Skip to content

Record number of candidates face off in St. Albert

Incumbent NDP candidate Marie Renaud is hoping to win re-election in the slightly-shuffled version of the riding she represented in 2015 and is facing off against a record number of candidates for the St. Albert vote.
1004 StA sup

Incumbent NDP candidate Marie Renaud is hoping to win re-election in the slightly-shuffled version of the riding she represented in 2015 and is facing off against a record number of candidates for the St. Albert vote.

This year, the riding has the most candidates it has ever seen in a provincial election, with seven MLA hopefuls facing off for the seat. In the past, the most amount of candidates the riding has had was five.

Renaud is the second NDP candidate to hold a seat in the St. Albert riding, with the first being Bryan Strong in 1986.

Renaud is facing off for the seat against UCP candidate Jeff Wedman, Alberta Party candidate Barry Bailey, Alberta Independence Party candidate Sheldon Gron, Alberta Green Party candidate Cameron Jefferies, Alberta Liberal Party candidate Kevin McLean and Alberta Advantage Party candidate Don Petruka.

Renaud has held the seat for one term after beating out incumbent PC candidate Stephen Khan in 2015 when the NDP swept the polls across Alberta.

Since the riding's original creation in 1905, it has been partly split up with, with a second riding needed to accommodate the population growth. This past provincial term saw the city served by two MLAs, with Renaud representing St. Albert and the NDP's Trevor Horne representing Spruce Grove-St. Albert.

Over the course of more than a century since the riding was created, St. Albertans have been representened by myriad parties, including the Liberals, United Farmers, Social Credit, PC, NDP and an independent candidate.

In 1926, the seat sat vacant briefly when Lucien Boudreau of the Liberal Party was removed after a court convicted him of bribery and corruption. Boudreau appealed and was reinstated less than a month later.

In 2017, the province redrew the riding boundaries, which ended up shuffling the two St. Albert ridings. The St. Albert riding is home to 47,745 people (based on figures from the 2016 municipal census), which is two per cent above the provincial average. The new boundary is along Boudreau Road, with the remaining 17,844 St. Albert residents who live in Erin Ridge North, Erin Ridge, Oakmont, Woodlands, Kingswood and Pineview joining Morinville and a portion of Sturgeon County to create the Morinville-St. Albert riding.

The remaining neighbourhoods will be part of the main St. Albert riding, which includes some of the biggest and oldest communities in the city. Residents living in the neighbourhoods of Mission and Ville Giroux represent the oldest voters in the city respectively and will be included in the main St. Albert riding. The riding also pulls in some of the neighbourhoods with the youngest populations in the city, including Jensen Lakes, Riverside and North Ridge respectively.

Residents will go to the polls on Tuesday, April 16, to vote for their next representative. Advance voting runs this week.


Jennifer Henderson

About the Author: Jennifer Henderson

Jennifer Henderson is the editor of the St. Albert Gazette and has been with Great West Media since 2015
Read more



Comments

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks