The proposed electoral boundaries and how they differ from the current ones and the previously recommended ones are now available to view in a new, interactive map. Bradley Lafortune, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, joins Alberta Primetime’s Michael Higgins to discuss the map and concerns over the proposed changes. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Michael Higgins: You’re raising a red flag over this issue of effective representation. Why? Bradley Lafortune: We’re doing it because it’s a charter-protected right. Section 3 of the Canadian Charter says we all have voting rights, and that means, according to the law, according to the courts over the years going back to 1994, effective representation needs to be preserved for every single Canadian to ensure the protection of those rights. We think that’s at risk, and we want to make sure we’re raising awareness for Albertans on that. MH: Now, the government says to get to this point, it’s been an independent process. Hybridization is an accepted practice, it works elsewhere in the province, including the premier’s own riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat. BL: There’s an argument for hybridization, and we’ve heard that from the premier’s office. We want to get back to basics though, and remind Albertans that we had an independent process through what they call an electoral boundaries commission that’s set out in legislation. They listened to over 2,000 Albertans’ written and oral submissions, they revised the maps based on what they heard, and then they also took into consideration the law of effective representation and came up with boundaries. They proposed it back to the legislature. That’s a process Alberta has always followed. Never before have we seen what we’re seeing now, which is a politician-appointed panel putting aside those maps and redrawing 91 ridings without taking any submissions from Albertans and proposing hybridization, dilution of votes in some cases, and packing and cracking ridings in other cases. There’s a whole bunch of issues we don’t really have a good rationale for when it comes to the principle of effective representation. So hybridization is just one issue of many that is of concern here today. MH: What’s missing from the equation? Why wouldn’t an MLA be able to effectively represent constituents in an urban half of the riding and in a rural half of the riding? Why is there no connection? BL: There’s an important principle that comes from effective representation called communities of interest. Let’s take Lethbridge for example, which might go from two to four ridings. Two urban ridings are currently proposed to be four ridings, three of them urban and rural, and one of them largely urban. If you take one of those urban-rural ridings that’s being proposed, you can see that in one case about 60 per cent of the city is going to be represented by the riding, and then the rest is going to be represented in ridings that cover hundreds of kilometres of rural Alberta. There are different needs when it comes to access to rural health care, public education, roads, dealing with things like septic, different types of taxation in those municipalities that are rural. There are a lot of different issues, including when it comes to how one MLA, not only getting to and from different communities to actually meet with those constituents, but the different kinds of issues their constituents deal with day to day when it comes to the services and the programmes that are provided versus urban and rural. MH: Let’s get to how you’re engaging Alberta voters on this. Fairmaps.ca is the website. I understand it’s interactive. How are you hoping to connect with Albertans? BL: It’s a complicated process, so we really want to break it down. We think the best way to do that is to give people a fun, interactive website where they can overlay the current map with the proposed maps. You can also see how your vote might be diluted or empowered, depending on which map you’re looking at. MH: Are you giving three sets of maps? Because there is the current set, there is the first set of recommendations, and now what is being proposed. BL: Instead of three, we’re actually looking at five sets of maps. We have the current map, we have the majority map from the commission, the minority map from the commission, the majority map from the advisory panel, and a set of ridings we’ve mapped from the minority advisory panel. So there’s five different things out there. MH: As a voter, how do I digest that and make sense of it? BL: We think you can’t really do that without a tool you can interact with and play with yourself. What our tool does at FairMaps.ca is allows Albertans to look at Lethbridge, Calgary, Edmonton, wherever you live, and see how those different maps lay over one another, and what it does to the power of your vote. You can also look at things like communities of interest and how those might be split up. It’s a really fun and effective way to break down some complex maps and sets of issues. We also have FAQs, the definitions of gerrymandering, effective representation, some references to big court cases across the country that people can dig into as well. But at the end of the day, the message we want to get across is that fair maps mean fair elections, and this is a way for us to communicate and educate Albertans. They can also send in their feedback based on what they learn through this tool, and tell us what they think about the proposed maps. MH: Are Albertans engaged enough to jump into a deep process like this and take something away from it? BL: I have a lot of faith in Albertans. I think they are. We saw in the referendum a really high voter turnout, a lot of people came out for that, and I sense there is a really strong energy for this kind of engagement. So we think people will engage with that, and we really hope we can send the message before that legislation is passed to the government to say, “Hey, fair maps benefit our democracy, and it’s good for everyone. This isn’t about one political party or another. This is about our democratic rights.” So the more Albertans speak to the government, we think we’re hopeful they can make a compelling case that the government can put those fair maps in place. MH: Is this about empowering Albertans or encouraging Albertans to reach out and engage on their own, with the government, or do you take something from this process and make use of it? BL: We want people to do both. When we take in those stories, we’ll compile them, we’ll take them forward. We’re considering all our options for intervention, up to and including legal options. But we also want to encourage Albertans to talk directly to their MLAs, because their voices matter and should matter, not just at the ballot box, but also between elections as they advocate to their MLAs.
