Canada Federal Representation 2024

[Njall]

If Quebec had it's 78th seat granted back, would there be increases in Ontario, Alberta or British Columbia to further even it out?

No. It would be granted through an act of Parliament, and would bypass the representation formula all together.

Although as an Albertan who likes political maps, as unlikely as it is, I wouldn't mind at all if they tossed another seat our way.

[Njall]

With the Riding Builder having now been launched, I decided to familiarize myself with it by creating a potential 37 seat map for Alberta. Maps are below with some commentary. I split it into rough regions to try to be able to include more detail where possible in the map screenshots. Riding populations and deviations from the average (which is 115,512 people) are included. I'm still used to drawing U.S. maps on DRA, so I'll admit that I may have stuck a bit closer to the populations quotients than some Canadian commissions may have. That said, where possible, I tried to adjust the deviations so that faster-growing areas had lower populations.

Northern Alberta (and provincewide map)



Fort McMurray--Cold Lake (Population 110,215 (-4.6%))

• The large green riding in Northeast Alberta
• Boundaries and population are unchanged from the 2013 representation order

Westlock--Peace River--Mackenzie (Population 113,774 (-1.5%))

• The large yellow riding in Northern Alberta
• Successor riding to Peace River--Westlock
• Barrhead County is removed from the riding
• Additions to the riding are the portions of the M.D. of Greenview No. 16 and Mackenzie County which were previously in Grande Prairie--Mackenzie, as well as the northwestern portion of Sturgeon County including Legal and Bon Accord

Grande Prairie (Population 108,388 (-6.2%))

• The large pink riding in Northwest Alberta
• Successor riding to Grande Prairie--Mackenzie (renamed due to Mackenzie County being removed)
• Portions of the M.D. of Greenview No. 16 and Mackenzie County that were in the riding are removed and transferred to Westlock--Peace River--Mackenzie

Central Alberta



Lakeland (Population 114,845 (-0.6%))

• The blue riding northeast of Edmonton
• Boundaries and population are largely the same as the 2013 representation order, with the exception of the addition of the northeast corner of Sturgeon County, including Redwater

Battle River--Crowfoot (Population 119,951 (+3.8%))

• The teal/green-ish riding in eastern Alberta
• The northeast corner of Leduc County is removed from the riding
• Additions to the riding are the portion of Kneehill County that was previously in Bow River, and a portion of rural southern Strathcona County

Leduc--Wetaskiwin (Population 114,173 (-1.2%))

• The tan riding south of Edmonton
• Probably most accurately described as the successor (or perhaps, one of two successors) to Edmonton--Wetaskiwin
• Comprised of the rural part of the former Edmonton--Wetaskiwin, plus the portions of Leduc County that were formerly in Battle River--Crowfoot and Yellowhead. The four First Nations reserves of the Maskwacis Cree Nations (formerly in Red Deer--Lacombe) are also added to the riding

Yellowhead (Population 110,487 (-4.3%))

• The purple riding west of Edmonton
• The western portion of Leduc County and the eastern portion of Clearwater County are removed
• Gains a small additional portion of Parkland County, the portion of Lac Ste. Anne County that was previously in Sturgeon River--Parkland, and all of Barrhead County

Red Deer (Population 112,850 (-2.3%))

• The small red riding in central Alberta
• Comprised of the City of Red Deer, plus a portion of Red Deer County including the hamlet of Springbrook and the Town of Penhold

Ponoka--Lacombe--Red Deer (Population 110,874 (-4.0%))

• The green riding surrounding Red Deer
• Largely the successor to the rural portions of Red Deer--Lacombe and Red Deer--Mountain View
• Compared to the rural portions of the predecessor ridings, it retains all of Lacombe and Ponoka Counties and most of Red Deer County, minus the part comprising the new Red Deer riding. It loses the Maskwacis Cree Nations and most of Mountain View County (excluding the northwest corner), while gaining the eastern portion of Clearwater County

Southern Alberta



Banff--Cochrane--Mountain View (Population 113,032 (-2.1%))

• The teal riding northwest of Calgary
• Successor riding to Banff--Airdrie
• Loses the City of Airdrie and a small rural section of Rocky View County between Airdrie and Calgary
• Gains most of Mountain View County, except for the northwest corner and the town of Sundre

Foothills (Population 116,874 (+1.2%))

• The gold/tan riding in southwest Alberta
• Unchanged from the 2013 representation order, except for a minor boundary adjustment to make all of Improvement District No. 4 be in the riding, and all of Cardston County be outside the riding

Bow River (Population 115,136 (-0.3%))

• The grey-ish riding in south-central Alberta
• Boundaries are the same as the 2013 representation order, except for losing the southern half of Kneehill County to Battle River--Crowfoot

Lethbridge (Population 113,461 (-1.8%))

• The small blue riding in southern Alberta
• Loses much of Lethbridge County. The new riding is comprised of the City of Lethbridge, the towns of Coaldale and Coalhurst, and rural portions of Lethbridge County connecting the City and Towns

Medicine Hat--Cardston--Warner (Population 120,038 (+3.9%))

• The small red riding in central Alberta
• Comprised of the largely-unchanged boundaries from the 2013 representation order (the only change being the minor boundary adjustment with Foothills), plus the part of Lethbridge County no longer contained in the Lethbridge riding

Calgary (and Airdrie)



I'll explain this one a little differently than the rurals because this map is more of a full redraw than the rural regions. For this map, I combined Calgary and Airdrie into one region, which due to population growth resulted in a regional population justifying 12 seats, compared to the 10.5(ish) it has today. I also had two specific geographic goals in mind:

1. Create a Calgary Centre that spans both sides of the Bow River, akin to the boundaries in place before 2000. This has both a functional/demographic and ideological purpose. From a functional/demographic perspective, I've never fully understood why the Bow River has been upheld as a boundary point in central Calgary for so long (at least provincially and federally - the municipal Ward 7 boundary has crossed the river for years). The river is relatively narrow in the central area of the city, and both sides are very well-connected with footbridges, bike paths, the LRT, and so on. It's much less of a natural boundary than the North Saskatchewan River is in central Edmonton, where the river is wider (and in a large valley), and bridges are less numerous. In terms of demographics (particularly age, housing type, and family/household size), the urban communities on both sides of the river (roughly from 16 Avenue North to 17 Avenue South) have more in common with each other than they do with the suburban communities that they get tacked onto and overwhelmed by in the current iterations of Calgary Centre and Calgary Confederation. This flows well into the ideological perspective, where as a relatively progressive Calgarian who likes competitive elections, I've come to favour the idea of a central riding that takes in as many younger, more urban neighbourhoods as possible on both sides of the river. I could see such a riding being competitive on the whole, probably tilting or leaning Liberal in a neutral environment, but with the Conservatives still competitive.

2. Fix Calgary Skyview and use Deerfoot Trail as a hard east-west boundary in northeast Calgary. The current boundaries of Calgary Skyview have always bugged me. First of all, there isn't a lot connecting the residential areas east and west of Deerfoot in the northeast - because of the airport, there's a huge swath of industrial land between the two residential areas. The two sides are also very different demographically, particularly in terms of race (and in terms of voting behaviour). The western part is pretty standard for 1990s-era Calgary suburbs: around 50-60% white with a pretty even split in the visible minority population between Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, and other, and lots of nuclear family households. The eastern part is newer housing stock in general with several actively-developing communities, is only 10-20% white in many census tracts (and 50-60% South Asian in those tracts), and features more multigenerational housing. Because of that, I always through that it would have made more sense for Calgary Skyview to be entirely on the east side of Deerfoot, and expand south if needed into more similar neighbourhoods instead of crossing Deerfoot.

