Election/Voting

Report Commented On: Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission Final Report (March 2026)

PDF Version: The Minority Report on Electoral Districts: Will the Law Protect Alberta from UCP Gerrymandering?

In a representative democracy, an elected representative is chosen by voters in their assigned electoral district. It goes without saying that the integrity of the process used to determine electoral districts is essential to a functional representative democracy. Any whiff of partisan influence on the process will poison the legitimacy of electoral outcomes, raising the spectre that electoral districts were drawn to ensure a particular result on voting day. This is known as “gerrymandering”. Political commentators (see here and here and here) have described the minority report issued by the two UCP-appointed members of the 2025-2026 Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission as classic gerrymandering. We are not quite there yet because it remains to be seen whether the minority report will be implemented by the UCP government. This post describes the content of the Electoral Boundaries Commission report submitted to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly on March 23, 2026 (the “Report”) and explores what legal guardrails exist to prevent gerrymandering from infecting Alberta’s democracy.

By: Hannah Hunter-Loubert

Case Commented On: Fair Voting BC v Canada (Attorney General), 2025 ONCA 581

PDF Version: Democratic Charter Rights and First-Past-The-Post: A Shallow Conception of Democracy at the Ontario Court of Appeal

Despite many Canadians’ dissatisfaction with our current first-past-the-post (“FPTP”) election system, every attempt at reform so far has failed. The failed political attempts include the 2015 Liberal Party campaign promise to reform FPTP (at 27) and later abandonment of reform efforts, as well as the unsuccessful referendums in BC. A previous Charter-based challenge to the provincial system in Québec was dismissed in Daoust v Québec (Directeur general des élections), 2011 QCCA 1634. As of last month, the Charter challenge brought by Fair Voting BC and Springtide Collective for Democratic Society (collectively, the “Applicants”) is no exception. I will begin my commentary on Fair Voting BC v Canada (Attorney General), 2025 ONCA 581 (Fair Voting BC )by providing a summary of the Applicant’s claim, as well as some background on FPTP or single member plurality (SMP), compared to the proportional representation (PR) system advocated for by the Applicants. I will then review the majority decision in Fair Voting BC, highlighting what I believe to be a narrow and impoverished view of democratic rights under the Charter and the more balanced approach taken by Justice Dawe in his concurring reasons. I will conclude by emphasizing both the difficulty and the importance of judicial protection of democratic rights. Judicial restraint is commendable, and indeed essential, to protect the ideal of a free and democratic society. However, interpreting the right to vote as being limited to the mere ability to cast a ballot, as the majority does, risks abdicating the judicial responsibility to protect the foundation upon which the entire democratic system is premised.

Category: Election/Voting

The Minority Report on Electoral Districts: Will the Law Protect Alberta from UCP Gerrymandering?

Democratic Charter Rights and First-Past-The-Post: A Shallow Conception of Democracy at the Ontario Court of Appeal