While the Conservatives are likely to take five of the six new seats in the 2015 election, the NDP will likely pick up at least one riding in Edmonton and could gain another, says Bruce Cameron, president of the Calgary-based firm Return on Insight.
Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission released its proposed changes to the province’s ridings on July 5.
The Conservatives currently hold 26 of the 28 seats in the province. NDP MP Linda Duncan holds Edmonton-Strathcona, and former Conservative MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East) now sits as an Independent Conservative.
Calgary is set to get two new ridings, one in the south and one in the northwest. The city’s population grew from 878,866 in 2001 to just over one million in 2011. Edmonton, whose population went from 666,104 to 812,201 from 2001 to 2011, will also get two new ridings. After the boundaries are adjusted, the two cities will hold 17 of the province’s 34 ridings. There will also be a new riding in the north of the province, and another in the south.
Mr. Cameron said that the riding redistributions required to fit in the two new ridings made for significant potential for change in party representation in Calgary and Edmonton. The new ridings concentrate urban voters who are more likely to vote progressively.
The downtown riding of Calgary Centre would be altered under the proposed adjustments for the 2015 election. It loses some of its western area, closer to the edge of the city, and picks up more space closer to the Bow River. Mr. Cameron said that this could weed out enough Conservative voters to push through a left-leaning candidate.
“That could be a Liberal candidate—it sounds crazy but it could be—or it could be a Green candidate,” he said.
He added that a potential candidate would have to be well-known in the area, and fiscally conservative while environmentally progressive.
Though an opportunity for opposition parties, the additional seats also put a greater strain on party resources—a situation that plays into the Conservatives’ strengths, said Mr. Cameron.
“It’s tough on the parties that are out of power and who don’t have much of a base here, because they have to spread their resources even thinner. For the Conservatives it’s a bonus,” he said.
“Liberals here or the NDP, it stretches their resources even thinner. They’re going to have to find riding executives, they’re going to have to find candidates,” he explained.
After the departure of Conservative MP Lee Richardson this spring, Calgary Centre is also preparing for a byelection. The Conservative nomination is still being contested. He said if the riding doesn’t go to a more progressive Tory, this too could help the riding swing liberal in the next election.
“Very few MPs here have Progressive Conservative backgrounds,” noted Mr. Cameron.
“Lee Richardson was one, and he’s left. Jim Prentice was another prominent one, and he’s left. It’s those types of Conservatives who can win handily in any inner-city riding, but you need a progressive conservative, a more red Tory, to take those urban seats in Calgary and Edmonton,” he said.
The electoral boundaries committee left no riding in Alberta untouched, altering the borders of all 28 existing ridings in the province as it added the six new constituencies.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s riding of Calgary Southwest would be renamed Calgary Heritage under the proposed changes and trimmed in the south. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s current riding of Calgary Southeast is being split into the newly-created riding of Calgary Midnapore and Calgary Shepard, to name just a few changes.
Conservative Calgary Centre North MP Michelle Rempel’s riding on the city’s north side is also being redistributed into other ridings under the proposed changes. Part of her riding would be re-named Calgary Confederation, while a portion of it would go into the new boundaries for Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy’s riding of Calgary Nose Hill.
Ms. Rempel said that she was glad to see Alberta getting six new seats under the new distributions, bringing the province’s representation more in line with its population. Still, Calgary Confederation would be the province’s largest riding under the new seats. The area had a population of 111,917 in 2011.
She said that the addition of two extra seats to the Calgary area would not change the way the city is represented, or how Conservatives campaign in the area.
“We all work very closely together to ensure that the city is well-represented, but also on the organization side we have a very strong team of volunteers and activists across the city that supports the Prime Minister, and I don’t expect that to change with the boundary distribution,” she said.
Conservative MP Rob Anders, who represents Calgary West, said that he is looking forward to getting some of his old constituents back, from neighborhoods he represented before the last change in electoral boundaries, even as he loses more than 40,000 people.
Mr. Anders said he expected changes to his riding as its population is almost 150,000 people, several thousands above the target riding size of about 107,000. He said that with the changes, the local hospital and university would not be in his riding any longer, though a local Dutch and Christian community would come back under his bailiwick.
“I was hoping that we would get 11 seats as opposed to 10 for the city of Calgary, because the city of Calgary is 1.1-million. If you leave that for another 10 years, that means we’ll be severely under-represented again,” he said in a telephone interview from the Calgary Stampede.
Alberta’s population has grown by almost one million people since the last readjustment 10 years ago. In the 2001 census, 2.9-million people called the province home. Now that number is more than 3.6-million. Alberta’s electoral quota, or the target population size per riding, is 107,213—the highest in Canada.
