Alberta NDP to participate in new boundaries review after calling it illegitimate

Naheed Nenshi delivers his acceptance speech after being named as the new leader of the Alberta NDP in Calgary, Saturday, June 22, 2024.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

EDMONTON — Alberta’s Opposition NDP say they will participate in a new review of provincial riding maps, even though they believe Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives are using it to rig the next election.

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi has called the new review “illegitimate”, but he told reporters Wednesday that participating is the only way to at least try to hold Smith’s United Conservatives to account.

The decision comes a day after Smith’s caucus used their majority in the house to vote to take a second run at new riding maps proposed last month by a bipartisan commission.

The commission couldn’t agree on new electoral districts, and after close to a year of study and public engagement its members split along party lines and presented drastically different proposals.

The majority opinion put forward maps that saw two rural seats be eliminated while additional ridings were created in Edmonton and Calgary. The minority opinion, put forward by the two UCP appointees on the commission, kept those rural ridings and instead pitched more than a dozen new urban-rural hybrid ridings.

Commission chair Dallas Miller and critics warned the minority maps were a clear attempt to favour Smith’s party come election time. Miller, out of concern the government would adopt those maps, proposed the government order a new review that would be allowed to create four additional seats rather than two so that the rural ridings he pitched to be eliminated could be maintained.

It’s Miller’s recommendation that Smith is following, calling it an “elegant solution” that would allow rural representation in the legislature to be protected.

“The intention, as well, is to preserve as much of the majority report as possible,” Smith said Wednesday in question period.

“There will be some knock-on effects by adding (the additional seats), but we’re going to let the committee do its work to be able to sort that out.”

The NDP, however, has said Smith is using the new review as a way to implement the ridings and recommendations from the commission’s minority in order to boost her election chances come fall of 2027.

The new review will see a committee of MLAs be entrusted with overseeing the work of a new advisory panel tasked with redrawing the maps by fall to add two more seats while using the majority’s proposals as a baseline. That panel will feature the same membership structure as the first commission: a government-appointed chair plus two nominees from each party.

Nenshi had said last week that the NDP was debating a boycott, but he said Wednesday he didn’t trust the UCP’s picks to be left in a room alone.

“They can’t be trusted,” he said. “There has to be someone in the room with them at all times.”

During debate Tuesday on the motion to start the new review, UCP backbencher Brandon Lunty, who will chair the new MLA oversight committee, said the NDP’s politicization of the new process risked public confidence in its independence.

Nenshi was skeptical of any such independence, saying Wednesday he thought the UCP majority committee will do whatever it pleases.

“But at least we’ll know and we’ll try and hold them to account and we’ll try and shame them,” he said.

Also Wednesday, Nenshi named the appointees from his caucus to the oversight committee: Kathleen Ganley, who served as justice minister when the NDP was in government from 2015 to 2019, and house leader Christina Gray.

A spokesperson for the UCP caucus said Wednesday that it would be announcing its own appointees soon, but didn’t provide a date.

The new review will see the legislature seat count rise to 91 from 87.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 22, 2026.

Jack Farrell, The Canadian Press