All of that being said, when drawing the Calgary map, I basically drew Calgary Centre, then Calgary Skyview, and then worked clockwise from Calgary Skyview, trying to make the boundaries as sensible as possible based on my knowledge of local geography, transport patterns, etc. Here are the ridings, names, and populations and deviations:

1. Calgary Centre (aqua/turquoise): 118,241 (+2.4%)
2. Calgary Skyview (light green): 112,420 (-2.7%)
3. Calgary Forest Lawn (lighter purple): 115,530 (+0.0%)
4. Calgary Shepard (orange/brown-ish): 115,214 (-0.3%)
5. Calgary Midnapore (darker blue): 104,506 (-9.5%)
6. Calgary Fish Creek (darker green): 118,512 (+2.6%)
7. Calgary Heritage (tan/gold): 117,680 (+1.9%)
8. Calgary Signal Hill (darker purple): 122,582 (+6.1%)
9. Calgary Confederation (teal): 119,159 (+3.2%)
10. Calgary Nose Hill (brown): 119,068 (+3.1%)
11. Calgary Rocky Ridge (grey): 110,672 (-4.2%)
12. Airdrie--Calgary (red-ish): 108,974 (-5.7%)



Edmonton Capital Region



The Edmonton region's map is, in the whole, similar to the map that is currently in place. However, challenges arose from the fact that all of the ridings, except for the three central ones, were overpopulated by between 8,000-17,000 people (not counting Edmonton--Wetaskiwin, which was 94,000 people overpopulated).

Sherwood Park--Fort Saskatchewan and the ridings in south Edmonton were easier to handle. For Sherwood Park--Fort Saskatchewan, I removed a rural portion of Strathcona County holding about 10,000 people and added that to Battle River--Crowfoot, all-but-eliminating the overpopulation. In south Edmonton, a new riding of Edmonton South was formed from the portion of Edmonton--Wetaskiwin within the City of Edmonton. Edmonton Mill Woods retained its current boundaries despite its overpopulation, as it cleanly encompasses the Mill Woods and Meadows areas of the city and there was no logical way to split off part of the riding. Finally, the populations of Edmonton Riverbend and Edmonton Strathcona were largely balanced by shifting a few neighbourhoods south of Whitemud Drive from Riverbend to Strathcona.

On the north side of Edmonton, I shifted some of the overpopulated Edmonton Manning and St. Albert--Edmonton ridings into the underpopulated Edmonton Centre and Edmonton Griesbach, while also admittedly trying to keep Centre and Griesbach as close as possible to their current iterations in terms of friendliness to progressives.

With how the other boundaries ended up, it was infeasible to accommodate the remaining population within Edmonton West at a desirable deviation level. In order to address this, I decided to take the portion of the City of Edmonton on the north/west side of the North Saskatchewan River, south of 62 Avenue and outside of Anthony Henday Drive, and add it to Sturgeon River--Parkland. While not the most ideal, I believe that this solution would be workable, as the housing mix and population characteristics in these suburban Edmonton communities are relatively similar to those in Spruce Grove and the surrounding Parkland County, and those communities in Edmonton are also some of the most disconnected from the rest of the city in terms of public transportation and road links. This addition also caused Sturgeon River--Parkland to need to shed some of its more rural land and transfer it to Yellowhead, Westlock--Peace River--Mackenzie, and Lakeland, allowing the now-renamed Sturgeon River--Parkland--Edmonton to more tightly encircle the city and broadly make it one representing exurban Edmonton bedroom communities in Parkland and Sturgeon Counties.

Here are the ridings, names, and populations and deviations for the Edmonton Capital Region:

1. Sherwood Park--Fort Saskatchewan (green): 116,574 (+0.9%)
2. Edmonton South (magenta?): 108,743 (-5.9%)
3. Edmonton Mill Woods (aqua/turquoise): 125,987 (+9.1%)
4. Edmonton Riverbend (dull yellow): 114,510 (-0.9%)
5. Edmonton Strathcona (bright pink/purple): 111,837 (-3.2%)
6. Edmonton Centre (brighter yellow): 117,480 (+1.7%)
7. Edmonton Griesbach (orange): 119,827 (+3.7%)
8. Edmonton Manning (grey): 123,461 (+6.9%)
9. St. Albert--Edmonton (salmon-ish): 120,230 (+4.1%)
10. Edmonton West (blue): 117,016 (+1.3%)
11. Sturgeon River--Parkland--Edmonton (reddish): 121,627 (+5.3%)

[Njall]

There's a really annoying bug that sometimes when you click it just adds the entire population of the level 1 block to the riding without actually adding the level 2 blocks, rending it impossible to remove that population from the riding, meaning the deviations are completely ruined, and you have completely blank ridings with like 80-90k people in them at times.

Yeah, I noticed that while working on my map. If you're paying attention right when it happens, it's possible to un-add the erroneous area by toggling to "unassigned" instead of the riding you're working on and then clicking on the same space. I also found that if you save your map, reload the builder and then upload the spreadsheet where you saved your map, sometimes that can take care of the error too.

Still, hopefully that can be addressed in an update soon.

[Njall]

Never done this before, but what the heck, decided to try my hand at it. Started with Alberta, not suuuper familiar with the province so I'd love some feedback:

Calgary:



Calgary Centre: 114,741,  -0.7%, the yellow riding in the middle of Calgary.

Bit of a weird shape, it maintains the downtown core and the industrial areas to the east, loses some of the affluent parts to the south close to the reservoir, gains the Wildwood area to the west.

Calgary Confederation: 111,936, -3.1%, pink riding north of Calgary Centre.

No big changes here, loses a bit of land in the northern part of the riding.

Calgary Glenmore: 115,888, +0.3%, orange riding south of Centre.

This is one of two new Calgary ridings, it has no obvious predecessor, as it's carved out of Heritage, Centre, Signal Hill, and a bit of Midnapore. Centred around its namesake reservoir with a slight panhandle to include Signal Hill.

Calgary Nose Hill: 114,677, -0.7%, pink riding north of Confederation.

Just a re-worked version of the existing riding of the same name.

Calgary North--Airdrie: 111,582, -3.4%, light green riding that extends out of Calgary proper (obviously)

This is a new riding. Airdrie, some of the rural areas to its east, a small northern portion of Nose Hill, and the parts of Skyview west of Deerfoot Trail.

Calgary Queensland: 119,911, +3.8%, tan riding straddling the Bow River.

This is Midnapore shifted northeast and crosses the river at some portions, taking from Shepard.

Calgary Rocky Ridge: 117,687, +1.9%, blue riding in the northwest.

Currently overpopulated, so I trimmed away some of its southern portions.

Calgary Shepard: 122,868, +6.4% orange riding in the southeast.

I must admit, not very proud of this one. Currently overpopulated so I took away some of its western portions by the Bow River, but had to adjust northwards and include Forest Lawn. But now there's a huge industrial portion separating the older working-class suburbs and more affluent areas to the south.