The House of Commons will grow from its existing 308 seats to 338 seats after the next election in 2015. The 30 new seats will be distributed in four provinces, with six going to British Columbia, 15 going to Ontario and three going to Quebec, in addition to Alberta’s six.
Ms. Duncan is the province’s lone opposition voice.
While her riding remains relatively unchanged, the addition of two new seats in the city bring the NDP an opportunity to grow.
“There is a new dynamic that is emerging, especially in the cities. If you look in Edmonton in the provincial election that just finished, the NDP won four ridings. The Liberals won five, and the Progressive Conservatives carried the rest. Wildrose was shut out,” said Mr. Cameron.
Ms. Duncan also said that the new ridings, and the redistribution of existing seats, presented an opportunity for her party.
“They’ve made it totally Edmonton, and they’ve excluded the rural communities, [which] I think makes sense, frankly, for the province because there’s more commonalities among people,” she said.
NDP candidate Lewis Cardinal said he is heartened by the changes to the new riding of Edmonton McDougall, which would replace Edmonton Centre while dropping part of the current riding at its southwest corner. Edmonton Centre is currently represented by Laurie Hawn. Mr. Cardinal ran against Mr. Hawn in 2011 as a star New Democrat candidate. He came in second, losing with 12,480 to Mr. Hawn’s 23,625 votes, and he plans to run again.
“The chunk that they carved out votes largely Conservative so that definitely helps me,” he said.
Mr. Cardinal said that the riding change wouldn’t affect how he campaigned in the area in 2015. He also said that changes to the neighbouring riding of Edmonton East, which would be renamed Edmonton Griesbach in 2015, would help the NDP in that seat too. The riding is currently represented by Mr. Goldring. NDP candidate Ray Martin came in second in that riding in 2011, losing with 17,078 votes to Mr. Goldring’s 24,111 votes.
Mr. Cardinal added that current party polling puts the NDP in the lower 30 per cent of support in the Edmonton area.
Mr. Cameron said that Edmonton Strathcona and the surrounding area would likely be targeted by the NDP, and should be ridings to watch.
“I look forward to having two new New Democratic colleagues,” said Ms. Duncan.
Mr. Anders noted that Alberta has a tradition of returning a strong slate of Conservatives to Ottawa after each federal election, and that he expected the tradition to continue.
He added that he didn’t think that the split between provincial Progressive Conservatives and the more reform-minded Wildrose Party would play out with voters at the federal level.
PC Premier Alison Redford upended expectations this spring in the provincial election when she won a majority over favourite Wildrose leader Danielle Smith.
“In the last election you saw that split between the two entities, Progressive Conservative and the Wildrose, but those voters all recognized that the Conservative Party, federally, represents them on the spectrum,” said Mr. Anders.
The smallest riding in the province will be Bow River, a newly-named district in the province’s southern end. Made up of parts of three existing ridings, Macleod, Medicine Hat and Crowfoot, the area had a population of 102,272 in 2011. The north will also get a new riding, Grande Prairie, which would consist of the southwest portion of the current riding of Peace River, represented by Conservative Chris Warkentin.
Mr. Cameron predicted that neither of these ridings, nor the new riding of Sturgeon River, to the northwest of Edmonton, would waver from Alberta’s Conservative tradition.
“Those ridings too are in areas where a lot of the jobs, the economy, the economic spin off from the oil sands and the upgrading of bitumen from the oilsands is huge. So it’s a very pro-development area,” he said, adding the most interesting competitions in those areas would be for the Conservative nomination.
While the city of Red Deer, represented by Earl Dreeshen, won’t be getting a new ridings, it will be divided across two constituencies, named Red Deer-Wolf Creek and Red Deer-Mountain View.
Public hearings on the proposed changes to Alberta’s electoral boundaries will take place between September 10 and 25. The electoral commission has until December 21 to submit its final report to the House of Commons.
Proposed new ridings and names for Alberta
Banff-Airdrie
Battle River
Bow River (new)
Calgary Centre
Calgary Confederation
Calgary Forest Lawn
Calgary Heritage
Calgary McCall
Calgary Midnapore (new)
Calgary Nose Hill
Calgary Shepard
Calgary Signal Hill
Calgary Spy Hill (new)
Edmonton Callingwood
Edmonton Griesbach (new)
Edmonton Manning
Edmonton McDougall
Edmonton Mill Woods
Edmonton Riverbend
Edmonton Strathcona
Edmonton-Wetaskiwin-Foothills
Fort McMurray-Athabasca
Grande Prairie (new)
Lakeland
Lethbridge
Medicine Hat
Peace River-Westlock
Red Deer-Mountain View
Red Deer-Wolf Creek
Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan
St. Albert-Edmonton
Sturgeon River
Yellowhead
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Jessica Bruno
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