Danielle Smith's Attack on Representation

Remember when she denied Calgary-Elbow a by-election? This is worse.

Albertans are struggling. Alberta’s inflation is the highest in the country; wage growth is the lowest. We’re falling further and further behind and we can feel it. The Smith government is in trouble: voters don’t like falling behind and punish governments when they do.

But Danielle Smith is going to try to inoculate itself against voter anger. She’s going to try to pick her voters (instead of voters picking the government) by changing the electoral boundary rules.

Alberta’s electoral boundaries are going to be redrawn prior to the next election. In Canada, we’ve had a tradition of non-partisan electoral boundary decisions that don’t typically favour one party over another.

But Danielle Smith is upending this tradition. Bill 31 changes the game in Alberta. The new boundaries don’t have to align with city boundaries. They don’t have to consider common communities. They don’t need to consider the sparsity, density, or growth of the population. She’s changing the law so these criteria are now optional.

Congressional District 30 in Texas, 1991-1996 | Source: Wikipedia

I’m worried that the Danielle Smith government is opening the door to US-style gerrymandering, like the Texas district in the picture above. She’s trying to choose her voters, instead of letting voters choose the government. It’s possible for Danielle Smith to draw boundaries that won’t elect an NDP government even if most Albertans vote for the NDP.

We saw this before in Calgary-Elbow, when she didn’t call a by-election in 2022 after the previous MLA resigned, while calling a by-election for herself in Brooks-Medicine Hat.

We know that she doesn’t value democracy. She only values power.

And while district boundaries are an issue for nerds, apparently far from the affordability concerns and health care crises hurting Albertans right now, we know that a less democratic government is a less effective one.

Danielle Smith’s subversion of democracy hurts us in real, tangible ways. It makes her less responsive to her voters. It means that she wastes more time and money, like the $100 million on Turkish Tylenol contracts to a company that paid for her playoff skybox tickets.

What can we do? Watch this space in the coming weeks.

The Smith government has a lot to answer for. You can be sure that I’m holding Danielle Smith to account.