Calgary Skyview: 112,420, -2.7%, brown riding in the northeast.

Pretty much bounded by Deerfoot Trail and McKnight Blvd, a trimmed down version of the current riding that focuses more on the Saddle Ridge area. Probably the only seat in the city that would lean Liberal.

Calgary Somerset: 116,794, +1.1%, blue riding in the southwest.

This takes the southern parts of Heritage and Midnapore.

Calgary Sunridge: 111,432, -3.5%, light blue in the east of the city.

Mostly carved out of Calgary Forest Lawn but shifted a bit north, picking up Temple and Whitehorn while losing much of Forest Lawn.

Calgary West: 113,554, -1,7%, purple riding on the western edge of the city.

Carved out of Rocky Ridge and some of Signal Hill.

What do y'all think?

Whoops, I missed this when you first posted it. As a longtime Calgarian, I quite like those boundaries. The main geographic shift that I would suggest, if it could work, would be to return Signal Hill to Calgary West instead of having it in Calgary Glenmore. While it's not the end of the world, Signal Hill has much stronger ties to the communities in Calgary West, and Sarcee Trail makes a logical boundary. If anything, if extra population is needed for Glenmore, it makes more sense to go south and absorb Woodbine and Woodlands.

Also, I know it's tough to name Calgary ridings, but Calgary Queensland wouldn't work super well as a name - that community isn't very well-known. It would honestly make more sense to either keep the name as Calgary Midnapore, or rename it to Calgary Fish Creek.

[Njall]

Never done this before, but what the heck, decided to try my hand at it. Started with Alberta, not suuuper familiar with the province so I'd love some feedback:

Calgary:



Calgary Centre: 114,741,  -0.7%, the yellow riding in the middle of Calgary.

Bit of a weird shape, it maintains the downtown core and the industrial areas to the east, loses some of the affluent parts to the south close to the reservoir, gains the Wildwood area to the west.

Calgary Confederation: 111,936, -3.1%, pink riding north of Calgary Centre.

No big changes here, loses a bit of land in the northern part of the riding.

Calgary Glenmore: 115,888, +0.3%, orange riding south of Centre.

This is one of two new Calgary ridings, it has no obvious predecessor, as it's carved out of Heritage, Centre, Signal Hill, and a bit of Midnapore. Centred around its namesake reservoir with a slight panhandle to include Signal Hill.

Calgary Nose Hill: 114,677, -0.7%, pink riding north of Confederation.

Just a re-worked version of the existing riding of the same name.

Calgary North--Airdrie: 111,582, -3.4%, light green riding that extends out of Calgary proper (obviously)

This is a new riding. Airdrie, some of the rural areas to its east, a small northern portion of Nose Hill, and the parts of Skyview west of Deerfoot Trail.

Calgary Queensland: 119,911, +3.8%, tan riding straddling the Bow River.

This is Midnapore shifted northeast and crosses the river at some portions, taking from Shepard.

Calgary Rocky Ridge: 117,687, +1.9%, blue riding in the northwest.

Currently overpopulated, so I trimmed away some of its southern portions.

Calgary Shepard: 122,868, +6.4% orange riding in the southeast.

I must admit, not very proud of this one. Currently overpopulated so I took away some of its western portions by the Bow River, but had to adjust northwards and include Forest Lawn. But now there's a huge industrial portion separating the older working-class suburbs and more affluent areas to the south.

Calgary Skyview: 112,420, -2.7%, brown riding in the northeast.

Pretty much bounded by Deerfoot Trail and McKnight Blvd, a trimmed down version of the current riding that focuses more on the Saddle Ridge area. Probably the only seat in the city that would lean Liberal.

Calgary Somerset: 116,794, +1.1%, blue riding in the southwest.

This takes the southern parts of Heritage and Midnapore.

Calgary Sunridge: 111,432, -3.5%, light blue in the east of the city.

Mostly carved out of Calgary Forest Lawn but shifted a bit north, picking up Temple and Whitehorn while losing much of Forest Lawn.

Calgary West: 113,554, -1,7%, purple riding on the western edge of the city.

Carved out of Rocky Ridge and some of Signal Hill.

What do y'all think?

Whoops, I missed this when you first posted it. As a longtime Calgarian, I quite like those boundaries. The main geographic shift that I would suggest, if it could work, would be to return Signal Hill to Calgary West instead of having it in Calgary Glenmore. While it's not the end of the world, Signal Hill has much stronger ties to the communities in Calgary West, and Sarcee Trail makes a logical boundary. If anything, if extra population is needed for Glenmore, it makes more sense to go south and absorb Woodbine and Woodlands.

Also, I know it's tough to name Calgary ridings, but Calgary Queensland wouldn't work super well as a name - that community isn't very well-known. It would honestly make more sense to either keep the name as Calgary Midnapore, or rename it to Calgary Fish Creek.

What do you think of the idea of chopping off a bit of Calgary Confederation and putting it into Centre? It would create a distinctly "urban" riding in Calgary and chop off some of the leafy suburbs in Calgary Centre that feel a little mismatched with the downtown core, but it would require the riding to be on both sides of the river.

That's kind of what I did in my Calgary map earlier in the thread, for much the same reasons. Tl;dr of my rationale essentially being that the urban communities on both sides of the river would be better represented by being joined in a single riding than having their voices diluted by more suburban communities within the current Centre and Confederation ridings.

[Njall]

My new improved Calgary alternative.  Thoughts?

This is my favourite of your Calgary maps so far. I might suggest trading Inglewood and Ramsay from Calgary Glenmore to Calgary Centre in exchange for Bankview, just because Bankview is better connected to the rest of Calgary Glenmore while Inglewood/Ramsay are separated from the rest of Calgary Glenmore by a large industrial area. But that's more of a minor note.

[Njall]

This is my favourite of your Calgary maps so far. I might suggest trading Inglewood and Ramsay from Calgary Glenmore to Calgary Centre in exchange for Bankview, just because Bankview is better connected to the rest of Calgary Glenmore while Inglewood/Ramsay are separated from the rest of Calgary Glenmore by a large industrial area. But that's more of a minor note.

Here is a version that incorporates your suggestions and adds a Varsity for Renfrew neighbourhood swap that keeps Varsity in the same riding as the University of Calgary.  Please let me know if this is an improvement.

Yup, I think that modification makes it better.

[Njall]

After the overwhelming response, here is the winner:

Sorry Krago, I was travelling and not checking the forum when you were looking for Calgarian input. With that said, I think this option is the one that I would have picked. One small suggestion that I'd make would be to adjust the border between Calgary Heritage and Calgary Ogden to be MacLeod Trail instead of the CPR line, at least south of 50th Avenue S. MacLeod Trail is the major boundary between communities that it touches in south Calgary, and I would imagine that the Haysboro Community Association in particular wouldn't appreciate having its residents on the east side of the rail line in a different riding. North of 50th Avenue S, it could actually make more sense to keep the rail line as the boundary so that Manchester can be in the same riding with communities like Windsor Park.

In terms of riding names, I agree that Glenmore is a much better riding name than Heritage. I know that the commission tries to not copy provincial names, but they let Edmonton Mill Woods and Edmonton Manning get away with it, so why not Calgary Glenmore too? A possible non-duplicating name could be Calgary Mount Royal, as both the communities of Upper and Lower Mount Royal as well as Mount Royal University are in the riding.

