New electoral committee will achieve fairness: MLA Hunter

Posted on July 9, 2026 by Ryan Dahlman

By Trevor Busch
Commentator/Courier
editor@tabertimes.com

Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter says the province’s recent move to create a committee of MLAs to re-analyze proposed changes to Alberta’s electoral boundaries is about fairness, not gerrymandering. 

Earlier this year, after Alberta’s independent Electoral Boundaries Commission submitted a report proposing changes to the electoral map based on 89 ridings, the UCP later set aside its recommendations and struck the special select MLA committee in April to consider boundaries based on 91 ridings. 

“Justice (Dallas) Miller said in his report that it was extremely difficult for them to be able to draw the boundaries fairly, both for rural and urban Alberta, and his words were he lamented over the fact of moving to more rural ridings, and it would have been nice if we had had the ability to do 91 versus 89 ridings,” said Hunter, who also serves as Minister of Environment and Protected Areas. “So we took that into consideration, and we struck an independent all-party panel – not a panel, but a committee of the legislature – and that committee will review all of the submissions that were done and try to be able to come up with a map that represents 91 versus 89 ridings.”

Brandon Lunty, the UCP MLA for Leduc-Beaumont, will chair the special select committee and deliver a report to the legislature by Nov. 2.

The Opposition NDP have cried foul regarding the province’s move, suggesting Premier Danielle Smith and the UCP are attempting to create ridings that will benefit them politically in the next election by utilizing a UCP-dominated committee to ensure favourable boundary recommendations. 

Hunter argues the commission’s motivation isn’t an American-style attempt to politicize Alberta’s electoral map along sharply partisan lines, but rather about finding the right balance between population and urban and rural ridings.

“When you’re trying to redraw boundaries, it’s not easy. Right now we have 87 ridings. Nobody’s going to be happy, obviously, but the key is to try to be able to find the balance between representation in urban and rural ridings, and that’s the addendum that Justice Miller said needed to be able to be addressed. That’s why he wanted to have the 91 ridings versus 89, so that was the reason why it was done. And is it going to be better for Alberta? I believe so. We’ve had a lot of people move into the province, and it’s important for each of those individuals to be represented properly.”

Provincial law requires Alberta’s electoral ridings be reviewed every decade based on population changes, but Hunter sees this as flawed when taking into account the geographical size required to achieve population parity in some rural divisions.

“I know there’s been some talk out there about how it should be exactly the same in every riding in terms of population, but that’s not a fair representation, because you can walk from one side of a riding to another side of riding in inner-city Calgary or inner-city Edmonton, and some ridings in rural areas takes you hours and hours to drive across the riding to be able to get from one side to the other. So you want to have equal representation, but you also want to have effective representation, and that is what this boundary redistribution does, it tries to be able to find that balance.”

The next election, set by legislation, is scheduled for the fall of 2027.