Alberta electoral district | |||
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2010 boundaries
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Provincial electoral district | |||
Legislature | Legislative Assembly of Alberta | ||
MLA |
Wildrose |
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District created | 2003 | ||
First contested | 2004 | ||
Last contested | 2015 |
Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock is a rural provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada. The district was created in 2003 and is mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta under the first past the post electoral system. It includes the towns of Barrhead, Morinville, Westlock, Swan Hills, and Legal as well as numerous smaller hamlets.
The electoral district was created in the 2003 boundary redistribution from the old Barrhead-Westlock riding that had existed since 1993. The riding was created by merging Barrhead-Westlock with the western portion of Redwater which had been split to make Athabasca-Redwater.
The second iteration of the district came in 2010 when the boundaries were revised to gain a portion of land from the Lesser Slave Lake electoral district. The portion of land in the district that was part of Sturgeon County was transferred to Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert.
The riding was created in the 2004 boundary redistribution. Its predecessor districts Barrhead-Westlock had been solidly represented by Progressive Conservative and while Redwater saw a mixture of Liberal and Progressive Conservative MLA's returned in recent decades.
Former Speaker of the Assembly Ken Kowalski had served as a member in the area since winning a by-election in 1979. Prior to being Speaker he had previously held some cabinet portfolios in the Alberta government. He was returned to office when the district was created in 2004 and re-elected in 2008 with landslide pluralities.