Don't "monkey" with growing populations

Olds College chair Bob Clark says the provincial Electoral Boundaries Commission shouldn't "monkey" with constituencies like Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, where the population is growing.

"I understand the difficulty of the challenge you have because I had the job of chairing one," Clark told the commission during its hearing at the Ramada Inn in Olds on Jan. 25. He chaired the 2002-2003 Electoral Boundaries Commission (and was ethics commissioner at the time).

Clark said Alberta is primarily growing in a line that runs from Fort McMurray to Edmonton and Grande Prairie to Edmonton, then down Highway 2 to Lethbridge and to a lesser degree, east to Medicine Hat.

Clark said along Highway 2, the population is growing in a corridor that's 30 to 40 miles wide on either side of that highway.

"I think one of the mistakes we made years ago was spending too much time just looking at the population now, as opposed to looking at the areas that are growing and taking that into consideration," he told the commission.

Alberta has 87 ridings and word is that's not going to change this year.

Ideally, each riding is supposed to contain 49,000 residents. But Alberta's population isn't evenly distributed. Some areas have far greater populations than others.

So when it draws boundaries, the commission can allow each riding's population to be plus or minus 25 per cent of that 49,000 figure.

Complicating that math is the fact that Alberta's population has grown by about 20 per cent since 2010.

A map posted during the hearing in Olds showed the population of the Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills riding to be 41,231.

"These boundaries that they're going to draw will likely be in place for the next two elections. So if you can predict reasonably where growth is going to take place, then for those areas to be a few percentage points behind the magic number is the way it should be, because those areas are going to grow," Clark said.

"We didn't do that back when I was chair and we should have."

Plans call for the commission to table an interim report by May 31 and a final report on Oct. 31. Then members of the legislature will vote on its recommendations.