Alberta Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure has just offered Premier Danielle Smith and her MLAs a graceful exit ramp from the embarrassment of having a court overturn a shameless scheme to gerrymander their way to an election victory.
Chances are that Ms. Smith and her United Conservative Party Caucus won’t take it, so off to court they’ll go, using Albertans’ tax money to defend their planned attack on Alberta democracy. That would be on brand.
Still, it’s said here the UCP might be smart to agree to Mr. McClure’s suggestion that they stick to the currently established electoral boundaries for the expected 2027 general election, assuming it goes forward on the legislated Oct. 18 fixed-election date.
After all – their unpopular recent separation referendum vote notwithstanding – voters’ memories are short and Alberta’s traditional voting habits are tribal enough in nature that it’s well within the UCP’s grasp to win the 2027 election honestly.
The question: Do they have it in themselves to take the chance on doing the right thing?
In a letter sent to all members of the Legislative Assembly on Friday, Mr. McClure gently reminded them of the legitimacy of the process that led to the report of the 2025 Electoral Boundaries Commission, which last April recommended a new electoral map for the province.
Sometime shortly after the non-partisan commission’s members appointed by the UCP and the Opposition NDP unanimously recommended the new electoral map, the two UCP members on the commission for some reason changed their minds and published a dissenting report with a map of their own that telegraphed the intention of the Smith Government to gerrymander urban and rural ridings to dilute urban votes and give itself an unfair edge in the next general election.
It’s not hard to imagine what happened behind the scenes to lead to this situation.
Using the rift on the commission as an excuse, the government tossed the commission’s report – the product of more than 30 public hearings throughout Alberta, in person and online, and close to 2,000 written submissions – and struck a UCP-dominated committee to come up with a hurried do-over more acceptable to the government.
Those new electoral maps are expected to be published Monday, but they are widely understood to show heavily gerrymandered ridings in south Calgary and Lethbridge clearly intended to dilute the NDP vote inside those cities by shuffling many voters off into large hybrid ridings covering vast swaths of reliably conservative rural territory.
Both the majority of the original Electoral Boundaries Commission, which was headed by a retired Court of King’s Bench justice, and the Opposition NDP have warned that if the UCP tries to implement the new gerrymandered map, the result may be a legal challenge, which could well succeed.
Now Mr. McClure’s letter has entered enter the debate.
“Recent media reports have raised the possibility the proposed boundaries could be subject to legal challenge,” Mr. McClure diplomatically noted. “While Elections Alberta takes no position on the merits of any potential legal proceedings, the prospect of a court challenge introduces additional uncertainty into an already compressed implementation schedule.”
“The challenges presented by further delay in settling electoral boundaries are compounded by Elections Alberta’s limited organizational capacity,” he continued. “Elections Alberta is already the leanest electoral management body in Canada on a per voter served basis. In the last 24 months we have been increasingly required to do more, with less resources.”
He noted, although not in quite these words, that work required to run Premier Smith’s ridiculous separation referendum and its nine noxious policy referenda, plus dealing with numerous petitions under the Citizen Initiative Act, hasn’t left his understaffed and underfunded agency in any position to plan for two election scenarios in the face of a court challenge to the government’s gerrymandering scheme.
He offered, therefore, two ways out of the dilemma:
- Let Elections Alberta hold a provincial general election event with the existing electoral boundaries.
- Extend the fixed-election date so that Elections Alberta has time for “orderly establishment, mapping, implementation, and operational preparation of the electoral boundaries.”
“These requests are not intended to influence the substance of the Legislature’s deliberations or any judicial determination,” Mr. McClure wrote, rather plaintively. “Rather, they reflect the practical requirements of election administration and the need to ensure that decisions concerning electoral boundaries are accompanied by a realistic and achievable implementation schedule.”
The UCP won’t like Option 1. They’re going to be anxious to get on with their gerrymandering before the public, tired of politics after the referendum campaign, starts to notice. It’s not just progressive city voters that will be unhappy, though. Some residents of rural ridings are sounding almost as unhappy about being forced into such unnatural pairings.
But the party isn’t going to like Option 2 either, because they know that the longer they wait, the worse their chances may get. You can call an election too soon in Canada’s Parliamentary system, as we’ve just seen in B.C., but you can call one too late too. Four years is the sweet spot. They’ve also moved the date once before to improve their electoral chances, or so they thought. There’s always a risk voters will cotton on to what they’re up to.
Mr. McClure has offered them a way out. Alas, this lady’s not for turning, even when it’s the smart thing to do.