Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives have tapped a former federal conservative cabinet minister and lobbyist to help redraw the map marking electoral ridings across the province.
Monte Solberg is one of four panel members appointed Tuesday by a legislature committee overseeing the new map-making process.
But the Opposition NDP says that process to re-do the work of a previous electoral boundaries commission — but with a mandate to create more ridings — is illegitimate and can’t be trusted.
Also handpicked by Smith’s UCP was emergency and infrastructure management strategist Darwin Durnie, who co-authored a submission to the previous commission recommending a map that includes multiple mixed rural-urban Calgary ridings.
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Opposition NDP member Christina Gray says Durnie’s appointment shows the fix is in and the UCP is trying to silence voters in Calgary.
The NDP put forward law professor Gerard Kennedy and former Okotoks town councillor Brent Robinson to serve on the panel.
Solberg is the CEO of Calgary-based New West Public Affairs.
He was first elected as a Reform Party Member of Parliament (MP) in 1993 and 1997, and as a Canadian Alliance MP in 2000.
After the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives, he was re-elected in the riding of Medicine hat in 2004.
He retired from federal politics in 2008.
— With files from Karen Bartko, Global News
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