The UCP government has cast aside the recommendations of Alberta’s 2025–26 Electoral Boundaries Commission and is moving to redraw ridings by MLA committee. Even the Alberta NDP recognizes this as gerrymandering; but they give no reason why the UCP is doing this, other than their moral rottenness. Why does the electorally dominant party of the oil barons tamper with its own state apparatus?
Parliamentary democracy is always democracy for the rich, democracy for the 0.1%, democracy for the ruling class. When useful, we are tricked into thinking our voice matters, channeling our struggle for daily bread into this shell. But when anything real is at stake, when the masses may begin to move independently, the shell is bent, twisted, or broken.
For decades, Alberta has been ruled by the party of the oil barons. Even in its brief interruptions, the Alberta NDP moved to the right and cheer-led the very oil companies they had campaigned on clawing profits from. But beneath this apparent stability something deeper is stirring. The teachers’ strike, and approval for a solidarity general strike, gives a glimpse of anger that reaches beyond any one dispute. The masses are beginning to test their strength.
The UCP senses this before most of the reformists. Electoral manipulation is not confidence but fear that old political habits are weakening. That workers in cities and then beyond may begin to act as a class.
No redrawing of boundaries can stop this process. The contradictory nature of capitalism in Alberta will only be aggravated. We must not merely request a fairer map, nor beg for a few more crumbs off the bosses’ table. We must prepare the Revolutionary Communist leadership worthy of the independent working class movement, which alone can sweep away both the sham democracy and the capitalist class it protects.
– Concerned Med Hatter, Medicine Hat