As far as Calgary Ogden goes, I think that it would actually make more sense to stick with Calgary Shepard. Aside from keeping the familiar name, the riding still includes the former hamlet of Shepard, the Shepard and East Shepard Industrial areas, and the Shepard landfill. Alternatively, it could be called Calgary Deerfoot Meadows, after the major retail/shopping hub that's roughly where Deerfoot Trail, Glenmore Trail, and Heritage Drive all converge.

[Njall]

Edmonton

Edmonton South 108743 - the Edmonton bits of the present Edmonton--Wetaskiwin. The name isn't great, but I couldn't find any alternatives that fit for the whole seat. East-west connectivity might be improved if it swapped territory with Riverbend?
Edmonton Mill Woods 125592 - unchanged.
Edmonton Riverbend 107962 - as much as possible, tries to use Whitemud Creek as the boundary with Strathcona.
Edmonton Strathcona 116403
Edmonton Highlands 107338 - successor to Griesbach, but no longer contains Griesbach. Almost certainly there's a better name than this, but the biggest central feature I could see on a map was the Yellowhead Corridor and even a Canadian commission isn't daft enough to use that as a name.
Edmonton Centre 115762 - is it still central enough for the name to be suitable?
Edmonton West 115329
Edmonton North 106667 - again, the name is basically a placeholder.
Edmonton Manning 106703

Rest of Alberta

Sherwood Park--Fort Saskatchewan 126313 - unchanged
St. Albert--Sturgeon River 107781
Lakeland 119497 - swaps Athabasca for Cold River to improve the following seat
Fort McMurray--Westlock 109836 - I'm happy with including Athabasca, I worry that including Westlock may make this riding a bit too disparate
Lac. Ste Anne--Mackenzie 123767 - similar to the current Peace River--Westlock, but it no longer includes the latter and the former is on the riding's edge.
Grande Prairie 113893 - loses the far north
Parkland--Yellowhead 125062 - I'm not wild about a constituency which is 80% Edmonton suburbia stretching to the BC border, but I couldn't think of anywhere better to put Yellowhead
Wetaskiwin--Leduc 121764 - in addition its half of Edmonton Wetaskiwin, also takes in Brazeau County
Battle River--Crowfoot 110212 - minor changes
Lacombe--Sylvan Lake 111050 - placeholder name
Red Deer 105997 - how do Canadian commissions usually feel about doughnut seats?
Banff--Cochrane--Clearwater 119756 - Looking on a map, internal connectivity via road seems OK, but this may or may not be true
Airdrie--Mountain View 110946
Bow River 112197 - just donates a few thousand electors to Battle River
Lethbridge 123847 - unchanged
Medicine Hat--Cardston--Warner 108391 - unchanged
Foothills 105954

Calgary

Calgary Midnapore 115238 - everything south of Fish Creek
Calgary Heritage 124430 - or another name of your choice. The arm north of Glenmore trail is only there for population equality reasons.
Calgary Centre 126563 - at the upper end of the allowable range because I wanted to avoid crossing the river. I accept this may not be to everybody's tastes.
Calgary Signal Hill 124848
Calgary Confederation 124064 - unchanged
Calgary Nose Hill 112705 - could probably be improved if you did swap territory with Confederation
Calgary Rocky Ridge 112792 - feels like a leftovers riding
Calgary Skyview 124363
Calgary East 109459 - placeholder name
Calgary Ogden 117388 - could also call this Shepherd or Forest Lawn, as they're both in the riding
Calgary McKenzie 114934 - name is a placeholder, picked as there seemed to be a few separate developments using variations of the name.

I think these maps look pretty good - I'm mainly just popping in with some riding name suggestions:

Edmonton South: the most logical name I could suggest would be Edmonton Ellerslie (acknowledging that that name exists at the provincial level), since Ellerslie Road runs the length of the riding and there is also an Ellerslie district on the east side of the riding. A second option could be Edmonton Heritage Valley, but that name moreso fits the western half of the riding and doesn't really apply to the east.

Edmonton Highlands: a possible alternative could be Edmonton Blatchford, which would reference the former City Centre Airport (AKA Blatchford Field) that is fully contained in the riding and is undergoing a major redevelopment into a new and relatively large residential area.

Edmonton Centre: I think that name is still fine, since it contains downtown and the riding has historically taken in a number of those neightbourhoods west of downtown. A more accurate, albeit long, name would be Edmonton Centre--Jasper Place.

Edmonton North: if you don't mind duplicating provincial riding names, then Edmonton Castle Downs would be a great fit, as the Castle Downs district is prominently located in the centre of the riding.

Lacombe--Sylvan Lake: This isn't a bad name at all. I might've gone with Lacombe--Ponoka--Sylvan Lake or Lacombe--Ponoka--Red Deer (referencing all the constituent counties), but I know some people don't like triple-barreled names as much as I do.

Red Deer: If a doughnut riding can work for Guelph (and historically did for Moncton--Riverview--Dieppe), I don't see why it wouldn't work for Red Deer.

Calgary East: Could be called Calgary McKnight, as McKnight Boulevard is a major roadway that runs through the middle of the riding.

Calgary McKenzie: This isn't a bad name. One alternative that I could suggest would be Calgary Seton. The Seton community is still under development, but it's home to the big new South Calgary hospital and is being designed as a kind of "town centre" district for the part of southeast Calgary that's largely contained within that riding.

[Njall]

I'd rather a riding cross the Bow than the Airport. The airport is much bigger than the river, and therefore is a greater barrier. Plus, the areas on both sides of the Bow are similar demographically, aren't they? More urban/dense. Of course, I'm not from Calgary so I could be off base here.

That's more-or-less correct. There's quite a noticeable demographic divide (in terms of ethnicity at the very least) between the communities on the east and west sides of the airport. As well, due to the presence of the airport, there are no east-west road connections between McKnight Boulevard and Airport Trail/96 Avenue N. The airport is also surrounded by industrial land, so there's zero residential population in the 5(ish) kilometres between Metis Trail and the CPR line in the Nose Creek Ravine. If someone wanted to walk between the main activity centres on the east and west sides of Deerfoot/the airport, it would take over 2 hours (and even driving, close to 20 minutes). By contrast, downtown is connected to the relatively urban communities north of the river by many short bridges, so it's very easy for people to cross back and forth on foot, bike, transit, or driving. And while the central area is probably the most connected across the river, there are other natural cross-river connections between similar communities, like the link between Montgomery and Bowness. The main Bow River crossing that I would try to avoid would be linking Inglewood and Ramsay with the Forest Lawn area across both the river and Deerfoot Trail, due to pretty wide ethnic and economic demographic differences.

Check out Calgary's current municipal ward boundaries: https://maps.calgary.ca/CalgaryBoundaries/. You'll notice that the lines were drawn to keep Wards 5 and 10 solely on the east side of Deerfoot Trail, while there are five wards that cross the Bow River. Although not all the river crossings are perfect, they do work, and they work a lot better than the old northeast ward that crossed the airport and Deerfoot.

[Njall]

It strikes me that it might be useful to think in terms of the population in the particular bits of Calgary, taking account of what Njall has said about where connections are and aren't good.

