inn Feb. 24 from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., but those wishing to present must register on the Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission website by Feb. 17.

Once registered, speakers will be given a 10-minute presentation timeslot followed by a five-minute question period from the commission. Afterwards, transcripts and audio of all presentations will be posted online.

Three other hearings are being held Feb. 21-23 in Calgary, Edson and Slave Lake. Once they’re wrapped up, the commission will prepare an interim report at the end of May. A second round of public hearings will be held in the summer before a final report is submitted in October.

“It’s been an interesting time to be on the commission because there’s been a huge growth in population in the province since the last time a commission sat in 2010,” said commission chair Justice Myra Bielby. “They haven’t moved equally in each of our 87 provincial constituencies, so the population hasn’t grown proportionally in each of the 87 constituencies.”

The province mandates the commission to update electoral boundaries every eight to 10 years based on population changes.

According to the 2016 Statistics Canada census released Feb. 8, Alberta’s population grew by 400,000 to 4.07 million people since the 2011 federal census.

Each of Alberta’s 87 constituencies contains roughly 49,000 people but population can vary by 25 per cent with appropriate reasons.

“Right now based on population estimates provided to us by the Alberta Treasury Board, our estimated populations in constituencies in Alberta range between 26,000 and 69,000 people, so they’re quite far off from the estimated provincial average,” Bielby noted.

Under the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, the final constituency boundaries will be based on public input, as well as population density, existing road systems, municipal boundaries and common community interests.

“We’re also to use geographical features, if they exist, that makes a border easily understood,” Bielby said. “So if there’s a major highway like Highway 2, maybe we should try to make that the boundary of the various constituencies that lie along it, rather than going over the highway, but we can do that if it makes logical sense.”

The Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock riding had a population of 40,670 according to the 2011 census and the Alberta Treasury Board predicted that number to grow to just over 45,000 although the 2016 federal census puts the number closer to 60,000.

“Right now the estimated statistics put you at eight per cent below the provincial average, so when we come to our deliberations, we’ll say, ‘Are there reasons for us to leave the constituency as is even though it is eight per cent under, or should we move a boundary to pick up a few more people to bring it closer to the provincial average,’ and if so, ‘Should we go north, south, east or west,’” she explained.

Those are the things she said she hoped people would address at the hearing. Up until Feb. 8, the public was able to submit written and online feedback to the commission, which added up to more than 550 submissions since January.

So far, Bielby has heard differing views at previous hearings, some who have supported the notion that constituencies should each have 49,000 people so everyone’s vote is equal.

“We’ve also heard from many people who are concerned about their MLAs ability to effectively represent them in the Legislature, (which) will be negatively impacted if their constituency has to grow geographically because its population hasn’t kept up with the rest of the province,” she added.

She said they have also heard from the public about specific adjustments. In Tofield, for example, the constituency boundary cuts right through the town. In another case, the boundary has cut a county in two so that county councillors have had to deal with two MLAs.

“The overall riding test is we want to make sure MLAs can effectively represent their constituents and that doesn’t mean arithmetic, identical constituencies, otherwise the commission wouldn’t need to sit at all,” she said.

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