Grande Prairie-Smoky was a provincial electoral district in

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the

Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from sin ...

using

first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

balloting from 1993 to 2019. The riding was created in 1993 when from the

Smoky River The Smoky River is a river in western Alberta, Canada. It is a major tributary of the Peace River. The descriptive name refers to the presence of "smouldering beds of coal in the riverbank" noted by the Cree Indians. It drains an area of . F ...

electoral district was expanded into the old

Whitecourt Whitecourt is a town in central Alberta, Canada that is surrounded by Woodlands County. It is approximately northwest of Edmonton and southeast of Grande Prairie at the junction of Highway 43 and Highway 32. It has an elevation of . White ...

electoral district. The district includes the north portion of the city of

Grande Prairie Grande Prairie is a city in northwest Alberta, Canada within the southern portion of an area known as Peace River Country. It is located at the intersection of Highway 43 (part of the CANAMEX Corridor) and Highway 40 (the Bighorn Highway), a ...

as well as the towns of Fox Creek, Sexsmith and Valleyview.

History

The electoral district was created in the 1993 boundary redistribution from the electoral district of

and

. It remained mostly unchanged in the 1997 and 2003 electoral boundary re-distributions. The Boundaries Commission proposed to abolish the district to create a completely urban Grande Prairie district but it changed its decision under public pressure. The 2010 re-distribution made minor changes to the border with Grande Prairie-Wapiti in the city of Grande Prairie but stayed the same in the rural areas.

Boundary history

Representation history

The electoral district was created in the 1993 boundary redistribution primarily from the old Smoky River and Whitecourt riding's. The first election held that year saw Progressive Conservative Smoky River incumbent Walter Paszkowski win a comfortable majority to pick up the seat for his party. He ran for a second term winning a larger majority in the 1997 election. He retired from the legislature at dissolution in 2001. The former representative was Progressive Conservative Mel Knight who won his first election in 2001 with a massive majority taking 67% of the popular vote. He was re-elected to his second term in the 2004 election with a very large, but reduced majority. Premier

Ed Stelmach Edward Michael Stelmach (; born May 11, 1951) is a Canadian politician and served as the 13th premier of Alberta, from 2006 to 2011. The grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, Stelmach was born and raised on a farm near Lamont and fluently speaks ...

appointed Mel Knight as Minister of Energy in 2006. He won a slightly higher majority running for a third term in the 2008 general election. Knight was shuffled out of the Energy portfolio in 2010 and then served as the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development. Upon his retirement,

Everett McDonald Everett McDonald (born c. 1958) is a Canadian politician who was an elected member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the electoral district of Grande Prairie-Smoky from 2012 to 2015. He formerly served as the Reeve of the Coun ...

kept the seat for the PCs at a reduced vote share in the 2012 election. In 2015, however, third-time candidate

Todd Loewen Douglas Todd Loewen (born September 16, 1966) is a Canadian politician and the Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Central Peace-Notley. Loewen was first elected in 2015 as a member of the Wildrose Party for the electoral district o ...

finally captured the seat for Wildrose. He subsequently crossed the floor to the

United Conservative Party The United Conservative Party of Alberta (UCP) is a conservative political party in the province of Alberta, Canada. It was established in July 2017 as a merger between the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and the Wildrose Party ...

when the two parties merged.

Election results

1993 general election

1997 general election

2001 general election

2004 general election

2008 general election

2012 general election

2015 general election

Senate nominee results

2004 Senate nominee election district results

''Voters had the option of selecting 4 Candidates on the Ballot''

2012 Senate nominee election district results

Student Vote results

2004 election

On November 19, 2004 a Student Vote was conducted at participating Alberta schools to parallel the 2004 Alberta general election results. The vote was designed to educate students and simulate the electoral process for persons who have not yet reached the legal majority. The vote was conducted in 80 of the 83 provincial electoral districts with students voting for actual election candidates. Schools with a large student body that reside in another electoral district had the option to vote for candidates outside of the electoral district then where they were physically located.

2012 election

References

External links

Elections AlbertaThe Legislative Assembly of Alberta
{{Coord, 55.379, N, 118.323, W, display=title Former provincial electoral districts of Alberta Grande Prairie