Calgary as a whole: 1306784 (11.31 quotas)
South of Fish Creek: 115238 (1.00)
North of Fish Creek and southwest of the Bow: 375841 (3.25 - 'group 1')
North of the Bow River and west of Deerfoot Trail: 415774 (3.60 - 'group 2')
East of the Bow and Deerfoot Trail: 399931 (3.46 - 'group 3')

So you can't get an integer number of ridings out of group 3, which means you either need to add other areas of Calgary or you need to add Airdrie. Assuming you're doing the former and you're ruling out crossing round the airport, that means either pairing with group 2 along the Trans-Canada Highway (so group 1 could stand alone for three large ridings) or you're pairing with group 1 across the Bow (presumably in the Ogden area) in which case groups 1 and 2 also need to be paired.

Krago's suggestion of putting group 3 with the bits of group 1 east of Macleod Trail gives you 457550, which is pretty much dead on for four ridings and you can then get 7 largeish ridings out of group 2 and the rest of group 1.

If on the other hand you're pairing along the Trans-Canada, then it looks like that naturally draws a riding which is made up of the eastern half of Confederation and the northern or western half of Forest Lawn. I defer to Njall on whether that works on a community level, but it certainly looks ugly on a map.

TLDR - yeah, crossing the river seems like a far superior option.

After playing around in the riding builder a little bit, here's what I would likely consider to be the optimal way to modify the map based on that initial division of Calgary into four sections as you outlined above, in order to create new sections with more sensible quotas:

1. Move the part of group 3 south of 50 Avenue SE to group 1. In practice, this would allow you to create the Calgary McKenzie riding from your maps above, and would leave the communities of Douglasdale/Glen, Riverbend, and Ogden to be joined with communities on the west side of the river.

2. Move the following communities from group 2 to group 1: Bridgeland/Riverside, Renfrew, Crescent Heights, Rosedale, Sunnyside, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill, St. Andrews Heights, Parkdale, Point McKay, University of Calgary, University Heights, University District, Montgomery, and Varsity. This allows you to take advantage of the numerous central river crossings as well as the crossing between Bowness and Montgomery.

3. Move the following communities from group 3 to group 2: Vista Heights and Mayland Heights, plus the McCall, North Airways, South Airways, and Mayland industrial areas. This move is the least ideal of all that I've listed, but it works because of the cross-Deerfoot connections offered by 16 Avenue NE, 32 Avenue NE, and McKnight Boulevard, as well as the fact that Vista Heights and Mayland Heights are cut off from other northeast communities by industrial areas, and so the residential communities on the west side of Deerfoot are actually closer to them. This crossing of Deerfoot south of McKnight can also be seen in the current boundaries of the provincial riding of Calgary-Klein.

After making those changes, you end up with the following groups, populations, and quotas:
Group 1: 588,900 (5.10)
Group 2: 356,935 (3.09)
Group 3: 245,711 (2.13)

[Njall]

It strikes me that it might be useful to think in terms of the population in the particular bits of Calgary, taking account of what Njall has said about where connections are and aren't good.

Calgary as a whole: 1306784 (11.31 quotas)
South of Fish Creek: 115238 (1.00)
North of Fish Creek and southwest of the Bow: 375841 (3.25 - 'group 1')
North of the Bow River and west of Deerfoot Trail: 415774 (3.60 - 'group 2')
East of the Bow and Deerfoot Trail: 399931 (3.46 - 'group 3')

So you can't get an integer number of ridings out of group 3, which means you either need to add other areas of Calgary or you need to add Airdrie. Assuming you're doing the former and you're ruling out crossing round the airport, that means either pairing with group 2 along the Trans-Canada Highway (so group 1 could stand alone for three large ridings) or you're pairing with group 1 across the Bow (presumably in the Ogden area) in which case groups 1 and 2 also need to be paired.

Krago's suggestion of putting group 3 with the bits of group 1 east of Macleod Trail gives you 457550, which is pretty much dead on for four ridings and you can then get 7 largeish ridings out of group 2 and the rest of group 1.

If on the other hand you're pairing along the Trans-Canada, then it looks like that naturally draws a riding which is made up of the eastern half of Confederation and the northern or western half of Forest Lawn. I defer to Njall on whether that works on a community level, but it certainly looks ugly on a map.

TLDR - yeah, crossing the river seems like a far superior option.

After playing around in the riding builder a little bit, here's what I would likely consider to be the optimal way to modify the map based on that initial division of Calgary into four sections as you outlined above, in order to create new sections with more sensible quotas:

1. Move the part of group 3 south of 50 Avenue SE to group 1. In practice, this would allow you to create the Calgary McKenzie riding from your maps above, and would leave the communities of Douglasdale/Glen, Riverbend, and Ogden to be joined with communities on the west side of the river.

2. Move the following communities from group 2 to group 1: Bridgeland/Riverside, Renfrew, Crescent Heights, Rosedale, Sunnyside, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill, St. Andrews Heights, Parkdale, Point McKay, University of Calgary, University Heights, University District, Montgomery, and Varsity. This allows you to take advantage of the numerous central river crossings as well as the crossing between Bowness and Montgomery.

3. Move the following communities from group 3 to group 2: Vista Heights and Mayland Heights, plus the McCall, North Airways, South Airways, and Mayland industrial areas. This move is the least ideal of all that I've listed, but it works because of the cross-Deerfoot connections offered by 16 Avenue NE, 32 Avenue NE, and McKnight Boulevard, as well as the fact that Vista Heights and Mayland Heights are cut off from other northeast communities by industrial areas, and so the residential communities on the west side of Deerfoot are actually closer to them. This crossing of Deerfoot south of McKnight can also be seen in the current boundaries of the provincial riding of Calgary-Klein.

After making those changes, you end up with the following groups, populations, and quotas:
Group 1: 588,900 (5.10)
Group 2: 356,935 (3.09)
Group 3: 245,711 (2.13)

I don't think step 3 is really needed - there's room for those communities to go with Forest Lawn by my reckoning. On the other hand, whilst the boundary between group 1 and group 2 you suggest sounds sensible, I think in practice you would probably need to keep Varsity in group 2 if you don't want the Ogden riding stretching west of Macleod Trail.

I was annoyed at the map that the actual commission came up with so I made a mock-up of what the boundaries could be using the groups that I outlined previously. Here's what I came up with:



Non-grouped:
Red: Calgary Midnapore: 115,238 (-0.2%)

Group 1:
Blue: Calgary Shepard: 115,118 (-0.3%)
Green:  Calgary Deerfoot Meadows: 116,743 (+1.1%)
Yellow: Calgary Glenmore: 119,422 (+3.4%)
Magenta: Calgary Centre: 118,241 (+2.4%)
Turquoise: Calgary Bowness: 119,108 (+3.1%)

Group 2:
Pink: Calgary Nose Hill: 122,353 (+5.9%)
Orange: Calgary Crowfoot: 117,275 (+1.5%)
Grey: Calgary Northern Hills: 117,307 (+1.6%)

Group 3:
Blue: Calgary Forest Lawn: 123,196 (+6.7%)
Gold: Calgary Saddletowne: 122,783 (+6.3%)

[Njall]

Funny we were talking about Alberta, considering the commission for Alberta has released their map:

https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/ab/prop/index_e.aspx

They did not use the airport as a boundary

Initial Thoughts on the Alberta Map:

Rural:

• Glad that Red Deer is no longer split
• Adding Banff to Yellowhead doesn't make sense - it should be grouped with Canmore and Cochrane.
• The ridings surrounding Edmonton need work. For instance, Sherwood Park being with Beaumont doesn't make a lot of sense. Sherwood Park is more closely linked with Fort Saskatchewan, and Beaumont is more closely linked with Leduc and Devon.

