When the 2019 Provincial Election kicks into high gear, Airdrie could be split in two, along with several other changes.

Yesterday (October 19th), the Electoral Boundaries Commission released their final report and the changes that could be made to Provincial ridings come 2019.

The commission was unable to add to the current 87 ridings, meaning that many areas were either split or consolidated with nearby communities.

As was the same with their interim report a few months ago, Airdrie could look completely different.

"We maintain our recommendation that a new constituency be created in the west part of Airdrie, including the town of Cochrane," says Chair of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, Justice Myra Bielby.

The new recommendations, split Airdrie's borders along Highway 2 through 8th Street and up to Range Road 12 North. The west part of the city would be amalgamated with the Town of Cochrane and adjacent communities west of the city to form the riding of Airdrie-Cochrane.

Areas east of that dividing line, including the remaining portion of Airdrie, Balzac and Kathyrn would form Airdrie-East.

The report says there were many recommendations to reconfigure the Airdrie riding, including a submission from Mayor Peter Brown to consolidate the city with parts of the Chestermere-Rocky View riding to eventually create three constituencies.

However, the commission determined that creating three ridings in and around Airdrie would deviate from their mandatory requirement to stay within the Provincial average population size for electoral ridings.

Gwen Day from the Boundaries Commission says that Airdrie did pose one of the biggest challenges in creating these new and consolidated ridings.

"There was a potential that we could have perhaps combined one of the large northern ridings, to gather one riding to put into Airdrie and solved that part of Alberta without removal of ridings from the rest of Rural Alberta."

Some of the other proposed changes in the report would create a new riding in Calgary known as Calgary-Northeast, merging Cardston with Siksika and Strathmore with Chestermere.

Interim Conservative Leader Nathan Cooper of Carstairs says that the report "misses the mark by placing too large of a value on population, rather than striking the right balance to ensure effective representation."

Cooper says the UCP will be making an amendment to have the name of Calgary-Greenway renamed to Calgary-Bhullar, in honour of the late PC MLA Manmeet Bhullar.

The final report is being brought to the Provincial Legislature this week.

 

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