EDMONTON – The Alberta NDP vehemently opposed the UCP's decision to modify the recommendations of the electoral boundaries commission, but the UCP say they should look in the mirror before accusing a government of meddling with independent electoral boundary recommendations. "I don't want the maps in this report," said Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi during a press conference on Thursday. "If I got to draw the maps, I would have drawn them differently, but I don't get to draw the maps. I deliberately don't get to draw the maps politicians never should."Nenshi and his party hurled accusations of gerrymandering at Premier Danielle Smith and the UCP government after they tried to creatively adopt the independent commission's majority-recommended electoral boundaries, but will adjust them to reinsert the rural districts that its proposal subtracted. Their caucus justified this decision by citing complaints from the commission, which said 89 districts were insufficient to provide effective representation, and by calling for a cabinet committee to re-add the two rural districts and address any necessary trickle-down effects. Nenshi does not believe this is necessary, though. "The commission members listened to Albertans, they read the law, they did their work, and they proposed a fair set of maps," Nenshi said."These maps are not perfect. We still have too many rural-urban hybrid ridings. The people of Medicine Hat don't really have their voice heard. But they are fair, and they are independent.".Smith and the UCP believe Nenshi should look at his own history before complaining about a government interfering with and changing electoral boundary recommendations. "Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is the only one who's voted against the recommendations of an electoral boundary commission when he was mayor of Calgary, and rewrote it three times so that he could get the boundaries that he wanted," said Smith during question period on Thursday. Nenshi was involved in a pair of Calgary ward boundary changes during his time as mayor from 2010 through 2021, both of which had the final maps drawn by the city's officers, rather than an independent commission. In 2014, Nenshi and his council appointed an independent Ward Boundary Commission, chaired by former mayor Al Duerr, to review Calgary's 14 ward boundaries and make adjustments to ensure equal population dispersion because the city had experienced rapid growth since the previous adjustments.Duerr and his commission were tasked with drawing boundaries with equal representation, with a target of 15% room for variation on either side of the average, despite Alberta's law allowing for 25% variation. .After consulting with Calgarians and gauging public input, the commission presented a proposal to City Council that included five wards with a range of -17% to -23% and three wards with a range of +8% to +12%. Nenshi disagreed with the plan's population balance and led a vote by putting forward a motion to defer the Duerr report to the city's Chief Electoral Officer Barb Clifford. The motion passed by an 8-7 vote, and Clifford began making further adjustments to better balance the wards based on the 15% targeted population variance.Clifford then put forward a new proposal that came closer to what Nenshi was looking for, but he had one recommended adjustment: moving either the community of MacEwan or Sandstone Valley to a neighbouring ward to achieve better population balance. Council voted on Nenshi's recommendation and rejected it by a 10-5 vote, then approved Clifford's overall proposal by a 13-2 vote, with Nenshi among the two who voted against the recommended boundaries. .Nenshi was involved in further partial boundary redesigns in 2020, following a review of the city's population that revealed some wards had experienced significant growth since the 2015 redesign and needed rebalancing. City Council then ordered a review by Calgary's Returning Officer, Laura Kennedy, rather than by an independent review commission. Kennedy then conducted her review, involving consultation and input from Calgarians, and presented the final report to Nenshi and the City Council, who ultimately voted to accept the minor changes. Nenshi has defended both instances by saying they involve something the UCP's electoral boundaries decision did not. "That is a crazy political spin on their part," Nenshi said. "You know, I don't usually highlight the bad political comms of the UCP, but that's nuts. Because what happened in Calgary is what's supposed to happen. "The report goes to council, and council debates and asks questions of the commission. We've been stripped of the opportunity to do that."Nenshi said if the government notices an issue with a report, their job is to point it out. "You let the experts fix it," Nenshi said. "You don't let the politician redraw."
