Why a federal commission rejected a pitch for new riding in Saskatoon

A federal commission tasked with redistributing election boundaries in the province has rejected a proposal to create a new riding in the centre of Saskatoon.

The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission forms every ten years to adjust election ridings based on population changes.

Over the summer the commission held public hearings on its proposal, which would have seen the creation of an electoral riding bound by Circle Drive called Saskatoon-Centre flanked by three urban and rural mixed ridings.

“Since it is possible to have five exclusively urban ridings, the question that must be answered is whether a community of interest or identity would be formed by blending some of or all the ridings in Saskatoon and Regina with rural ridings lying adjacent to these cities,” the commission wrote in its proposal.

It described a “community of interest” as a “shared set of challenges, like affordable housing, homelessness, addressing the needs of an urban Indigenous population, meeting the needs of new Canadians, mass transit, funding of major infrastructure projects, complex policing matters and so on.”

After months of public input, the commission opted not to separate Saskatoon’s urban and suburban residents into different voting blocks, according to its report submitted to the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Instead it’s proposed bringing in the boundary of Saskatoon-Grasswood to city limits, and renaming it Saskatoon-South. The other two ridings remain basically unchanged.

These are the Saskatoon election boundaries submitted for review by members of parliament on Dec. 6.

There may still be many who don’t agree with the commission’s choice, says political studies assistant professor Daniel Westlake, because the process is decidedly subjective.

“There is no objective rule for drawing boundaries around a riding,” said Westlake, who researches Canadian parties and elections at the University of Saskatchewan.

“In Saskatoon I think there are different ways to justify it. There’s an East-West divide to the city, but there’s also a kind of urban versus suburban divide to the city and those create different possibilities for how you can create ridings that match with different interests.”

Given the number of people in each riding, there’s no way to ensure someone isn’t left out, he says.

“There’s never going to be clean cuts between one set of 80 or 90,000 people … the way people live doesn’t lend itself to that.”

The commission’s report and updated proposal is now back in the House of Commons for potential objections from MPs. It will release its final decision in September 2023.