December 1, 2022
I've already covered what redistribution is in my first post for this series and that's where to look to see some basic information about redistribution.
New Brunswick has 10 ridings with an average population/electoral district of 77,561 which is smaller than in most of the country. New Brunswick often doesn't have large changes in electoral districts and this redistribution is no different.
From the original proposal to the report, only 1 town switched ridings, a large area of land in the Southwest switched, and the name of one district changed back to the current name. Other than those 3 larger changes the remaining changes are minor border fixes mainly around the 3 large cities.
Proposal
The original proposal had some pretty major changes all across the province. The Northwestern border between Madawaska-Restigouche and Tobique-Mactaquac had a big shift moving south as the population in the Northern areas of the province can't catch up as much to the South. As with all maps in this series the black line represents the current borders in use, the purple represents the proposal from the commission and the blue represents the reports tabled in the House of Commons which will be farther down in this post.
Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe had Riverview cut out of it and added to the newly named Fundy Royal-Riverview. The cities in New Brunswick have gotten more populated and a pattern will emerge where urban ridings get much smaller.
Fredericton had a massive change going from a large rural-urban riding to a very concentrated riding around Fredericton and Oromocto. The commission to make up for the population loss made the borders very strange in some areas around the cities.
Saint John got a lot of hate online for what the commission did to follow the trend of much more urban ridings. The commission split the city in 2 across the Saint John River to make a massive rural-urban riding that replaced the current seat of New Brunswick Southwest with a riding named Saint John-St. Croix.
Report
The report as mentioned before only had minor border shifts. Notably, the change in the area around Four Falls moved from Madawaska-Restigouche to Tobique-Mactaquac.
In the Southwest the area around McAdam it was moved from Tobique-Mactaquac to Saint John-St. Croix.
Lastly, the riding of Fundy Royal which scooped up Riverview was renamed Fundy Royal-Riverview in the proposal but it was switched back to the current name of just Fundy Royal.
Current Riding | Proposal | Report |
Acadie-Bathurst | Acadie-Bathurst | Acadie-Bathurst |
Beauséjour | Beauséjour | Beauséjour |
Fredericton | Fredericton-Oromocto | Fredericton-Oromocto |
Fundy Royal | Fundy Royal-Riverview | Fundy Royal |
Madawaska-Restigouche | Madawaska-Restigouche | Madawaska-Restigouche |
Miramichi-Grand Lake | Miramichi-Grand Lake | Miramichi-Grand Lake |
Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe | Moncton-Dieppe | Moncton-Dieppe |
New Brunswick Southwest | Saint John-St. Croix | Saint John-St. Croix |
Saint John-Rothesay | Saint John-Kennebecasis | Saint John-Kennebecasis |
Tobique-Mactaquac | Tobique-Mactaquac | Tobique-Mactaquac |
Political Impact
The urbanization of the 3 city ridings didn't affect the results of this map in 2021 and 2019 which I found interesting. There weren't any flips or any major shifts in any area politically.
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