Lake Country vote is to ride Kelowna ‘coattails’ at polls

Lake Country Mayor James Baker has one issue with a proposed new federal riding called Vernon-Lake Country.

“It should be Lake Country-Vernon,” Baker said with a laugh on Wednesday. “We may be smaller than Vernon, but we’re growing faster than they are.”

A federal commission has proposed sweeping changes to electoral boundaries in B.C. While the main aim is to create one new riding to reflect population growth, many revisions to the configurations and names of existing ridings are also being put forward.

The new riding of Vernon-Lake Country would include both those municipalities, and all of downtown Kelowna and Glenmore.

“I’ll be darned,” Baker said, when told of the proposed change. “That’s a pretty strange configuration, from Kelowna’s point of view.”

Baker acknowledges efforts to redraw boundaries are necessary to reflect population changes, but he says he’d be in favour of retaining Lake Country with a Kelownabased riding.

“Our citizens probably have much more interaction with Kelowna than they do with Vernon,” Baker said. “Although sometimes, and particularly for people in our northern ward of Oyama, it’s easier and more convenient to go into Vernon for things than it is to go battle the traffic into Kelowna.”

A 2018 transportation study found that 70% of all trips made by residents of Lake Country cross into another municipality, the most by far being Kelowna. A much smaller number of Lake Country residents head north toward Vernon on a regular basis, the study found.

Lake Country is also a member municipality of the Central Okanagan Regional District, along with Kelowna, West Kelowna and Peachland.

Given Kelowna’s higher national profile than Vernon’s, Baker says there may be some benefits to his community by retaining its federal political association with the city to the south.

“If we’re able to ride on Kelowna’s coattails, there may be more advantages to us than being tacked onto a Vernon riding,” he said.

If the proposed new riding of Vernon-Lake Country comes into being, it would include Kelowna City Hall. Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran has not responded to a request for comment.