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Alberta’s opposition parties fear interim recommendations from the commission re-drawing the province’s electoral boundaries will create massive rural ridings impossible for MLAs to represent properly.

The recommendations would distill seven rural ridings in the east of the province down to six, five ridings in the west into four and four ridings in the northeast to three. The commission’s mandate doesn’t allow the number of ridings to change, so the three eliminated ridings would turn into two urban ridings and another suburban riding north of Calgary.

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Of the 16 ridings marked for mergers, 10 of them are represented by Wildrose MLAs. The five NDP ridings on the list would have been Wildrose targets in a future election.

Wildrose house leader Nathan Cooper said the recommendations create unwieldy super-ridings that will not only be geographically large, but more populous than the average, too.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” said Cooper.

Some have argued that advances in technology should allow MLAs to reach more constituents over vaster distances, but Cooper said it’s no substitute for seeing an MLA in person.

Personal contact is a “real tangible thing that comes along with good government,” he said.