Federal riding boundaries to change, under plan going out for public comment

Downtown Kelowna and all of Glenmore could be shuffled into a new federal riding named ‘Vernon-Lake Country’.

The proposed new riding’s name and boundaries surprises and perplexes former Kelownaarea MP Al Horning.

“Doesn’t make any sense to me,” Horning, 82, said in an interview Tuesday.

Beyond the curiosity of there being no Kelowna reference to such a substantial new riding, Horning said the boundary could present challenges for effective representation of this region in Ottawa.

“Take someone from Vernon who’s maybe interested in being a candidate. How much do they really know, or care, about Kelowna. And viceversa, too,” Horning said.

Horning was a Progressive Conservative MP between 1988 and 1992, when the riding centred on Kelowna was known as Okanagan Centre. Its boundaries conformed to those of the Central Okanagan Regional District.

“That made perfect sense, though I know there’s always a bit of a problem in coming up with ridings because of population differences and whatnot,” Horning said.

An independent federal commission has been tasked with creating one new riding in B.C. to match the province’s population growth. But the group has also taken an energetic approach to redrawing many existing riding boundaries.

“We are proposing quite a few boundary changes,” commission chair Mary Saunders said in a release. “The changes are mainly in response to the significant but uneven growth of population.”

The commission will hold hearings across B.C. to ask what people make of the proposed new ridings.

Hearings will be held in Kelowna on June 14 at the Best Western Plus Inn at 7 p.m., and in Vernon on June 15 at the Okanagan Regional Library branch at 1 p.m.

For the next federal election, each riding is supposed to have a population of about 116,300 people.

For the Central Okanagan, the commission proposes that the existing riding of KelownaLake Country will disappear. Its area will be divided between the proposed new riding of Vernon-Lake Country and a proposed new riding called Kelowna.

That riding would include all areas south and east of Highway 97.

As well, the existing riding of Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola, which includes downtown and central Kelowna, all of the Westside and the South ThompsonNicola Valley areas, would also disappear.

It would be replaced by a new riding called Coquihalla, that would include all of West Kelowna, Peachland, Summerland and areas to the west that include Merritt and Hope.

Before the COSN riding was created, and added downtown Kelowna, the riding was known as Okanagan-Coquihalla, and represented by Stockwell Day for many years.

Asked for his views, Central OkanaganSimilkameen-Nicola Conservative MP Dan Albas responded in an email:

“The electoral boundary process is by design meant to be nonpartisan – if elected officials support or oppose suggested changes it understandably can led to the question if the opposition or support is solely politically motivated and that in turn can undermine the process.

“What matters is what do citizens in the affected communities think about these changes? I will be reaching out and contacting citizens as well as local government elected leaders to hear their views on these proposed changes.

“From my own perspective I believe having access to your local Member of Parliament is important and that is why the work of the independent, nonpartisan, electoral boundaries commission is challenging having to create similar sized ratings with very differently populated communities.”