MP protests boundary plan

Medicine Hat MP LaVar Payne has lodged an official protest to proposed constituency boundary changes which were tabled in Parliament late last year.

“They sent out the boundary changes just prior to the House rising – in fact they sent them out early for Alberta, and it really put a squeeze on to put objections in, and I put one in. I was actually very upset with the proposal, because it had no rationale at all,” said Payne.

Under recommendations handed down by the Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission in Ottawa, many areas south of Lethbridge and the M.D. of Taber are slated to become part of a huge new southern Alberta riding – Bow River – which in its current incarnation would stretch north-south across the interior of the province. Encompassing a vast tract of territory, which in addition includes the counties of Vulcan, Newell, Wheatland and parts of the counties of Kneehill and Rocky View – it will range from Three Hills in the north to Taber in the south, a distance of almost 300 kilometres.

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