Edmonton:

• I'm actually not mad at it for the most part. However, I'm not a fan of how the Highlands/Beverly/Alberta Avenue area is now split between three ridings, it makes Edmonton Griesbach a weird mishmash of different areas. And on a point of personal political bias, I also don't like the Griesbach boundaries as they would make it a fair bit tougher for Blake Dejarlais to get re-elected. On the upside for progressives, the new Edmonton Mill Woods looks friendlier to the Liberals. Also, the name "Edmonton Gateway" is kind of dumb.

Calgary:

• I'm very annoyed that they crossed the Airport and refused to cross the Bow River.
• Calgary McKnight is probably friendlier to the Liberals than the current Calgary Skyview, but that still doesn't justify crossing the airport.
• North Calgary is a bit of a mess: they cut the Northern Hills area in two and split the Symons Valley area between three ridings. The community of Saddle Ridge is also clumsily divided between Calgary Skyview and Calgary McKnight
• The Calgary Centre/Signal Hill boundary splits the community of Killarney unnecessarily
• The way that the Calgary Midnapore boundary with Calgary Heritage crosses Fish Creek just to take in the community of Parkland is really stupid.
• The name Calgary Crowchild is stupid (although it replaces Calgary Rocky Ridge which was also a bad name). Crowchild Trail is a big road - it runs through two other ridings in addition to Calgary Crowchild, and runs along the borders of two other ridings.

[Njall]

It strikes me that it might be useful to think in terms of the population in the particular bits of Calgary, taking account of what Njall has said about where connections are and aren't good.

Calgary as a whole: 1306784 (11.31 quotas)
South of Fish Creek: 115238 (1.00)
North of Fish Creek and southwest of the Bow: 375841 (3.25 - 'group 1')
North of the Bow River and west of Deerfoot Trail: 415774 (3.60 - 'group 2')
East of the Bow and Deerfoot Trail: 399931 (3.46 - 'group 3')

So you can't get an integer number of ridings out of group 3, which means you either need to add other areas of Calgary or you need to add Airdrie. Assuming you're doing the former and you're ruling out crossing round the airport, that means either pairing with group 2 along the Trans-Canada Highway (so group 1 could stand alone for three large ridings) or you're pairing with group 1 across the Bow (presumably in the Ogden area) in which case groups 1 and 2 also need to be paired.

Krago's suggestion of putting group 3 with the bits of group 1 east of Macleod Trail gives you 457550, which is pretty much dead on for four ridings and you can then get 7 largeish ridings out of group 2 and the rest of group 1.

If on the other hand you're pairing along the Trans-Canada, then it looks like that naturally draws a riding which is made up of the eastern half of Confederation and the northern or western half of Forest Lawn. I defer to Njall on whether that works on a community level, but it certainly looks ugly on a map.

TLDR - yeah, crossing the river seems like a far superior option.

After playing around in the riding builder a little bit, here's what I would likely consider to be the optimal way to modify the map based on that initial division of Calgary into four sections as you outlined above, in order to create new sections with more sensible quotas:

1. Move the part of group 3 south of 50 Avenue SE to group 1. In practice, this would allow you to create the Calgary McKenzie riding from your maps above, and would leave the communities of Douglasdale/Glen, Riverbend, and Ogden to be joined with communities on the west side of the river.

2. Move the following communities from group 2 to group 1: Bridgeland/Riverside, Renfrew, Crescent Heights, Rosedale, Sunnyside, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill, St. Andrews Heights, Parkdale, Point McKay, University of Calgary, University Heights, University District, Montgomery, and Varsity. This allows you to take advantage of the numerous central river crossings as well as the crossing between Bowness and Montgomery.

3. Move the following communities from group 3 to group 2: Vista Heights and Mayland Heights, plus the McCall, North Airways, South Airways, and Mayland industrial areas. This move is the least ideal of all that I've listed, but it works because of the cross-Deerfoot connections offered by 16 Avenue NE, 32 Avenue NE, and McKnight Boulevard, as well as the fact that Vista Heights and Mayland Heights are cut off from other northeast communities by industrial areas, and so the residential communities on the west side of Deerfoot are actually closer to them. This crossing of Deerfoot south of McKnight can also be seen in the current boundaries of the provincial riding of Calgary-Klein.

After making those changes, you end up with the following groups, populations, and quotas:
Group 1: 588,900 (5.10)
Group 2: 356,935 (3.09)
Group 3: 245,711 (2.13)

I don't think step 3 is really needed - there's room for those communities to go with Forest Lawn by my reckoning. On the other hand, whilst the boundary between group 1 and group 2 you suggest sounds sensible, I think in practice you would probably need to keep Varsity in group 2 if you don't want the Ogden riding stretching west of Macleod Trail.

I was annoyed at the map that the actual commission came up with so I made a mock-up of what the boundaries could be using the groups that I outlined previously. Here's what I came up with:



Non-grouped:
Red: Calgary Midnapore: 115,238 (-0.2%)

Group 1:
Blue: Calgary Shepard: 115,118 (-0.3%)
Green:  Calgary Deerfoot Meadows: 116,743 (+1.1%)
Yellow: Calgary Glenmore: 119,422 (+3.4%)
Magenta: Calgary Centre: 118,241 (+2.4%)
Turquoise: Calgary Bowness: 119,108 (+3.1%)

Group 2:
Pink: Calgary Nose Hill: 122,353 (+5.9%)
Orange: Calgary Crowfoot: 117,275 (+1.5%)
Grey: Calgary Northern Hills: 117,307 (+1.6%)

Group 3:
Blue: Calgary Forest Lawn: 123,196 (+6.7%)
Gold: Calgary Saddletowne: 122,783 (+6.3%)

This is a very good map, though I may have tried to avoid crossing the Bow in the Varsity area (though, the dominoes from such a move may result in a worse map)

After looking at the Edmonton map, I was unhappy with the new Winterburn riding as it kind of lumps a bunch of disparate neighbourhoods that are separated by large industrial tracts. I've tried to fix that situation with the following map:



The only real "issue" with this map is it splits the downtown up. But it helps shore up Desjarlais, and cracks a Liberal riding, so I'm not complaining

Yeah, the Varsity-area river crossing was basically unavoidable without a headache of dominoes. I justify it by the fact that Montgomery and Bowness are very closely connected (they used to be independent municipalities until the 1960s and were joined by the same streetcar route historically), to the point where you can go between them while only barely noticing that the river even exists. And then from there, Montgomery connects to the UofC area and Varsity. The same river crossing also tends to happen pretty often in Calgary's municipal ward boundaries, so the communities are used to being connected.

Your Edmonton map is more aesthetically-pleasing than anything I've been able to come up with, to be honest. I'm not nearly as much of a fan of the cracking of the Liberal Edmonton Centre though But voting for Randy Boissonault was one of the last things I did as a resident of Edmonton Centre before moving back to Calgary, so I'm a little biased.

