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Final electoral boundaries report splits up County of St. Paul, SPERD region

The final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission has been released, and if accepted, would see the local constituency grow to a population of over 53,800. A new Cold Lake-St.
The final electoral boundaries report was released last week, with the above map showing the new proposed Cold Lake-St. Paul constituency.
The final electoral boundaries report was released last week, with the above map showing the new proposed Cold Lake-St. Paul constituency.

The final report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission has been released, and if accepted, would see the local constituency grow to a population of over 53,800.

A new Cold Lake-St. Paul constituency would be 15 per cent above the provincial average for population size, and would include the Town of St. Paul, the Saddle Lake First Nations Reserve, the Town of Elk Point, and portions of the County of St. Paul being absorbed into much of the former Bonnyville-Cold Lake constituency.

Current Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills MLA Dave Hanson says that while the final report is “slightly better” than the interim report that had put St. Paul into the same constituency as Fort Saskatchewan, he doesn’t feel the new boundaries are much of an improvement over the interim report.

Hanson was hoping the report would address concerns expressed during the consultation process, and would restore the rural constituencies that had been taken away. Hanson says he believes the new boundaries will results in a loss of rural voices.

In the St. Paul area, the new boundary would put Mallaig, St. Vincent, Boscombe and Ashmont into the Athabasca-Barrhead constituency. For Hanson, the boundary line would actually fall on his property, which is in the Owlseye area.

County of St. Paul Reeve Steve Upham finds himself personally in the Athabasca-Barrhead constituency, since he lives even farther west than Hanson.

“Really, in a word, I am dumbfounded,” said Upham, after taking a look at the report. “Despite all the work and thought having been put into this process we have sprawling rural constituencies, reaching 250 kms from end to end.”

Town of Bonnyville Mayor Gene Sobolewski was strongly opposed to changes to the constituencies, specifically in northern Alberta.

“I am definitely not happy about it, particularly now that our average population is going to be higher than the median they had set,” Sobolewski stated. “I think it’s going to be a detriment to our constituency, and the residents in the new one, because we’re going to have less representation.”

His concern is that the urban centres will take precedence over the needs of rural communities, using hospitals and roads as a prime example where funding has been spent in the city centres, with little to none left for smaller and more rural communities.

“We need to have a voice in the legislature, and I am not happy about the way things are starting to shake out.”

Current Cold Lake-Bonnyville MLA Scott Cyr expressed his concern over the size of the constituency.

“We’re actually the largest population percentage over the average for all of Alberta,” he expressed. “Size of the constituency will matter, because we are looking at a lot more travelling for an MLA to get to the different areas.”

He continued, that the number of municipalities within the constituency has nearly doubled, meaning less time spent with constituents, and more time spent on the road.

The electoral boundaries review started last year, and has since undergone a number of public hearings and written submissions.

According to Justice Myra Bielby, chair of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, the “review was required by law with a view to producing recommendations to the Legislature aimed at ensuring continued effective representation notwithstanding significant population growth in recent years.”

The report has been submitted to the Speaker of the legislative assembly and will be presented to MLAs for decision on whether to accept all or portions of the recommendations.

When speaking on the notion that the new constituency would have a population that is 15 per cent larger than the average, the report states that “the majority believes this variance can be supported as this is an area where future population growth is likely to fall well below the provincial average.”

The report further makes mention of the fact that the new constituency “would be relatively small in geographic size, with the uninhabited Air Weapons Range being a large part of its geography.”

Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland felt this statement was inaccurate.

“The ridings in Edmonton are very tiny. It’s well known that MLAs in rural Alberta have far more issues, and their areas are so much more vast to travel. It’s just going to make it that much more difficult for the MLA,” he said. “They can throw those comments up in the air, but I think it was all about making this work so they could make another riding or two in big cities. Rural Alberta is going to get sacrificed, and it looks like they have picked our area.”

Cyr compared the recommended constituency area to that of those in the urban centres.

“In some of the Edmonton and Calgary constituencies, you can literally walk across their entire riding within an hour or two. With ours, you can’t even drive across it in that time,” he expressed. “This seems to be a very unfortunate thing that they have decided to use only population when they drafted the boundary review. This has essentially eroded rural Albertan’s ability to speak to their government.”

Hanson agrees with local politicians, saying there’s a lot more to consider when looking at rural ridings than just population.

As things are right now, the entire St. Paul Education Regional Division falls within the Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills electoral division. Under the new boundaries, SPERD will be split into three different constituencies.

“This split further dissects our division and will make significant representation by MLAs very problematic,” says SPERD board chair Heather Starosielski. “The board is also concerned that the County of St. Paul has been split in this proposal, and it is difficult to understand the commissions rationale in this.”

Starosielski says the new board of trustees will examine the electoral boundaries report further at its November board meeting, “and I anticipate that we will be appealing for further discussion on this topic.”

Former mayor of St. Paul Glenn Andersen disagreed that the recommended constituency population was over the top.

During discussions and public hearings with the Electoral Boundaries Commission, he had lobbied to see the town included in the Bonnyville-Cold Lake constituency.

“That’s a natural pattern of trade is Bonnyville, Cold Lake, and St. Paul. We’re in the northeast, and we dead-end in Cold Lake,” says Andersen. “We share in healthcare, and the economy is really the same all the way through. We have a lot of similarities, and we’re in close proximity to each other. It’s just natural to have us all in one constituency.”

When it came to the scope of riding, Andersen noted that when compared to the constituencies of MPs, MLAs have a much smaller population and area to cover.

“If you have an MP dealing with 105,000 constituents, and we are only 15 per cent over (provincial average), to me, it’s really not a big issue,” he said.


Janice Huser

About the Author: Janice Huser

Janice Huser has been with the St. Paul Journal since 2006. She is a graduate of the SAIT print media journalism program, is originally from St. Paul and has a passion for photography.
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