Albertans have until the end of the day Wednesday to have their say on how the province’s electoral boundaries should be changed. Changes will be made ahead of the scheduled election in 2019.
In the Grande Prairie region, the Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission is looking to see whether people want the two ridings to continue to split the city along 100th Avenue, or if they’re prefer one MLA for the city and one for the rural area.
At Monday’s night’s city council meeting, council changed its request to one representative inside the city’s boundaries, and one to cover a 25 kilometres radius surrounding it. The County says it wants to keep the current boundaries, to make sure that everyone is fairly represented and MLAs don’t have to travel too far to see constituents.
The commission is looking at a average constituency population of 48,800, and Grande Prairie’s is nearly 69,000. Right now both the local ridings have around 57,000 residents, already much higher than the provincial average.
People can submit their thoughts online. An interim report will be submitted by the end of May.