February 11, 2023
British Columbia now has 43 seats, gaining 1 from the previous redistribution. BC has an average population/electoral district of 116,300, the 2nd highest in the country, only a few hundred below Ontario. This map has received the most hate, from what I've seen, in both the proposal and the report.
Proposal
Overall the BC commissions both federally and provincially need to balance out the vast interior of the province with the quickly growing Vancouver Metro. In the proposal, I found much of the interior to be quite well drawn as it's similar to the current borders in the province.
The Kelowna area was an area of contention with the large increase in population from the previous redistribution. I saw a lot of proposals that would keep the Kelowna and the Okanagan Lake Area together in ridings that would meet population requirements and also not look too insane like the proposal.
On the Island, I don't like the lack of change even with the massive increase in population. Even a guesstimation could tell that the current 7 seats that are already a bit big will not work fairly by the next redistribution. This redistribution is unique to recent ones that have taken place because the total gain of seats is only 5 across the country. The problem of a lack of fair representation across each province is something commissions have had to deal with and I think many of them have dealt with this fairly poorly.
Many of the weird shifts around the Eastern Fraser Valley make sense for the population changes and requirements, even though I wish some of the borders were changed, but it's a largely personal preference.
The cities in the Greater Vancouver Region south of the Fraser River had some of the worst changes to their borders. The biggest issue I have is the constant jumping across some of the widest stretches of the Fraser. Particularly in Delta and Northern Surrey. Just Delta on its own has an almost exact population as what's needed to form an electoral district. Instead of this simple approach, the commission decided to split Delta across 3 different ridings: Delta, Richmond East and Surrey West. To compensate for this very weird decision the riding of Delta juts far into Surrey, almost close enough to reach Cloverdale-Langley City.
In the Surrey ridings, many borders were shifted around including 3 jumps around the Fraser in Pitt Meadows-Fort Langley, which is a weird riding name considering a large chunk of the population comes from Port Coquitlam but it isn't mentioned. One of the biggest issues I saw people have in Surrey was the riding of New Westminster-Bridgeview. Other than those, with the circumstances of Surrey I think it's well drawn.
In Vancouver, I liked the preservation of the current electoral districts with only some minor shifting, the biggest ones around the south end of False Creek, although I didn't like how Burnaby was being bitten by Vancouver.
In North Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Burnaby all the shifts in borders overall do make sense in my opinion, but I think that there could've been other ways to carry out the changes to this region. The biggest issues I have are with the weird shift in a small section of West Vancouver and a 6km panhandle in Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam that stretches to the Fraser River.
Report
Luckily the Report did balance out much of the weird Fraser River crossings and overall did a better job at balancing out that area of Greater Vancouver.
I am baffled as to why the commission objected to keeping Richmond as 2 ridings just in the city in almost any form could be almost equal in population, while also preparing for a likely population increase. This also leads to the absolute mess of Vancouver and Burnaby in this report. Vancouver is split across 7 different ridings (it's currently only 5).
North Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Burnaby had a lot of reversals to the current ridings and I like almost all the changes except for the continual unnecessary split of West Vancouver. The outer areas of Greater Vancouver easily had some of the best changes to ridings in my opinion.
As mentioned previously, it's extremely difficult to balance Metro Vancouver with the interior. This stage of redistribution fixed many changes in Metro Vancouver but unfortunately, a lot of the interior was redrawn completely differently. The following map doesn't include the current ridings and report ridings as it's very difficult to process the map well with both lines on.
I don't like the shifts but considering what they were working with I don't think it's too bad I dislike the weird splits in Kamloops and Kelowna. Kamloops is not split in the current borders but is split almost down the middle which I find odd and somewhat unnecessary. In Kelowna specifically, I'm glad there are 2 seats as that has been necessary, I just really don't approve of the weird borders they decided to go with to make this change.
If you wanted a nicer-looking 3-riding Okanagan Lake map this is a quick one I made that ensures all ridings have a deviation below 1%.
Political Impact
BC is consistently one of the closest provinces in elections regarding the total seat count in the province. The NDP holds on Vancouver Island stay consistent, with the only real shift happening in the new Vancouver seats with the Liberals and NDP, and in Similkameen-West Kootenay which is a battleground between the NDP and Conservatives.
Comentarios