The Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission has restated its support for a new Airdrie-Cochrane constituency in its final report that will dramatically redraw the political landscape of this area.

In its final report, the commission has recommended Cochrane be included with a westerly portion of Airdrie in addition to Cochrane Lake and Balzac. It also includes Bearspaw, which is currently part of the Chestermere-Rocky View constituency of Leela Aheer. Excluded is the Bragg Creek home of Banff-Cochrane MLA Cam Westhead.

During the boundaries hearings, the City of Airdrie proposed a different map. They wanted to see all of Airdrie west of Hwy. 2 stand as one constituency and the eastern portion of Airdrie included in a riding with the City of Chestermere.

The commission found this idea would leave the population of the proposed "Cochrane-Rocky View West" constituency too low, even when considering the rapid growth of Cochrane, while the proposed Airdrie-Chestermere riding would have too large of a population.

The Town of Cochrane had supported Airdrie's submission, largely because it left Cochrane as the major centre in a riding.

Come next election, Westhead says he will be seeking to represent the proposed Banff-Kananaskis constituency. That riding underwent some significant changes in the redraft by including Kananakis. It's renaming has reflected the change and the original handle of Banff-Stoney has been dropped. Rural outreaches west of Cochrane would also form part of that new constituency, including Benchlands, the Ghost Valley and the Stoney Nakoda Nation. It also includes Redwood Meadows, Priddis and Millarville in its southeast.

This summer, Westhead made an oral presentation asking for the inclusion of Kananaskis in the new riding.

"Based on consultations with the Kananaskis Improvement District, Town of Canmore, MD of Bighorn and Banff, we all thought that it would be best to have Kananakis remain in the constitency," explains Westhead.  "It's a relatively important tourism corridor, and so it made sense to keep them together. They have similar interests and similar economies in terms of tourism."

It also saw about a quarter-section of land from Mountain View County removed from the northeast portion of the originally proposed boundaries.

Westhead commends the commission for their work.

"They were given a difficult task and they received a lot of feedback from the public and I want to thank them for the work that they've done. They were given some fairly tight perimeters and they've done the best job that they can."

The final report was presented to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly on Oct. 19 and will be debated by the assembly sometime between Oct. 30 and Dec. 2. Historically there are seldom major changes once the final report is submitted and it largely becomes a matter of finetuning.