[Njall]

I've attempted a new Alberta map to try and address the things that the Commission did which bugged me. I wasn't able to address everything, but I do think that this is better than what the commission came back with. The biggest frustration in drawing this was that I couldn't find a way around putting Beaumont into Battle River--Crowfoot. I now have a better understanding of why the Commission put it with Sherwood Park, but I didn't copy them because I wanted to keep Sherwood Park with Fort Saskatchewan. And then there unfortunately wasn't enough room for Beaumont in the riding with Leduc, Devon, Spruce Grove, and Stony Plain.

Anyways, this isn't perfect, but I would prefer this to what the Commission gave us:












As an aside, something that struck me while drawing this is just how fast bedroom communities around Calgary have grown over the last 15-20 years. As recently as the mid-2000s, Airdrie-Chestermere was only big enough to be a provincial riding, but fast forward to now and you can draw a federal riding (almost 3x the population) on essentially the same boundaries.

[Njall]

You didn't find anything wrong to what they did to the south end of Edmonton? Mill Woods should remain whole for COI reasons in my opinion, even if it's a tad over-sized.

It's a tough call, but the thing is that on a number of demographic grounds, including ethnicity and (somewhat) income, the part of Mill Woods east of 66 St has quite a lot in common with the Meadows and Ellerslie areas to the east and south, respectively. It's enough to make an arguable CoI. It's also helped by the way that municipal boundaries there are currently shaped. Mill Woods was a distinct community when it was developed in the 1970s when it was separated from the rest of Edmonton by industrial, but I think it's important to recognize the districts that have sprung up since then, as opposed to seeing Mill Woods as an indivisible thing.

[Njall]

When I revised my Saskatchewan proposal, I first had to decide which boundaries the Commissioners were unlikely to change (Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River) and which ones would be open to suggestions (basically everything else).

So when the Alberta Commission placed 11 seats entirely within the City of Calgary, and nine seats entirely within the City of Edmonton, I started to wave goodbye to my proposed Airdrie--Calgary North and St. Albert--Edmonton.  Then I began reading complaints about Sherwood Park, Beaumont, Banff, and the new Battle River--Crowfoot.

So I have a question: Should I revise my Alberta map to follow the Commission's 11/9/17 recommendation?  Or should I stick to my principles and try to convince the Commission that I'm right and they're wrong?

I would personally be very happy if you could convince the commission that you're right and they're wrong. However, experience suggests that it would probably be more effective to follow their 11/9/17 recommendation and try to fix as many things as possible within that. That said, I would anticipate that you could have a chance of getting them to re-instate St. Albert--Edmonton (or, at least, a better chance than Airdrie--Calgary North), since that riding's existed for nearly the last two decades. Edmonton also has more of a history of blended city proper-suburb ridings than Calgary. I'm pretty sure that Calgary's ridings have exclusively been within the city boundary since at least the 1960s.

[Njall]

How about this for a tidy-up of Edmonton?




Manning 111044 - as proposed
Palisades 115142 - coherent northern seat
Central 112696 - probably throws Desjarlais and Boissonault together
Jasper Place 112586 - surely an improvement on Winterburn?
West 111634 - not mad on the river crossing, but the Commission seems to want to minimise population deviations and it was the only way to keep all the northern seats with 5000 of the average. If you're less bothered with that, there are easy adjustments you can make
Strathcona 113676 - very minor changes
Riverbend 112347 - very minor changes
Ellerslie 110903 - takes a small bite out of Mill Woods
Mill Woods 110871 - a little less disruptive

Nice job. My only real complaint, which isn't a valid mapmaking complaint, would be that it would be likely to turf either Boissonnault or Desjarlais, and I'd prefer to see them both re-elected.

[Njall]

And this for a tidy-up of Calgary:




Country Hills 120432 - if you want to avoid crossing Deerfoot then that requires more changes than can reasonably be considered a tidy-up. So I limited this to trying to improve the southern boundary on both east and west sides and changing the name. Stays north of Airport Trail
McKnight 121352 - shifts north a bit. If you wish, can swap Rundle for Monterey Park
Forest Lawn 121840
Shepard 123717 - largest ridings in the city. With this arrangement, all the eastern ridings need to be overpopulated a little
Midnapore 115238 - aligns with Fish Creek
Heritage 116845 - north-western boundary becomes the reservoir
Centre 120219 - can you call a riding Centre when it borders the edge of the city?
Signal Hill 118852 - probably improved by not containing Valley Ridge
Confederation 119096 - but this is worsened. It goes with Bowness, but not the rest of the riding. Rather elongated
Crowchild 117478 - as proposed
Nose Hill 112215 - as proposed

I don't think this is better than a map that doesn't cross Deerfoot Trail, but it might be easier to convince a commission of this than to get them to do a total re-draw.

Not bad given the constraints. I'd probably switch Monterey Park and Rundle. And if it was possible, Valley Ridge and Crestmont would probably fit better in Crowchild or Signal Hill. I know that the resulting boundary of that would be weird, but in terms of demographics and development patterns, Bowness has more in common with communities in Confederation like Montgomery and Parkdale, while Valley Ridge and Crestmont have more in common with communities like Tuscany (Crowchild) or Cougar Ridge (Signal Hill).

[Njall]

Which Halifax option is better?

Option 1




Option 2

I think option 1 looks a bit better, though I'm not the most familiar with Halifax's geography.

[Njall]

Since the riding builder now has election data, I wanted to see how the Alberta commission's maps for Edmonton and Calgary would have voted in 2021. I couldn't get the exact boundaries in a couple of places but I think I got pretty close.

In Edmonton, I was somewhat surprised to see that the new Mill Woods voted essentially the same way as the old Mill Woods, since the Liberals tend to do better in the eastern part of the old Mill Woods.

Gateway, Riverbend, West, and Winterburn all basically voted the same way as last time and as each other, with the CPC at 43-45% and the LPC and NDP neck-and-neck in the mid-20s. Strathcona was also basically unchanged, shifting maybe 1% towards the CPC at the NDP's expense.

Manning changed less than I expected given the boundary shift. There was a change of maybe 2% from the LPC to NDP, so the CPC margin would have been a little closer, but they still would have beaten the NPD by about 3,500 votes.

As expected, the CPC would have beaten the NDP in the new Griesbach, at a margin of 40%-35%. Given the relative closeness, I wouldn't necessarily write off Desjarlais if he ran for re-election here as an incumbent, but he would start as the underdog.

Finally, in Centre, Boissonnault would have won by an even narrower margin than 2021 at 185 votes, but the territory absorbed from Griesbach would have had the NDP in second place at 32% and the CPC in third at 29%. Still a three-way race, but with the NDP slightly up at the CPC's expense compared to the old Centre.

In Calgary, Shepard, Midnapore, Heritage, Signal Hill, Crowchild, and Nose Hill are all boring at 55-60% CPC. The new Forest Lawn is close behind at 53% CPC.

Centre and Confederation are both basically unchanged from 2021. Progressive candidates collectively got about 49% in both ridings, but were far from unified behind a single candidate. (As an aside, I also tested two versions of the cross-river Calgary Centres that we've been playing with in this thread and the CPC would have still won by about 10 points, with 43%. It looks like at least in 2021, crossing the river would have made the riding about 6% friendlier for progressives, but the LPC would have still needed a little more than half of the NDP's vote share to win.

