New Brunswick electoral redistribution, 2006

The New Brunswick electoral redistribution of 2006 was undertaken as a result of legislation introduced by Bernard Lord, the Premier of New Brunswick, Canada, on June 9, 2005. The legislation establishes a statutory requirement for redistribution of electoral districts after every decennial Canadian census.

The redistribution process set out in the legislation took approximately six months to complete, and was overseen by an independent commission. The bill introduced by the government would have required that 55 ridings be maintained with populations varying between 75% and 110% of 1/55 of the provincial population. The Opposition Liberals expressed a desire for the commission to have greater flexibility either in the variance of the average population or in the number of districts. On June 30, 2005, an agreement was reached and the bill was amended to allow the commission to ignore population basis entirely in "extraordinary circumstances," but should strive to be within the range of 90% to 110% of the average population of 55 districts.

There was considerable work to be done as 35 out of the 55 districts that existed from the outset were outside of the +/- 10% range. This is due in part to the population shifts over the course of a decade, and because the requirement was +/- 25% during the previous redistribution.

In the end, the commission was able to maintain most districts in their same alignment by means of minor boundary adjustments. However, two sets of districts were merged and there were considerable changes of district boundaries in the cities Dieppe and Fredericton.

On November 21, 2005, the Commission released its preliminary recommendations for new electoral districts. Despite the fact that the vast majority of existing ridings were outside of the +/- 10% population range, most were retained in the new distribution through minor adjustments to their boundaries. In all, 46 of 55 districts are largely unchanged. There are five essentially new districts, three of which resulting from a merger of previous districts or large parts of previous districts.

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