Finally, in the northeast, the new Skyview would have been a 44%-34% CPC victory over the LPC. It would be friendlier to the LPC than Centre or Confederation, but still likely unwinnable except in a wave election. And as expected, McKnight would be the Liberals' best bet in Calgary. They would have beaten the CPC by 10 points (44%-34%) in 2021, which is up from the 6-point margin of victory in the old Skyview, and even in the 2019 the CPC would have been held to 50%.

[Njall]

Since the riding builder now has election data, I wanted to see how the Alberta commission's maps for Edmonton and Calgary would have voted in 2021. I couldn't get the exact boundaries in a couple of places but I think I got pretty close.

In Edmonton, I was somewhat surprised to see that the new Mill Woods voted essentially the same way as the old Mill Woods, since the Liberals tend to do better in the eastern part of the old Mill Woods.

Gateway, Riverbend, West, and Winterburn all basically voted the same way as last time and as each other, with the CPC at 43-45% and the LPC and NDP neck-and-neck in the mid-20s. Strathcona was also basically unchanged, shifting maybe 1% towards the CPC at the NDP's expense.

Manning changed less than I expected given the boundary shift. There was a change of maybe 2% from the LPC to NDP, so the CPC margin would have been a little closer, but they still would have beaten the NPD by about 3,500 votes.

As expected, the CPC would have beaten the NDP in the new Griesbach, at a margin of 40%-35%. Given the relative closeness, I wouldn't necessarily write off Desjarlais if he ran for re-election here as an incumbent, but he would start as the underdog.

Finally, in Centre, Boissonnault would have won by an even narrower margin than 2021 at 185 votes, but the territory absorbed from Griesbach would have had the NDP in second place at 32% and the CPC in third at 29%. Still a three-way race, but with the NDP slightly up at the CPC's expense compared to the old Centre.

In Calgary, Shepard, Midnapore, Heritage, Signal Hill, Crowchild, and Nose Hill are all boring at 55-60% CPC. The new Forest Lawn is close behind at 53% CPC.

Centre and Confederation are both basically unchanged from 2021. Progressive candidates collectively got about 49% in both ridings, but were far from unified behind a single candidate. (As an aside, I also tested two versions of the cross-river Calgary Centres that we've been playing with in this thread and the CPC would have still won by about 10 points, with 43%. It looks like at least in 2021, crossing the river would have made the riding about 6% friendlier for progressives, but the LPC would have still needed a little more than half of the NDP's vote share to win.

Finally, in the northeast, the new Skyview would have been a 44%-34% CPC victory over the LPC. It would be friendlier to the LPC than Centre or Confederation, but still likely unwinnable except in a wave election. And as expected, McKnight would be the Liberals' best bet in Calgary. They would have beaten the CPC by 10 points (44%-34%) in 2021, which is up from the 6-point margin of victory in the old Skyview, and even in the 2019 the CPC would have been held to 50%.

Calgary's an anomaly in how the downtown core and surrounding areas are NOT the most favourable turf for the left. I guess Vancouver too has a situation where the East Hastings/Sunrise area (the VanEast riding, basically) gives more support to the centre-left than downtown, which makes sense considering Vancouver East is pretty low-income and downtown Vancouver is full of very wealthy people - though this is less noticeable, because both Vancouver Centre and East always vote for the centre-left with big margins. Vancouver-False Creek provincially is the only "real" indicator of this. Elsewhere in Canada though, this is basically never the case. Even in Edmonton, it's clear that the downtown area and Strathcona are the most left-wing parts.

I guess what makes Calgary unique is that downtown Calgary is largely based on oil wealth - but a more "white-collar" oil wealth which lends itself to a more 'PC' conservatism, as opposed to the "blue-collar" oil wealth of Fort Mac which lends itself to a more 'Wildrose' conservatism. As for northeast Calgary, especially the areas comprising the proposed McKnight riding, is lower-income than the rest of Calgary, and overwhelmingly populated by recent immigrants and minorities, making it favourable Liberal turf. What's even weirder is that northwest Calgary also has a large immigrant/minority presence, smaller than northeast but still significant in the areas consisting the Nose Hill and Crowchild ridings, but there's little evidence of that vote pushing those areas left. My assumption would be that the minorities/immigrants in northwest are generally higher-income and more assimilated into the mainstream politics of Alberta, ergo more conservative. Most of Calgary south of downtown and Forest Lawn seems very much like the old stereotype of Calgary, very white, pretty wealthy, and Tory uber alles, and that is reflected in it being the bluest part of the city.

I personally attribute a lot of northeast Calgary's political uniqueness to its demographics and relative isolation, for lack of a better phrase. The northeast is not only uniquely-heavily populated by recent immigrants and minorities, but even more specifically, there is a distinct concentration of South Asian residents, including a large number of Punjabi Sikhs. If you look at neighbourhoods like Saddle Ridge, you'll see that the populations are around 60% South Asian and under 10% white - in other words, numbers you might stereotypically expect to see in parts of Brampton or Surrey. Due to their size and presence, ethnocultural communities in the northeast are the closest-knit that I've seen in Calgary. And when I reference isolation, I'm not just talking about geography (due to the airport and industrial areas), but also linguistically and culturally. I've seen statistics that in multiple northeast communities, up to 10% of residents are unable to converse in English, and many more speak languages other than English whenever possible. When you compare this to the rest of the city, even where immigration numbers are high, you have a much higher degree of different ethnic groups intermingling and generally assimilating into the default political landscape in their area.

I'd also say that although the Liberals certainly have a stronger base in the northeast than in the rest of Calgary, candidate quality and connections to the area are more important than average in the northeast. We saw this in the victories of Darshan Kang and George Chahal in 2015 and 2021, but this also applied to former PC MLA Manmeet Bhullar's victories, even in the 2015 NDP wave. The 2019 federal election was probably a lost cause for the Liberals regardless, but the nail in the coffin if there was one would have been picking Nirmala Naidoo, who was from the northwest and didn't really have ties to the local community.

[Njall]

Saskatchewan and Manitoba are out.

Saskatchewan: https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/sk/rprt/index_e.aspx.

Manitoba: https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/com/mb/rprt/index_e.aspx.

Amongst the changes made from the proposal is removing the recommendation for an NDP-friendly seat in Saskatoon Centre.

[Njall]

Jasper--Banff--Canmore?  Who the f**k proposed that?

https://redecoupage-redistribution-2022.ca/ebv/en/?locale=en-ca&prov=ab

It's odd, but at least it's marginally better than the old proposal's idea to randomly tack Banff onto Yellowhead.

On the whole, it's not my favourite map ever, but I like it better than the proposal. It definitely seems a little better in terms of seat prospects for progressives, primarily because the new Griesbach boundaries are definitely better for Desjarlais than the proposal. They also more-or-less retained the proposed Calgary McKnight riding, and while I would have preferred a Calgary Skyview entirely on the east side of Deerfoot, Calgary McKnight should be at least a lean Liberal seat as long as the Liberals run candidates who are actually from the area.

[Njall]

•   I don’t know enough about the west end of Ottawa to understand if Golden Ave is the western limit of Westboro neighbourhood, but that jog around Berkley Ave, Tay St, and Dominion Ave seems rather odd to me.

Agreed, that is weird. As best as I can tell, they got that boundary by matching the municipal ward boundary north of Richmond Road. Which still doesn't make much sense because the municipal boundary south of Richmond Road is 5-6 blocks west at Denbury Ave. The local community association also considers Denbury to be their western boundary.